#oneaday, Day 296: DEADLY PREMONITION Must Always Be In Capslock

Ahh, all you people out there playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. I hope you’re having a good time. I seriously doubt you’re having as good a time as me. Because I’m playing DEADLY PREMONITION, a game so remarkable it insists on its title being in capitals whenever it announced you’re playing it on Xbox LIVE.

Here in Europe, we’re late to the DEADLY PREMONITION party, of course, but at least the game finally made it over here. And at a knock-down price of £24.99, too. This is very much a Good Thing, though I’m concerned that within a few weeks the game will have disappeared without trace, never to be seen again. As such, I decided that I should probably pick up a copy before that happened. I did the same with 3D Dot Game Heroes a while back, and still haven’t got around to finishing that. One day.

DEADLY PREMONITION, though, I decided to make a start on tonight after Fallout: New Vegas decided to throw a wobbly earlier on. So here, then, are my first impressions of a game I knew pretty much nothing about prior to tonight, save the fact that it’s supposedly “so bad it’s good” territory.

The first thing that will strike you upon firing up Deadly… I mean DEADLY PREMONITION is that it looks like ass. Coming off a game with sparkly hi-definition graphics like Fallout: New Vegas, or Vanquish (which I reviewed this week for The Big Pixels… go check it out) it’s a jarring change to see muddy textures and that weird “sparkly texture” effect that we used to see all the time on previous-gen consoles. But after a few short moments it ceases to matter. And if anything, so far I am feeling that the shoddy graphics are, in fact, part of this game’s charm.

The second thing which is striking about the game is that it is genuinely atmospheric. Some good use of creepy sounds, reminiscent of Silent Hill, coupled with some ugly, horrifying enemies that remind me somewhat of Fatal Frame (aka Project Zero) make for a nerve-wracking walk into town. I haven’t got very far yet, so I couldn’t say for certain if this atmosphere continues throughout. But I’m certainly impressed with the feeling of dread which the game is producing so far.

Controls are initially clunky but you soon adjust to them when you remember that this isn’t supposed to be a fast-action shooter. Yes, being rooted to the spot while aiming a gun is a pain. But it forces you to think a little bit more carefully about getting into a suitable position to fire rather than spraying bullet fire around randomly. I’m certainly fine with it, though it would be understandable for some people to hate it.

In fact, that last statement pretty much sums up what I’m expecting from DEADLY PREMONITION as a whole: something which I’m going to enjoy a huge amount, which other people will probably hate, loathe and despise for various reasons. Some may be immediately turned off by the graphics (whores that you are). Some may be put off by the control scheme (which is easier for me to sympathise with). And others simply would probably rather play something like Call of Duty. Which, as I said yesterday, is absolutely fine by me.

Me? I’ll be exploring Greenvale and trying not to get chopped up by the “Raincort Killer” [sic], as the European box would have it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

#oneaday, Day 295: Eat Your Words

Call of Duty: Black Ops is currently in the process of being launched. This game, for the uninitiated, is going to be rather popular, and it’s expected to sell by the millions. Fair enough. It’s always good to see something enjoy so much success. (Unless it’s, say, a nuclear bomb or terrorist plot or something.)

It’s also something that I couldn’t give two shits about, but this blog post isn’t about why I don’t give two shits about it. This blog post is about why it doesn’t matter that I don’t give two shits about it, and why it doesn’t matter that you, the reader, might think it’s the best thing ever. All that really matters is your own personal opinion on the matter, and it’s this principle that the Internet at large (including, occasionally, yours truly) forgets sometimes.

Everyone has a right to their own opinion, of course. But who really has the right to say what is the “correct” opinion? No-one, of course. The only “correct” opinion is the one you hold. If your opinion doesn’t happen to gel with the majority, then that’s fine. If you hold an opinion that’s popular with the majority but unpopular with your circle of friends, that’s fine too.

In most cases, anyway. Opinions involving being a Nazi, a racist, enjoying raping and/or killing children and/or animals or reading the Daily Mail are generally agreed to be Bad Things. These are societal norms. They’re universally accepted. (Except by the racist Nazi child-raping animal-haters who read the Daily Mail, of course.)

But there are no societal norms on what you “should” think about Call of Duty. Sure, there’s a large number of people out there who really dig it. Some may point to sales figures or Raptr usage statistics and claim that Modern Warfare 2 is the “most popular game of all time” and therefore one of the most important that everyone should like and appreciate. But that’s not the case at all.

