Review of Life

I have to admit, I’ve never really been enrolled into the whole history of the Resident Evil series. I do seem to remember playing the original on the Playstation (is that right?!) but it may have been the second. Either way, it was good fun, part action, part adventure. Reasonably scary.

So when the fifth in the series came out (Oh, I tried the one on the Wii, that was AWFUL!) I had to get it… and I must say I’m really enjoying it! I know it’s standard practice to complete a game before reviewing but I’m not a massive, massive gamer. I play when I can and mostly that’s very casual but I’m trying my best.

The first thing that hit me is how gorgeous the game looks. I was, for some reason, expecting an “on rails” type game where there are hundreds of pauses and camera swings to divert your attention to the next thing. That it’s as free as it is somehow came as a shock and interacting with the environment on this game is a thorough joy. I don’t know whether it’s just me but the controls did irritate a fair bit, as did the odd bizarre camera angle… still, it’s kinda one of those things these days that people just *do* complain about.

The storyline is pretty good considering it’s a Zombie game to all intents and purposes. Oh, and it’s been ages since I’ve played a game with proper end-of-level baddies, how cool is that?! Your main ally in your pursuit, Sheva, is a bit bloody stupid I have to admit – you’re supposed to be able to get her to help you out more often than not but I just kept putting her into “cover” mode and that seemed to be for the best. There’s a need to conserve ammo that’s quite tricky for someone who’s not a confirmed FPS gamer, but the challenge seems fair enough really, rather than being handed everything on a plate. And the cool thing is that I hardly had to blow up a barrel at all!

I don’t think I’ve ever played a more cinematic game, though I’m looking to get Call of Duty: World at War, so we’ll see how long that lasts.

A very solid game, well directed, well executed and voice acted. A very intense and inclusive experience.

The game gets 8/10

On the way to pick up my son and coming up to a roundabout: 3 lanes; left lane goes left, middle and right lanes go straight on. I’m in the middle lane… person in the left lane is going left, going left, going left – nope! Going straight on. Argh!!!!

Luckily, * very luckily * there was no-one in the right lane so I was able to move over just in time. But that’s really rare that there aren’t cars filling all three lanes. I’m useless at finding my horn (yeah, yeah, ha-ha) so I didn’t even beep. I was so… well, scared I guess. I do get incensed when driving but less so when my heart’s pounding with fear.

Still don’t really know how I managed to avoid a scrape of some kind. Idiot then carried on driving stupidly fast in front of me, braking somewhat erratically. Did wonder whether the driver was drunk. Makes you think.

Anyway, bit dull, but overall I’d give my journey a very low 1/10 and only gets a 1 because I was at least able to see my little boy

Chips, glorious chips. Well, not that glorious I suppose, they are chips after all. Oh, and chips means fried potatoes by the way, cut into sticks and eaten with ketchup. *Those* kind of chips.

So, in my own weird way, I’ve had opportunity recently to make my own chips using real-life potatoes, and use ready-made oven chips, the brand of which I forget but quite possibly McCain. This is my review.

The home made chips were, on the whole, the more dangerous to make. Having no peeler handy, I slices the potatoes using a sharp knife. Actually, and perhaps you should all think about this, I reckon that I actually removed far less good potato this way than using a peeler. Anyway, then I had to dice-with-death another time and cut the potatoes up into chip shapes. Scary huh? In the meantime I was tasked with heating up oil in a pan to a stupidly dangerous level before adding the potatoes. It all went well, but I could have died is what I’m saying!

The oven ready chips I slapped on a baking tray and popped into the oven. Easy.

But when it came to taste time, I can emphatically announce home-made the clear winners. The oven ready were dry and the middle kinda collapsed in on itself. Useless. The home made were just the right side of greasy and anyway the ketchup cut through all that beautifully. Yum!

So, my scores are:

Home-Made Chips: 9/10
Over-Ready Chips: 5/10

On average, I’m going to have to score 8/10

This is my first review of this quite bizarre and quite wonderful book, “The Master and Margarita”. I say wonderful even though I have no idea whether it truly is wholly so, but it’s almost irrelevant, right now I can happily report that it is quite wonderful to read, even though I can’t confess to be entirely enjoying it.

What I’m intending to do is review each separate bit that I read, partly as a way to give myself momentum to KEEP GOING with it. It’s hard work, believe me, it’s… well, I’ll explain why later. Anyway, hopefully doing the reviews this way gives it a chance since it is a book of changing moods, styles and stories. At this point, I’ve read 40 pages. The other reason to do it is it gives me a chance to think about books, stories, tales of mystery, in a different way. Makes me stop and think and disparate points rather than ploughing on and considering the tale only at the end. That’s otherwise what I do and it seems kinda daft.

