Right up yer twitter

http://twitter.com/harrodgossip is where you can go now for your fix of meaningless Harrod gossip. Updating the blog is too much work when there are so many achievements to earn! Twitter will enable me to shower you with little snippets of 'cool' stuff from my day along with the odd link or three to bonkers web garbage that takes my fancy. Take a peek if you're so bored that it's a toss up between this or pouring petrol over your head and lighting a match.

Blogging again

Hello. Missed me? No, thought not. Blame work, and kids, and holidays, and beer. That's the difference when you work away from the house. You could also be blaming Batman had I got my freebie copy on friday. I won't buy it. Not when I work for Square Enix who owns Eidos. Got to draw the line somewhere! It was tough though as by all accounts Batman: AA is kick ass and probably well worth the money. So I am forced to unlock Abomination in the Sega Hulk game for the third time for the kids. Punishment for being a tightwad.

Risk Death by playing Street Fighter!

That's right kids. Games can kill. Just by holding the controller it seems. Seeing as I've been playing them for almost 30 years now I should be the size of a house with my own special chair so I can play and take a dump without having to move. So you don't forget, everything you see, read and hear is a person, who just like you and me has their own opinions and these other specially prepared alternatives that they hope will get them attention, success and a leg over at the Xmas party. No one genuinely believes that games make you fat, just as the editor of the Daily Mail knows that playing GTA won't turn you into a axe-toting maniac. Though reading the Daily Mail might…
Don't be Square
Square Enix. Heard of them? Little known company from Japan who put out some RPG's every now and then. Well, that's where I spend most of my day right now helping them out with the marketing, packaging and advertising for europe. Worked on projects as diverse as Disgaea 3, Persona 4, Final Fantasy Echoes of Time and plenty more. Like most product I work on I'll probably not play them but they all look nice on my shelf. I'll post some pics of finished stuff when I get the moment.

Mad Catz or Mad Tw*ts?

It's February. Can only mean one thing. STREET FIGHTER!! It's back and it'll kick your ass and your Ma along with it. I said last year it was going to be a triumphant return to form for the most celebrated fist fest ever.. Oh, you mocked. The doubters sprung from the woodwork and spread the seeds of doubt but the hype is now fever pitch. The office is chocka with SF vets discussing the merits of the various additions to the game such as why is Rufus so fast for a fat bloke and whether a joystick player is superior to a pad fiend. Almost everyone agrees that you will have to invest in a Mad Catz stick/pad to play at your best. You can't get squat from a 360 pad as anyone who has played HD Remix will testify. Of course it would help if Mad Catz had actually made enough to go round as you can't GET ONE FOR SHIT anywhere!!! Even the sucky Chun Li pad is sold out. Seriously, what bright spark decided on manufacture next to nothing and then get the entire internet community to rate them as essential? Okay if you're a PS3 owner perhaps as the pad is a little more robust for SF but for 360? Pfff...

Happy New Year... Maybe.

2009. Could it be a better year than last? I can't tell you what will happen with the economy, couldn't say for certain if Liverpool will win the Premier league and don't have a clue if Watchmen will actually get a theatrical release due to legal problems. On a positive note there are signs that gaming could certainly surpass 2008 in terms of quality titles delivering the goods. SFIV has the possibility to revive my interest in fighting games that sadly faded a long time ago. Playing online with some retard teenager who spams cheap moves and then talks about his apparent relationship with my mother doesn't bring about the same level of satisfaction as taking on your mates in the office. Working in an office right now with other people who share a similar stance when it comes to multiplayer and smack talk has raised the potential for a glorious return of Street Fighter to the top of my gaming heap. I'm already adding ex-Emap colleagues to my friends list in anticipation.

Sweaty and smells of fart…

…could be many things. Sharing an office with Richard comes to mind. This example however is the London Underground. Doing some work in the capital for a short while and finding the tube to be just as smelly, hot and obnoxious as I remember it back in the Emap days. The work is fun though and whilst I can't lift the lid on what it is I haven't worked on this much product for a long while. Quality product too and not the cack I'm used to handling. I'm working on a new Harrod website design with a proper gallery rather than the downloadable PDF I currently use. Should be more user friendly and with regular updates for visitors that are interested I'll be able to show some examples of everything once this stuff is out the door and on the supermarket shelves.
Live and Kicking
Took a painful weekend of misery to get online from my new london residence. Macs are great to use but the lack of support for wireless had me trapsing up and down Tottenham Court Road all weekend looking for USB adaptors and the like. Xbox Live is still down as I forgot to bring the wireless adaptor with me but will be back online before Chrimbo hopefully. Missing the fun of Left for Dead and Gears so I got my murderous kicks by beating my way through Dead Space on Impossible mode. Clearly not Impossible and earned the Epic 3 achievement with just the Plasma Cutter. '2 for 190' will do very nicely thank you!