The simple fact is, all forms of media have, over time, broadened their appeal. No-one can be expected to be “into” everything. There’s no-one out there who’s read every book, seen every film, watches everything on TV. For one thing, there simply isn’t time to do that. And while it was once possible to play every game there was thanks to their short length or relatively limited availability, we’re now at a stage where there’s no need to play every game out there. In fact, it’s arguably undesirable to do so, because it would inevitably mean you’d miss out on some of the hidden depths of some titles. Consider the person who romps straight through Fallout: New Vegas’ main questline and beats it in, say, 20 hours, versus the person who fully explores the world and invests over 100 hours into that game. Who’s had the fuller experience and got better value for money? I guess there’s arguments for either, but personally speaking on reflection I’d much rather have a deeper experience with less titles than whore around with every game that’s available out there.

What that means, then, is that if you’re someone who isn’t interested in Black Ops, you don’t have to feel bad about all the fuss. But at the same time, there’s no need to be an ass to the people out there who are buzzed for that game. They probably wouldn’t be into the idea of playing Deadly Premonition, Aquaria or Super Meat Boy.

So, basically, do your thing, enjoy what you enjoy and don’t be hatin’ on those who like something you don’t. Similarly, if you like something and someone else doesn’t, don’t be hatin’ on them for not liking it, either.

And the world will be a happy place.

Who am I kidding? This is never going to happen. Call of Duty sucks and everyone buying it is a lame-ass fagbrain!*

* This is a joke, tightass.

#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you’ll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn’t so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I’ve never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it’s a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn’t “see” new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren’t revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn’t mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn’t bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly “feeling” my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn’t matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I’d experienced in a game before. And I’ve struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I’d like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn’t look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it’s challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven’t even made it to the bottom yet. It’s a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it’s addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal‘s quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being “potentially”. 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It’s very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don’t even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there’s even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it’s immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It’s a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don’t mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it’s very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there’s no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster “behaviour”.

Couple that with the game’s immense customisability (it’s a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn’t even mention Moria or NetHack once.

#oneaday, Day 293: The Internet Will Make You Gay

When you’re young, being labelled as “gay” is the ultimate stigma, regardless of what your sexuality actually is. Anything bad is labelled “gay” and anyone who is not one of the cool kids is labelled “gay”, “gaylord”, “queer” or all manner of other things. This is not terribly sexually enlightened, of course, and is one of the things that leads to homosexual teens feeling stigmatised and terrified of their own sexual identity—to the extent that they’ll take their lives in some cases. This is, of course, a terrible thing, and we shouldn’t make light of this issue. Go support the It Gets Better project, and feel good about yourself. Then we can start taking the piss out of something else gay-related.

Done that? Good.

What I would like to make light of, though, is the inexplicable ability for Twitter, Facebook and indeed the whole Internet to turn the hairiest and burliest of men into gibbering, mincing queens. I’ve only really noticed it in the last couple of years or so. But something, somewhere, has snapped and deemed it okay for men to be outrageously flirtatious (and, at times, downright filthy) with one another, all in jest. Say some of the things which regularly grace my Twitter feed (occasionally from my own typing fingers) in high school and you’d have got a one-way ticket to Wedgie City, population: your head and a toilet bowl.

I won’t give examples, to spare the blushes of those who have made said comments in the past. But I actually find it pretty interesting that this sort of thing seems to be more and more common. It’s not done with any form of sexual intent in mind, though the content of the comments may well be sexual in nature. It’s more a form of light-hearted banter that is possibly an ironic response to those men with an overabundance of testosterone—the kind who barely disguise their erections in the street any time a vaguely attractive girl walks past, and the kind who like to shout outside pubs and anyone, everything and, often, nothing or no-one at all.

Perhaps it’s the long-distance, semi-anonymous nature of communication on the Internet that makes this sort of thing happen more often. After all, if someone misinterprets a flirtatious gay comment and either takes offence (or indeed becomes rather more amorous than you were expecting) you can always hide behind the “ah, well, you can’t tell tone of voice in text, can you… ahahahaha” defence.

Still. Perhaps this is a sign that the online world is, on the whole, more comfortable with a broad spectrum of sexual identities rather than simple “straights over there, gays over there, and then there are bisexuals, but some just say they’re kidding themselves” terms.

