Natal bends down and picks up honours at Game Critic awards

Microsoft's newly announced Project Natal has won Best Hardware/Peripheral of E3 2009 at the Game Critics Awards.

Natal has caused a stir among the gaming community since it's announcement at E3 earlier this month, and Microsoft's Creative Director of European Studios, Peter Molyneux (seen here revealing how many inches his ears add to the width of his head), was only too willing to blurt out details about Microsoft's ambitions for the project.

"We're going to revolutionise gaming as we know it." claimed Molyneux. "Right now games are played with a controller, but with Natal we can remove that. Imagine being able to play through Fable 2 purely by twitching your eyebrows. That's the kind of thing we're aiming towards."

Another success story from the award ceremony was DS game Scribblenauts. The Little Big Planet imitator picked up the award for Best Original Game, with the irony sadly lost on the voting American editors.

Bleszinski to "Nintendo" the Gears franchise

Developer Cliff Bleszinski has made it clear that he intends to milk the Gears of War franchise for all it's worth.

Bleszinski, seen here posing for the Game Developer Douchebags of America calender in which he features as ten of the months, says that there have "Only been two identical Gears of War games so far" and that there is room on the market for three, or maybe even four even more identical instalments in the popular franchise.

"There is still a lot of things you can do in a cover based shooter." claimed Bleszinski. "There are a lot of melee weapons that we haven't even thought of glueing onto a gun yet.". Bleszinski went on to say that there are "still lots of stories to tell in the Gears universe" while clutching a rented copy of Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and cheekily winking to nearby development staff.

One interviewer, who dared to suggest that Bleszinski might be milking the franchise to satisfy his monumental ego, was quickly silenced as Cliffy B aimed a rubber Lancer at the protester, shouting "Pew Pew Pew you're dead". Security escorting the protester off the premises as the developer held the Lancer aloft and made triumphant revving noises with his mouth, before swaggering off to go buy another girly earring.

Obama condemned by PETA after fly swatting

PETA have criticised US President Barack Obama for his brutal murdering of a fly

The spotlight-loving animal rights activists have branded the President as "inhumane" after he performed a grievous act of violence on the insect.

The assault was performed during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood, where Obama can clearly be seen taking a swipe, exclaiming "Quit flying up in ma face, yo", with the fly dropping to the ground moments later. Obama then went on to boast "Take that sucka!" before continuing with the interview as if nothing had happened.

The swipe itself was described by onlookers as "something between a karate chop and a full on pimp slap". Vice President Joe Biden went on to say the action was "wickedy wickedy fly, yo", before putting a baseball cap on backwards, sauntering up to the President and offering some "big up respec'" for his lightning-fast strike.

However, it appears PETA have taken offence at Obama's inhumane and reckless actions, even going as far to say that the President's fly swatting was "borderline psychopathic". Spokesman Bruce Freidrich protested against the swat, claiming that "flies are people too, and they should be treated with just as much respect as another human being" and that Obama's actions "would only further encourage abuse towards insects.".

Freidrich then went on to say that Obama would be forgiven by the organisation if he laid a dookie on the steps of the White House and "allowed nearby flies to feast upon it without threat of violence", although White House security deemed the chances of this happening were "unlikely", due to the high probability of someone attempting to steal the faeces and sell it on eBay.

BNP leader Nick Griffin claims crusty jugglers shouldn't get what's coming to 'em

Following a BNP attack on a group of Romanian Gypsies in Belfast yesterday, Nick Griffin has both condemned and defended the actions of supporters of his party.

Griffin said of the event that "No one wants to see any person attacked, and that any right-minded person would condemn the attacks.". He then went on to add that "The bastards shouldn't have been here in the first place, and they're all criminals anyway.".

It's an action that comes just as the BNP were attempting to further establish themselves as a respectable political party in the wake of their election victories in the North West and Yorkshire, although Nick Griffin stated he was confident that the party's reputation would not be significantly hindered by this because anyone thick enough to not know the BNP's immigration policy of "Bricks and velocity" is too busy ranting about the MP's expenses scandal that nobody really cares about any more.

This attack by the BNP on a group of gypsies in a church follows a day after an article on the BNP website that has dubbed a former Labour minister a "racist thug". Nick Griffin then went on to defend his concept of irony, stating that it was "Like rain on your wedding day".

NASA decide that Moon doesn't have enough craters.

A team of NASA scientists have decided to make their jobs more interesting by blowing a massive chunk out of the Moon.

The team, led by Kimberly Ennico, have finally gotten bored of staring at the same floating rock in space every day, and instead of finding something worthwhile to do have opted to just make another great big hole in it.

Kimberly Ennico said of the billion dollar undertaking: "There is only so much of the Moon a team of scientists can really look at, and after a while it becomes a little tedious. Imagine watching paint dry, except the paint is several hundred-thousand miles away and has been dry for several decades. We're just trying to make our lives a little more interesting.".