OK, so, to the story. This being the first chapter of my review I need to give some background of the book. The Master and Margarita first drew me to it because of the wonderful cover of the book. It has a cat, a black cat, a bespectacled black cat… oh, I’m going to stop there BUT the cat is also smoking a cigar and playing cards. Fantastic! The novel is written by Russian Mikhail Bulgakov. It is a satire, by all accounts, and in my reading of it so far can be desperately funny and beautifully absurd. The book, by all accounts, has quite a weird history; apparently the first draft of the book was destroyed for dubious reasons, and the final draft was completed by Bulgakov’s wife after his death. Then, after its release was censored to hell, the devil knows why (that is a bad joke based on the first few bad jokes referencing the devil in the first few pages of the book). Obviously the version I’m reading is an interpretation into English and has been completed by two separate interpreters.

The book starts with a poet and a journalist discussing the former’s current employ by the latter to produce an atheistic poem about Jesus. At which point a “foreigner” arrives who starts to tell them about how he knows that Jesus did exist, and a chapter is devoted to a flashback of Pontius Pilate’s introduction to Jesus of Nazareth. It’s actually quite fun, the historical details, Jesus’ apparent words and actions are all rather interesting and the juxtaposition of the chapters is amusing and quite enthralling.

Then it starts to get a little odd. The “foreigner” starts to get all spooky and predicts the future. Only 35 pages or so in and actually I was quite attached to the poet and the journalist so…

[SPOILER ALERT]
… it’s quite weird when one of them is decapitated. End of story for the journalist. But the important thing is that the odd sequence of events that leads to the beheading is predicted by the foreigner. The poet, quite freaked out, starts to chase after the foreigner who is joined by another bizarre gentleman and… a big, walking cat.
[/SPOILER ALERT]

Personally I’m finding the reading of it all quite difficult. Clearly there’s a fair amount of interpretation going on and it shows, frankly, in the way the humour in particular is interpreted. I have a feeling, and this is a good thing, that some of the humour has been either over-played or under-played. It’s silly in places and I get the feeling that it’s supposed to be, that the original is, but somehow it doesn’t work in English. The other major difficulty I have is that the names are also quite difficult to follow. I know, I’m a pathetic Englishman who can’t remember long complicated foreign names… but it’s true! I can’t! Especially when the characters also have Russian nicknames that are used intermittently.

Anyway, that’s where I’m up to. I’m happy to carry on, though I must admit it’s hard work. Loving the weirdness though

Cover: 10/10
Introduction to the story: 8/10
Story so far: 9/10

Overall, I’m giving the first 40 pages a very devilish 9/10

Jade Goody – is there any one person in the UK who is simultaneously so loathed and loved by he public? Yeah, probably. Truth is though that she is someone who has divided opinion so greatly over the years that there’s a certain amount of feeling within me that’s forcing me to be really think about whether it’s fair to “have a pop” when someone’s dying? Why not? Why do I have to suddenly think that she’s a wonderful person *just because* she’s dying?

Well, I should, because like her or not, she has a family, she has friends, she genuinely does have a lot of people who love her around her. Sure, I can be skeptical about people like Max Clifford but really I have no real reason to suspect his motives of being anything but friendly in the lady’s last days or weeks. Frankly I feel a bit uncomfortable, it’s not like she’s stabbed anyone, or destroyed anyone’s future, or really done an awful lot but take advantage of our own society… if anything should be done on the back of feeling anything negative towards the Goodie, then it should be to take on the most deplorable “media” aspects of our selves.

Personally, I’m a bit tired of the whole thing. She is one amongst thousands who are suffering in exactly the same way, she’s not special in that respect.. and to be honest, I have no idea if she herself would like the attention she’s getting. I just don’t know, and it’s not fair to assume that she would.

The amount of vitriol and humor being poked at her around the internet is immense. There’s a pretty good summary of all this shown here: Jade Goody funny stories and jokes. Don’t blame that site, by the way, it’s just aggregating all the stories around the internet.

It’s a weird state of affairs. The way I see it is Jade Goody is OK. She’ll die, people will mourn, and hopefully Cancer becomes even more pressing in people’s lives as something that needs funding, in terms of research, and hopefully anyone who has profited from Jade Goody’s life (and death) will put some money – if not all that money – that way.

When the time comes – because I won’t blog about it again – RIP Jade Goody.

This review isn’t going to have a “rating” – it doesn’t seem appropriate.

Just sat down to watch the first few minutes of Live and Let Die… not quite sure why, was only really in the mood for a few minutes of it. But it’s all good, a great start to a Bond film, and (I believe) Roger Moore’s first Bond outing.