Or perhaps it’s just a sign that Spider-Man has, in fact, now made everyone on the Internet gay.

#oneaday, Day 292: TV Get Bent

Most times I watch TV, I’m reminded why I don’t watch TV any more, besides the occasional isolated incident of The Apprentice (which I can’t really be bothered with this year, anyway). And the reason for that is that 99.87% (approximately) of it is complete, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks, and the rest are reruns of old, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks.

Now I understand and appreciate that some people enjoy zoning out in front of the TV and enjoy having things that they don’t have to think about. I do the same with video games. But at least I’m interacting with video games, and even the most mindless, dumbest video game requires at least a bit of co-ordination and use of your reflexes. Unless it’s Farmville, in which case you just require to be non-vegetative enough to click a mouse a few thousand times. But even that demands more brainpower than staring at the TV.

Not all TV is rubbish of course. But I find myself picking up favourite TV shows on DVD rather than watching them when they air. There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, being tied down to a schedule at the behest of an inanimate object is a pain that I can do without. Secondly, if I really get into a show, it’s nice to be able to watch several episodes of it in succession to get a greater sense of “coherence” than watching a one-off. Try watching a season of 24 when it airs on TV as opposed to being able to watch several in a row on DVD and you’ll see what I mean. Not that I ever got into Lost (the TV schedule thing meant I lost—no pun intended—interest about halfway through the first season) but I imagine that, with all its confusion, would be much the same.

The kind of TV that doesn’t lend itself to a sense of “coherence”—random quiz shows and reality TV—doesn’t particularly interest me anyway. So everyone’s a winner, then. TV can keep its dross, its reruns, its uninspired crap and endless repetitions of Alexander the fucking Meerkat adverts. I’ll stick to my DVDs, iPlayer and 4OD, thanks.

Will we eventually reach a stage where the concept of traditional TV broadcasting itself is obsolete? Thanks to services like those I’ve just mentioned, it’s entirely possible to have a completely personalised staring-at-the-gogglebox experience consisting entirely of programmes you actually enjoy. And with services like Netflix, LoveFilm and MUBI offering a variety of niche as well as mainstream content, you can even populate your own personal TV and movie playlist with things that would never have been on TV in the first place.

Also there is no need to wait for Alexander the fucking Meerkat to come on screen to go and have a toilet break, either.

The more I think about it, the more this concept sounds very appealing. But will the TV studios ever go for it? The concept of “primetime” is still very firmly in the heads of most broadcasters, and so it’s likely that scheduled programming will continue for at least a little while yet. But as time goes on? Who knows. Perhaps one day TV will move to an exclusively on-demand system.

I look forward to that day immensely.

#oneaday, Day 291: Final Lap

As the year starts to draw to a close—seriously, how the fuck did it get to be November already?—lots of “projects” or long-term goals are starting to eventually come together and come to fruition. Unfortunately, none of said long-term goals will result in financial gain for myself (unless you want to sponsor any of them, which you’re very welcome to do) but they will result in a sense of long-term satisfaction.

This blog thing, for example. It’s become part of my daily routine now. I love writing something every day. And it’s interesting to look back at how the year (a pretty shitty one, by all accounts) has gone, how it’s changed and, more to the point, how it’s changed me. I’m a different person to the one I was five months ago. I’m a different person again to the one I was eleven months ago. I’d like to think that these changes are mostly for the better, and there are a few people out there who can probably back me up on this one. That’s not a request for ego-massaging comments, incidentally, though those are, as ever, welcome.

And then there’s the running thing, too. Tonight I completed Week 6 of the 9-week Couch To 5K programme. Tonight’s run was 25 minutes of non-stop running, bookended by 5-minute walks for warm-up and cool-down purposes. And it was… I hesitate to say “easy”, but certainly well within my abilities. I feel like my speed is increasing, too, though my average speed readout from RunKeeper (awesome app, by the way, and free for iOS and Android) seems fairly constant at just under 4mph. Not very fast, I know, but considering that nearly seven weeks ago I was struggling to run for a minute at a time, I think it’s pretty clear that I’ve made awesome progress. And I feel good about that and have absolutely no problem publicly displaying a bit of pride about it. So there.