She then went on to meet criticism of the expensive endeavour by claiming that "There might be some water up there", because apparently the colossal and inexhaustible supply of water on the Earth's surface doesn't quite cut it any more.

Despite some criticism, many scientists have joined Ms Ennico in defending the act, stating that not only would it be "seriously fucking cool, man", but are also convinced that this action will further confirm whether or not the Moon is in fact made of cheese, and if so what kind.

"A few large chunks would probably suggest some kind of cheddar, while a sprinkling or crumbly residue would point towards something like feta or parmesan." claimed one scientist, who later insisted that current study has proven it "wouldn't be any of that poncey blue shit.".

Blog post thing.

Just to quickly prove to myself that this time I'm actually going to stick with something I claimed to be doing, I'm serving up the first slice of meaningless drivel - without proper spell checking or anything. I'm living dangerously, baby.

So Friday I had an Editorial Writing exam, which is basically where the exam board sends you two packs on two random topics they've chosen (I'm assuming the "random article" button on Wikipedia is involved somewhere in their decision making process) and then ask you to write a 1000-word piece on it, which can be in pretty much any style. It's basically their way of fucking with you - you can be asked to write anything about anything - so properly researching the two packs is very important preparation.

But being naturally lazy, I didn't do that. Instead it was more a case of picking up the packs two days late, quickly deciding which one to do (a choice between Senior Fitness or Twin Peaks, a cult television show from the 90s, didn't seem like a tough call at the time) and then just highlighting the fuck out of thirty pages of words. So, there was me tottering into the exam hall with a thick wedge of luminous pink paper thinking "A-ha, I'm well prepared for this", just before the questions bitch-slap me into reality and I spend two and a half hours trying to remember what Radio 2 is like so I can write a script for it.

I couldn't help but think "Maybe I should have done the other one" all the way through, which just made me realise how lazy I was. It wasn't "Maybe I should prepare both", no. Either way my choice had to include some sort of apathy towards something. I suppose I should have tried to look at both, but even though they were so different I'd have still gotten them confused. All through the exam I'd have had this image in my head of an old woman doing star jumps while her Twin Peaks bounced lazily up and down like sad melons in plastic bags. No thanks.

Still, the weekend following it was good, spent Saturday celebrating my girlfriend's 19th and Sunday dorking it up on the 360 while she stole my room to revise, with the occasional break to clean up puppy piss. Wouldn't have minded it so much if he didn't look so proud of himself when he saw me cleaning it up, almost as if he was gloating. Or maybe he was just expecting me to feed him cheese. Either way he decided it was a good idea to galavant off with all the kitchen roll and trail it around the house before leaving a shapely turd on the doormat. Aren't puppies adorable?

So yeah, that was the last three days of my relatively uneventful life. Hopefully it'll get more interesting as I keep writing this - or I'll at least be able to throw in enough cock gags to make it semi-enjoyable. In the mean time, try not to hurl too much abuse. I'm new to this stuff and still figuring out the kinks.

Oh yeah, uploading the Halo Wars review tonight when I get back from work, so that'll be up in...er...some hours.

Update - four reviews next week, other stuff, blah blah blah

Since I've been holding back all reviews for the last four months while waiting for this new site everything I've done has become pretty out of date - not to mention a total lack of motivation on my part because of the "well if nobody's reading it I don't have to write it" thoughts that go through my mind every time I sit down to do anything mildly creative or critical - so I've decided to just crack on with stuff now and go back to posting things on here.

The reviews I've managed to get done are (I'm actually straining to remember as I type this) Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I know, four in four months is pretty shit, but now that I've got some proper incentive to write (that somebody will actually be reading it now) I should be able to get a few more done.

Immediate stuff I've got planned are two full game reviews - Red Faction: Guerilla (which is class, by the way) and Prototype (picking that up tomorrow) - and a DLC review - Fable 2's See The Future, which I might as well just copy paste from the Knothole Island review and replace certain words.

Keep meaning to get back into films but because I'm working now (hurray, money) it's a bit of a faff finding time during the week, and obviously weekends I spend with my girlfriend, who's not always that bothered about going to the cinema. Will try and get back into that over summer, as well as TV.

Also, while I've got time on my hands I might as well start doing actual blogging, instead of just updating a couple of times a week with "By the way I'm writing this". Most of it will be totally pointless, but I'll try and get a few laughs out of it. Besides, it's all good practise!

Right, that's me done, I'm off to highlight some more stuff for an exam tomorrow - which is going to be the first time I've had to wake up early in the morning for a good few months. Sad times, man.

Cheers for reading this, sorry for the delay, more stuff coming soon, yada yada yada.