It starts with a series of deaths, a murder in the UN – death by high-frequency sound! The most hilarious the bloke who’s watching the funeral procession being led by a brass band.. turns out the procession is for him and he gets picked up into the coffin, then the band goes all JAZZ and it’s a street party. Ace. Didn’t actually get to the bit where Moore actually gets on screen but that’s not the point. I know how the rest goes and it’s a brilliant film, great debut for Roger Moore and the whole film’s very Bond.

Not to mention the title track sung by Sir Paul McCartney – a wicked bit of music, perfect for Bond though actually quite different. Amazing stuff.

I give the first few minutes of this film a very strong 9/10, though overall I think I’d temper it by saying that it’s not the best Bond film by any means and so overall the film gets 7/10.

This is my review of the Manchester United vs. Liverpool football game which has just finished at Old Trafford. It’s not going to be a long review but it was a particularly good game for anyone who isn’t a Man Utd fan. Obviously especially good for Liverpool fans but also for neutral supporters who can perhaps now look forward to a decent end to the season, perhaps a genuine race including Liverpool, Man U and Chelsea is on the cards.

4-1 though! That’s pretty impressive Liverpool! Especially considering the mid-week destruction of Real Madrid, a team that once British clubs would genuinely think they had little chance against. But it turns out that fancy moves and reputation really don’t do a great deal when up against a decent team.

Perhaps we should be talking about great management here. Let’s face it, Sir Alex Ferguson is a pretty awesome manager by any means. So many trophies, so many titles using so many different teams. That’s impressive. But what about Rafael Benitez? At this point I think we have to say that he really is as good as he thinks he is. Go Benitez!

So, Liverpool have beaten Manchester United 4-1. Good days, good days.

Overall score for the game: 8/10 – it was pretty action packed, certainly lots of goals, penalties and even a sending off. Super!

Message away!

I’m not really into social networking, social bookmarking, social…ising. Anything really that involves me having to interact with other humans is not really something I do. Which makes it all the more important that my communication tool of choice really does the job well.

I use MSN Messenger. It might not even be called that, exactly, but I don’t much care either. Messenger is a Microsoft product, which doesn’t immediately mean it’s evil or that it’s buggy or that its Terms and Conditions forced me to give up my first born or the deeds to my eldest Stallion. Nope – it just means it works pretty much half the time and almost certainly contains a lot of functionality I’ll never use.

Personally I think out of all the instant online chat machines, Messenger is the best (out of interest, ICQ was the worst). It’s functional, it lets you have your own avatars, it’s quick, it lets you have privacy (I’m always in “appear offline” mode). Yeah – it’s a good product.

Appearance: 8/10 (It hasn’t ever changed much but personally I *like* that)
Functionality: 7/10 (It doesn’t do much, really, but what it does it does well)
Funk factor: 4/10 (It won’t do much for your street cred)

Overall I give MSN Messenger a healthy but not stunning 6/10

A late lunch for me, nearly 4pm!! Not too out of the ordinary for me, but perhaps a little later. Still, point is, I’m sat here now with a half-eaten Jacket potato and looking forward to eating that second half.

It’s a good jacket, though oddly it’s quite burnt on the outside and I haven’t been given a plastic knife, just a little plastic fork which makes it thoroughly tough to eat. I’ve gone for a beans and cheese combination for my jacket, it’s fantastically cooked on the inside, the beans and cheese have melted together in a big splodge of loveliness. My arteries harden… then immediately soften in the knowledge that it’s going to be so tasty it’d be very unfair to bring on a heart-attack. At least until I’m finished.

It’s served in the same container as a kebab which is slightly less good. In fact, in terms of presentation, it’s a bit of a wash-out. Disappointing.

Tastiness: 9/10
Presentation: 4/10
Accessories: 3/10

Overall: 6/10

It’s lunch time! And as such it’s time for me to enjoy a hot, tasty, flat Cornish pasty, brought to me by those beautiful (er, not really*) people at Ainsley’s who make pies, pasties, sandwiches and cakes. The smell is good, the packaging almost translucent with greasy goodness, so let’s dive in and taste the pasty goodness.

Mmmm! It’s all good, baby. Not to suggest that their Cornish meat filling includes baby, though for all I know it might. I have no real idea what goes into it and I don’t want to know. It could be haggis without the stomach for all I know and care. The spices are right, the heat is nice, the gravy – delectable. The only thing that occasionally lets it down is a “slip” of gristle. I say “slip” because that’s kind of what your teeth do when they try to chew it. Not pleasant.

Still, overall you’ve got to stand tall Ainsley’s – you guys know how to stuff crap into a pastry half-moon and cook it. Yum!

Tastiness: 9/10
Service (at store): 8/10
Presentation: 7/10

Overall Score: 8/10