I have blown the right headphone earbud on my iPhone though. Guess the thumping bass and drums of the Split/Second soundtrack finally proved too much for them. That or Apple make shitty headphones. Given that exactly the same also happened to the right earbud of the headphones on my old 20GB iPod, I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. Fuck you, Apple, and your shitty headphones. But not too much. I like the iPhone just fine, thanks.

So here are the “deadlines”, for want of a better word: By the 25th of November, I should be running for 30 minutes at a time comfortably, and presumably able to run the titular 5K in that time. And by the 19th of January 2011, I’ll have completed a year of continuous non-stop blogging. Will I have a decent job by then? Given that I have an exciting and mysterious job interview next Thursday, I might.

Will I be in a position to say “yes, this is where I want my life to be” by then? Possibly not. But things are definitely on that upwards slope. Time passes. Things happen. And when you look back, it’s difficult to imagine being where you are now, then. If that makes sense.

I know what I mean, even if you don’t.

#oneaday, Day 290: Ever Onward

Something that someone told me recently (yay for specifics) has stuck with me. That something was the phrase “you don’t stop knowing someone when you’re not with them any more”. Those perhaps weren’t the exact words, but the sentiment stands. And it’s true, whatever the context of you not being with that person any more is. It doesn’t have to be a romantic thing. It could simply be a friendship thing.

I have two examples in mind here. Just recently, I had the good fortune to be reunited with a buddy from school with whom I’d kept in idle contact with—the occasional Facebook comment or tweet—but hadn’t seen face-to-face since the time he visited me during my first year of university, got roaringly drunk with me and then proceeded to assist me in the consumption of a pound of Tesco Value mild cheddar cheese at about 3 in the morning. Actually, there was an incident subsequent to that which involved several people vomiting out of the window of a house onto the corrugated plastic roof of what passed for a “conservatory” in student accommodation. But the cheese incident is the one that remains fresh in my memory.

Said incident was at least ten years ago now, but when we met up in the village pub for a pint and a chat it was like that time had ceased to exist—or at least didn’t matter. We hadn’t seen each other for ages, and yet suddenly we were back to talking about the word “COCK!”, driving in search of “old man pubs” and ending up in the local Tesco garage’s forecourt at 2 in the morning eating pre-packed sandwiches because the nearest club (15 miles away) was shit and/or full, and the old man pubs in question were either shut or had vanished into some sort of rural space-time anomaly. It was, to say the least, awesome. Not all reunions go this way, and I’m sure there are plenty of people I was at school with who are completely different people now. But then I have no idea where they are now, so a reunion is unlikely anyway.

The other example I have in mind is something I wrote about way back on Day 106; the idea of crystallised memories. I probably didn’t coin this term but it’s one I’m particularly fond of: the idea that inanimate objects can possess memories and trigger powerful emotional responses simply by their presence. A crystallised memory can be a tiny thing, like a dirty penny you find in the depths of your coat pocket. Perhaps you remember how it got so dirty. Or where you found it. Or what you were doing when you dropped it into your pocket.

Alternatively, as the case may be, a crystallised memory could be a whole city. Cities are places that are full of life, constantly on the move, changing, morphing, filling with people during the day and evaporating them in the dead of night. But some things don’t change amidst all the chaos—pretty amazing in itself, when you think about it—and those are the things which hold powerful emotional responses, powerful memories, senses of nostalgia, whatever it is you want to call it.

Sometimes, these things which have remained constant amidst the chaos of the daily tsunami of people that pass by them are enough to remind you of something or someone important, something that is, at times, long-forgotten. Tiny little memories which, at the time, seemed inconsequential, unimportant. And yet they are the ones which remained most vivid. A river that you once saw a hundred rubber ducks racing along. A swinging teashop sign and the delicious delights found within. The low beam that you bang your head on as you clamber into an “authentic” old pub.

Sometimes you see all those things again and they cause you pain. They remind you of what once was and what is now no longer.

And sometimes you see all those things again and they bring comfort. They still remind you of what once was and what is now no longer. But something, somewhere, causes the negativity and the pain to slip away and you’re left with those things that you should cling onto, the crystals that shine the brightest, the ones which glitter eternally.

Time heals all wounds, they say. But the good stuff that all the blood and pus and “discharge” from the wounds hides? (That was gross. Sorry.) That sticks around a whole lot longer.

