Tag: rant
The Xbox Update; Or Why I Learned to Hate Security
You know there was an update for the Xbox 360 recently? I’ve never enjoyed these updates. They take forever, usually make the console worse and less responsive, and – on one occasion – broke my Xbox. This new one appears to do two things: Replace Microsoft Points with actual pound values, and Make me want to stab people at Microsoft in the face. You see, there’s now a forced “two factor” logon. Which is good, for security. But the way …
The impending death of gaming
Yes, that’s an overstatement. Gaming is not going to die. It’s going to change, and if it changes how it looks like it’s going to, then it’ll be dead to me. Much of this concern stems from rumours (most of which have been rubbished), but where there is smoke, there is fire. Rumours come from ideas, and even if they’re not implemented now, or fully – someone, somewhere, thought they’d be a a good idea. Online only I don’t want my console …
How I hate PC gaming
Ten years ago, I used to play quite a lot of PC games. Sim City, Tony Hawk, GTA, Rollcage, Half Life. Some of the Tomb Raiders and things like NOX too. I forget the rest. The last PC game I really sank any time into was Anarchy Online, back in 2005. Even that I didn’t play for long. Aside from brief prod at the Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst demo, that was the end of my PC gaming. There were …
The new Xbox 360 Dashboard
Rant moan rant rant moan. That’s all I’ve seen written about the new 360 GUI. It’s rubbish. Everything is hidden. There’s too many adverts. Games aren’t the focus any more. It’s too confusing. Everything is seventeen menus deep and behind carousel images. Rant bloody rant moan moan. With good reason: Everything is hidden. There’s too many adverts. Games aren’t the focus any more. It’s too confusing. Everything is seventeen menus deep and behind carousel images. Of course, it looks nice. It really does – …
Games I Hate: Donkey Kong 64
Until the release of the technically fantastic, utterly huge, and gloriously lovely to look at Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64, I was a big fan of Rare’s stuff. Or at least, I thought I was. I mean, I did really, really, enjoy Banjo Kazooie. So much so that I almost completed it many times (the end boss proving too much), and even got the XBLA remake – finally 100%ing it. But looking back at their other titles, I’m not …
Sky can’t read
At least, it seems that way. I sent them a message via their help pages: This isn’t a complaint, I just can’t find any other way of emailing you. Since Ofcom have now forced BT to reduce the cost of their wholesale product to resellers (such as yourself, with Sky Connect which I use), I was wondering when you are going pass that price reduction on to customers, and by how much our bills will be reduced? BT have a …
Happy Birthday, Sonic the Hedgehog
Happy 20th birthday, Sonic! Not that you can hear me, being a) fictional, and b) dead. Dead to me at least, with Sega’s stream of memory-raping crapbaskets they call Sonic games. I’ve done all that before. Moaned about Sonic games. At length. To anyone who will listen, read or otherwise take an interest (or not). It hasn’t done any good: Sega still keeps making them. Today, to mark his birthday, Sega have released a demo of Sonic Generations for the …
How do you buy from Lenovo?
Answer: You don’t. In fact, you can’t. I couldn’t anyway. It’s not even the first time something like this has happened with Lenovo, as they’ve been utterly useless in the past.
Wonderful Microsoft Technical Support Fun
Fairly recently, Microsoft added a “feature” to Live Mail (formerly Hotmail, remember that?). It’s a feed of all your “social” activity, called “Messenger Social”. I’m sure it’s lovely and all, but in a school where we block everything to do with Facebook and MySpace (remember that too?) and all other fun stuff like it, but still allow web-based email, it causes us a problem. How do we block just this bit of Live Mail? You’d expect that just filtering the …
Why Sega should just give up and die
When I got my Megadrive in the early 1990s, it was for one single game – Sonic the Hedgehog. I’d played it often at the local game shop, and didn’t just want it, I needed it. Once I had my own Sega console to play it on, I was hooked on Sega games. In fact, for a good decade or so, I loved pretty much all of Sega’s major-title output – I suppose I was a Sega Fanboy (although Mario …