Fingers to the bone

Complete lack of posts is due to two things. Work and Games. Don't blame me though. Blame the banks for screwing the world economy right up and then blame the Xbox for the tidal wave of insanely good software that hit us all over the last month. When I'm thoroughly bored on Gears submission multiplayer and the rest of my stack then I'll be back for more tales and drawings!

Thirty but done dirty

Took my GamerScore past the thirty thousand threshold recently. Not a huge number compared to a lot of players out there but adding a further 10k is a particularly pleasing amount nevertheless. Just a pity it was the Sega shambles IronMan that helped me do it. Further proof that a successful franchise from one medium becomes a inept crock when adapted to another. Very easy achievements though. Not Avatar easy as some skill was required. No matter how desperate I might become for a boost you'll not see Avatar on my played games list!
October 24th
Decisions, decisions. Too many good games coming out. What do I buy first? What game is going to deliver the goods? Can't trust reviews. Even well established sources for trustworthy opinions are looking a little conspiratorial. Right now it looks like Dead Space is going to grab my readies this Friday. It's exactly what I want to play after months of Piñatas, ATVs and gender confused RPG dandies. A bit of dismemberment in a zero-g environment is just what the doctor ordered! Then I'll always take a gun over a sword which puts Far Cry 2 next on the list and Fallout the following week. Imagine how much carnage and murder will ensue during the course of those three games? I'll be a fully trained psychopathic killer after that lot if the Daily Mail is to be believed.

Pure Class

You hear the word Disney and you'd be forgiven for thinking mice, ballerina's or high school dorks. So who would have thought that they could put out a top quality racer called Pure to rave reviews and kudos from the hardcore gamers out there? With many a nod to the Burnout school of presentation you can spot the crowd that Blackrock were aiming for. The races take plenty of concentration as you need to bust out tricks as well as find the optimum route if you want to place first. You'll be punished hard for just one error. I've already had a few 'moments' with the controller when I've tried for one trick too many and faceplanted into the dirt, dropping 10 places in the process. All good stuff really. Except the boxart. Bloody awful orange mess.
To Err is only Human
I always check the visitors ip's on really busy days to see who and why people visit my blog. About 40% come from a Google image search. Some of the search strings are classic. And yes, they are all porn related you filthy bunch of pigs. The others are either regulars or people searching for something Harrod related. I share the same name as some dude in Florida who donates large sums to the Republican party. Since I don't live there or donate money to the yeehaw war machine then it's not me they are looking for. I got one visit last week from someone at Silicon Knights. They probably employ someone just to trawl the web looking for commentary on their products. I don't envy that guy. In the event that they return after picking up this post I thought I'd mention three little things that got on my goat when playing TH. Not the most urgent of problems I'll warrant but they sure got annoying when you go for the last few achievements. Here goes:
1 - Faces. Awful! They all looked like accountants. Baldur is the spitting image of a school teacher that lives two doors down from me, not exactly the face I had in mind for a Norse god. The human soldiers all shared the same mug with a big conk and dumb expression slapped across it. Looking at them made the cutscenes unbearable.
2 - Charms. These are not fun. Diablo made item checking quick and painless. Too Human makes it a chore. You're in the menu literally every minute checking loot and charm progress. Gameplay becomes a stop-start affair as you race to the inventory after each battle to scroll through endless stats in the hope that you can improve your kit. One particular lvl 3 charm wanted me to slaughter 16,000 enemies. That's fun, thanks for that one Dennis.
3 - Sprint button. You're a god so is it too much to ask that on occasion you can run a little faster? When you're trekking through the endless corridors for the twentieth time you are literally begging for him to up the pace and move his fat, norse arse a little quicker.

Tit for Tat

Second only to my collection of spank journalism was my horde of game guides and books from Japan. Or 'Mook' as those wacky guys would call them. I was never sure if Mook was a new term for a game guide or just the result of a dodgy translation by some kid on work experience. When I used to flat share with Paul Glancey I kept my stash of game guides, art books, and prized one-off-the-wrist material hidden in a cupboard. Using markers and small strips of paper wedged into the doors I was able to discover that wandering hands had been hunting for my tug tomes. I had to bring them out of hiding to stop Paul wrecking the sleeves of my expensive imports. Japanese books had wraparound sleeves which always got wrecked when people tried to slot books back into the shelf, forcing them down and ripping the covers. Thanks Paul! You owe me a copy of Pure please. 360 version thankyou...