#oneaday, Day 289: Autumn Days When The Grass Is Green

I can’t remember the last time I was as acutely aware of the arrival of autumn as I have been this year. Much of the weather of our green and pleasant land falls into the “grey and overcast” category, which is why the sun shining is usually a trigger for wide-ranging sensationalist journalism. “HEAT WAVE!!” “HOSEPIPE BAN!!” “TROPICAL TEMPERATURES!!” And of course, the inevitable knowing winks towards global warming.

Autumn, on the other hand, arrives with little to no fanfare. It gets a bit colder. Some people (usually at the elderly end of the spectrum) take this as a cue to say out loud things like “ooh, feels like Autumn’s here”. But there’s never sensationalist journalism. “TREEPOCALYPSE!!” “OMG LEAVES!!” “MILD HURRICANES SWEEP NATION!!” I don’t think so.

But during a long drive tonight, it was very apparent that autumn is indeed in full swing. The thing which means I can say this with absolute authority? The amount of leaves blowing around. They were everywhere, sweeping through the air like their own weird little weather system. Even the motorways, concrete slabs of greyness that are about as far from Mother Nature as you can get, had leaves swirling above them and fluttering across the road like a pixie dropping a large pile of correspondence.

This became even more pronounced once I hit the country lanes close to home. Leaves lined the roads, breaking up the monotonous greyness of the Tarmac surface with colourful patterns, swept up by cars as they sped by and tumbling back to the ground like a “wake” for the passing vehicles.

Perhaps it’s just that I spent the best part of ten years living in an urban environment where one season looks much like another. For the moment, I live in the countryside. So maybe I genuinely am seeing it more.

Whatever the cause, autumn is here. So wrap up warm, go outside and go jump in some piles of crisp, crunchy brown leaves.

#oneaday, Day 288: Where’s The UK’s Netflix?

So the new Xbox Dashboard went live today. Pretty neat, isn’t it? Lots of new sound effects, a clean white aesthetic, Kinect compatibility and all manner of other goodies. In fact, let’s take a look at the list of new features, shall we?

Kinect Integration
ESPN on Xbox LIVE
Zune Music
Netflix Search
Improved voice chat quality
Improved Gamertag creation
Streamlined virtual keyboard
Improved wireless networking
Improved family settings

Pretty nice, I’m sure you’ll agree. Particularly if you’re an American, because here’s the list of new features I got in the email today:

Kinect Integration
Zune Music

Granted, some of the features that weren’t mentioned were fairly minor ones. But it’s still pretty clear that if you’re a European Xbox gamer, you’re missing out quite a bit on some of the things that make the Xbox and its LIVE service particularly appealing.

One of the biggest things us poor Europeans are missing out on is Netflix. I don’t watch many movies and thus feel rather ill-equipped to contribute to conversations that start with the words “Have you seen…”. The reason I don’t watch that many movies is that I have it in my mind that buying DVDs with movies on is a bit more of a waste of money than buying box sets of TV series that I’m more likely to watch several times. Once I’ve seen a movie, I tend not to watch it again unless I really, really loved it. As such, I don’t own many movies on DVD or Blu-Ray, and I rarely remember to get to the cinema in time to see movies while they’re on the big screen.

If I had access to a service like Netflix, however, I’d be more inclined to watch more movies, since paying a monthly fee for access to whatever I wanted seems like less like a waste of money than purchasing a DVD or Blu-Ray I might never watch ever again.

So then, Points of View, I ask why oh why oh why don’t we have a Netflix-like service here in the UK? The company LOVEFiLM (or however the hell they capitalise it) already offer a similar DVD rental-by-post system, as well as a streaming service via web browser. So isn’t it about time they pulled their fingers out of their celluloid arseholes and got on with integrating their service with the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii? A huge number of households now have one or more of these devices hooked up to their fancy-pants HDTVs. So LoVeFILm would probably stand to make an absolute fortune from new subscriptions if they got on with integrating their service with various devices.

I’d go off on a similar rant about ESPN’s lack of appearance on the 360 in the UK too, but for me watching sport on TV is an experience only mildly less appealing than having my eyes pulled out through my bellend.

So… Netflix-or-UK-equivalent YES PLZ. I’m sure it’ll happen. Eventually. It’s just a shame we get it years behind you pesky Americans. YES, YOU. You are pesky. You may gloat in the fact that while we have the greatest condiment in the world (HP Sauce) you have an awesome streaming movie service available via your Xbox.

Hmm. I’m actually not sure which one I’d rather have, thinking about it…