News in Briefs FTW

Ah, you've gotta love The Sun's Page 3. It's been running for yonks now (and is quite famous even outside of the UK), and a relatively recent thing they do is have the delightful play on words, "News in Briefs" where the current Page 3 model expresses an opinion about the big news of the day.

Unfortunately, I'm finding it very difficult to believe that these quotes genuinely come from the model in question. (Understatement much?)

To demonstrate, let's take Ruth, 26, from Kent (who happens to be my favorite Page 3 model at the moment). She wanted to express her opinion (allegedly) on the age-old argument that A-levels are getting easier in Britain (from Friday August 20, 2010):

GRAMMAR school girl Ruth is unimpressed with claims that A-levels are easier. She said: “Measuring grade inflation requires objective means of differentiating changes in nominal awards on a common set of exams, and distinguishing from shifts resulting from changes in value such as quality or performance. Rather than focus on that, we should congratulate everyone who got the grades they wanted and give everyone who didn’t a nice big hug.”

I understand that I am taking this out of context somewhat, especially when I'm not showing another quote, but basically they are all written in the same manner. It's almost as if someone is pretending to be the model of the day and putting words into their mouths. But, The Sun wouldn't do that, would they?

I guess the question I want to ask is: WHY? Why are you doing this to us? Are you suggesting that the average IQ of "White Van Man" (the highest demographic of yer average Sun reader) is so low that they're going to read this, stroke their chin and say "Hmmm... yes, this young lady with her tits out raises a very fine point on said subject. I shall pass this information on to my friends down the boozer when I sup on a frothy bevvy."? Boggleth the mind.

If you don't live in the UK and would be fascinated to see what the Page 3 model of the day (Monday to Friday) says, you can always go to their online site (the News in Briefs usually appears in the afternoon, I've noticed) at www.page3.com. (Kind of NSFW: the landing page usually doesn't have any nudity, but be warned that it is a site dedicated to scantily-clad ladies. I've always wanted to use that phrase.)

 

Rez HD for XBox 360

I made it a personal goal to use the BBB RSS feed a little more often, than to just say "this show has been cancelled". I have also signed up with Posterous which makes "one-stop posting" much easier; sharing one post on multiple social networks, should I ever need to do that.

So, I suppose it's a little weird that my first post with this new attitude in mind isn't about the BBB itself. It's about a game that's been on the XBox 360 since 2008. The reason I'm blathering on about it now is twofold: I've been playing it again as part of going back to old games I've downloaded in the past. And, there is a sequel coming out.

Rez HD is a rail shooter in which you control an Avatar that has hacked into a supernetwork with an AI that is beginning to question its existence. You need to get to the heart of the system and force a reboot, battling against viruses and firewalls on the way. It is presented in first-person 3D and is a "rail shooter" in that the path you take is predetermined - you just control the Avatar within the bounds of the screen (sometimes able to rotate the screen somewhat).

Along the way you will meet end-of-level bosses for four levels; and a final boss-rush at the end of level 5, eventually meeting Eden (the AI) and battling her defenses to reboot her. You also get blue power-ups that increase your evolution (able to withstand collisions from enemies and bullets), or give you up to four Overdrives (once activated, it automatically kills enemies for a short period).  Shooting is performed by a lock-on target - you move the target over an enemy and press (or hold down) the fire button. You can lock-on to up to 8 enemies at a time and once the fire button is released, they are fired upon.

As mentioned, you can evolve, starting as a normal sphere (lowest level before dying) to a high-res human-like Avatar. Blue power-ups increase a gauge at the bottom-level; when this is filled, you evolve to the next-highest state. Hitting an enemy or a missile devolves you. Colliding with an object at the lowest level (sphere) logs you out of the system (game over).

What makes this game different to normal shooters, however, is the synesthesia - the coordination of the gameplay with a soundtrack. Each level has a different tune, and the actions you take go to the "beat" of this track. The track progresses on each sub-level until you have a full-blown soundtrack when you get to the boss. Even your player and some of the enemies pulse to this beat. It keeps you going along with the game, trying to build up the tune at the same time as killing as many enemies as you can. My favorite tune is on Level 5 (when you are on the way to meeting Eden). The track is called "Fear" (a remix of Mind Killer) by Adam Freeland, a well-known UK DJ now living in L.A.

Levels are locked when you first play the game, so you can only play Level 1. Completing levels not only open up the main game, but bonus levels as well, along with Time Attacks and other bonuses.
Rez HD is basically a "High-Definition" remake of the original Rez that appeared on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. A sequel of the game, called Child of Eden, is being worked on for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 - the XBox 360 version has been confirmed to be able to use the new Kinect system (formerly Project Natal). I'm gonna have to get me that!

Rez HD is available from the Live Marketplace, with a trial version to evaluate the game.

Fascinating Fact: The Japanese version of the original Rez was also available as a "Special Package" which came with a USB gizmo called the Trance Vibrator. The idea was to hold it, put it in your pocket or sit on it and it was a vibration package with more "umph" than the vibrator built into the controller. Needless to say, there are several reports that this was also used as a sex toy or masturbatory aid ;)

More info on Wikipedia, with information on the sequel, Child of Eden.

I'm on XBox Live as BozRetro.

2010-08-11 CANCELLED

Hi everyone,

Due to the flood that happened over the weekend, we're still cleaning up the mess, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel the show this week.

Hopefully things will be back to some sort of normality next week!

Thanks for understanding,

Boz.

Gathering 2010 Mission Success!

Thank you to everyone for making the Gathering 2010 such a great get-together! Some regular gathering guests were there but there were also new faces, which is always good to see!

Thanks also to the guys at Kville Biljard for making the whole weekend go by swimmingly.

Apologies to those of you I didn't get to say much (or anything) to... hopefully you could see that, with the amount of people there, it's difficult to get to see everybody. But you all looked like you were enjoying yourself and that's the important thing!

See you next year!