So, the famous blue blur is 20 years old. Makes me feel younger in a way, since Sonic is the first thing I really remember about being a child, it feels like it’s my 20th birthday too. Meh, who am I kidding? I’m turning into an old fart. Sonic, on the other hand, is looking better than ever, and this title is the final return to full form that has been building now for the past few years.

The turn-around for Sonic came in 2008′s Sonic Unleashed. Moving away from pointlessly complicated storylines, overbearing new characters and glitch-filled gameplay, Unleashed showed us that Sonic could be cool again. It introduced the new standard Sonic gameplay which has been carried through to Sonic Colours, and now Sonic Generations:  apart from that nasty ware-hog business, Unleashed was amazing.

Then came Colours, taking the Unleashed daytime formula and making it even better – with levels designed around an interplanetary theme park, we saw a return to the crazy, colourful level styles of the original Sonic games. Not to mention Wisps, those guys are so cute.

Now we have Sonic Generations – which is the good, the bad, and the rather ugly outings  of the past 20 years rolled into one. On paper this sounds worrying, so, does the game correct the past 10 years of Sonic mistakes?

The answer is, sort of.

The storyline for this game is almost entirely absent, there is a vague plot that runs through the game about the “Time Eater” and whatnot, but there are 12 cutscenes in the entire game, and most of them are short and inconsequential.  In a way I’m a bit disappointed by this, since Sonic Colours had a fairly okay plot, that progressed the story and had lots of humor in it. There is humor in this game too, but there’s so little done in the cutscenes and they’re so few that, really, they feel out of place even being there at all.

The levels themselves are largely great. You play through one level from every major Sonic game, both as “Classic” Sonic (the cute round one) and “Modern” Sonic (The tall retarded one) – Classic plays pretty much 1:1 as he did in Sonic 1 through Sonic & Knuckles, while Modern plays as he did largely in Unleashed, with a few minor tweaks. The actual level designs are largely faithful to the originals with one or two little new bits thrown in, but overall, nothing substantially new here.

There are two main reasons to play this game;

1: Playing classic Sonic levels in awesome 2.5D
2: Playing Dreamcast & Sonic 06 levels with gameplay that isn’t totally fucked.

The further you get into the game, the more recycled things seem to become, with obvious reasons. Playing the classic levels was a total joy and you feel like these levels  have the most effort put into them. The Dreamcast era levels feel like they’ve been upgraded but, since the original versions where 3D already, you can’t help but feel it’s the same stuff presented in a much nicer way. The modern era levels, apart from Crisis City (it was nice to play this one in a less broken way, shame though, just shows Sonic 06 could have been decent) – just feel like harder versions of levels I’ve already played.

A nice touch is the fact that you can unlock music tracks to use in different levels – including remastered and remixed tracks from classic Sonic games. This adds some nice little touches, for example, playing Speed Highway as Classic Sonic with Starlight Zone as the music does feel like you’re playing the latter instead. There’s a few other nice matches in there, i.e. playing Toxic Caves from Sonic Spinball over Chemical Plant or Marble Zone over Crisis City. There’s also a ton of artwork to unlock which is quite a cool thing to have, as it spans the entire 20 year history of Sonic.

Each level comprises of one main act and five side mission acts for each Sonic. There are also rival battles between Metal Sonic, Shadow and Silver. We also have the Red Ring hunt returning from Sonic Colours – but despite all this, I am afraid this game is far, far too short. This game takes, roughly, from putting the disc in to completing everything the game has to offer, one weekend. Compared to Sonic Colours, this game falls completely flat in this department.

Infact, if you removed the nostalgia element from this game, it would be a rather poor outing when compared to Colours, which had far more to see and do. Each level in Colours had it’s own set of red rings to collect, and each level had 6 full acts and a boss to complete. The side acts in Generations are normally quite short, mission based and take place in the same level as Act 1, unlike colours where each act was completely unique and mostly of a decent size. Colours also had the Sonic Simulator for even more fun.

The bosses in this game are also stupendously easy to defeat, even on “hard” mode. The final boss was hard, but only because I was expecting something harder and was trying to figure out what I had to do – imagine my surprise where the aim of the final boss is to just boost, and thats it. Infact it’s completely fucking appalling, and that isn’t a phrase I should be using for this game.

The Good;

• Great graphics and music
• Great levels to play
• Gameplay is spot on in main levels

Tbe Bad;

• Storyline isn’t very in-depth
• Cut scenes are rather badly rendered
• Game is very short, takes no time at all to 100% it

The Ugly;

• Shockingly easy boss battles
• No real love or attention to the menu system compared to colours
• Online play is rather basic and suffering from the usual leaderboard hacking rendering it worthless.

Yeah, it’d be unfair for me to say I’m totally disappointed in this game, it does bring joy to the 5 year old who played the Classics, and the 15 year old who had a Dreamcast, and it brings some closure to the disturbed 20 year old who was forced to suffer through Bestiality and Silver the Hedgehog a couple years back. I’d be lying, however, if I said I didn’t expect more. This game is over far too soon, it leaves you wanting for more. God, I hope there’s more. I hope there’s some cracking DLC levels coming out for this in the future.

Sadly, however, I doubt this will be the case. Shame.

Lets focus on the positives first. The game is incredibly interactive, Duke can interact with almost any item in the environment, often with hilarious consequences. This isn’t just a gimmick, using items boosts your overall “Ego” (Duke has ego instead of a health bar) – the game starts off teaching you how to piss in a urinal and draw on a whiteboard (start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say. This is the level we’re working on here, folks).

Duke’s one liners are as classic as ever. All the classic lines are there, but a lot of new material is in there too, keeping funny. That’s about all the positives I can think of, though. The rest of the characters in this game are dull, lifeless and boring. They also have a tendency to look in one fixed direction when talking rather than facing the player. The non-playable characters in this game feel like they’ve been through several engine changes, a lot of them seem retextured several times. In fact, a lot of the textures in this game seem poor by modern standards, you can’t help but notice how pixelated and grainy they can be. Weather this is intentional or not for the “retro” feel, I don’t know.

The storyline isn’t exactly a classic either. Okay, I wasn’t expecting much in this department, but the storyline is neither engaging nor particularly funny. Duke’s lines are the only real source of humor, but the setting, situations and characters merely exist for the sake of it. In many ways this makes the game feel like it was born out of the 90′s (which it was) – games have moved on a lot since then, and this feels different from any game you’d expect to pick up these days.

For anyone looking for a classic style First Person Shooter, this game will be worth getting. It’s been a while since a decent FPS that was simple and fun to play like this was created, and the old mentality of levels that have small puzzles of where to go next and what to do next are something that you seldom get in games these days, which seem to increasingly play themselves with set pieces and cut scenes.  What this games does is bring nostalga value, and that isn’t a bad thing.

There’s one unforgivable sin, however, one that this game cannot and will not be allowed to live down – the loading times. When you look at games like Fallout, you see a game where you have massive scale environments and activity with minimum loading screens and loading time – this is the complete opposite. Levels are relatively short and loading times between them excessively long. This would be forgivable if it wasn’t for the fact that, every time you die, the entire level loads again. When you’re on a high difficulty setting, this means you can spend 30 seconds playing and 75 seconds waiting for a load. This is frustrating beyond belief.  There is no need in this day and age for a game to reload the entire level for a checkpoint.

All in all then, this game does not even remotely live up to the hype. It never could, but it falls a lot further flat than I ever expected it would do. As a famous reviewer once said, “Duke Nukem Forever is going to have to cure at least two different types of cancer to live up to the hype after all these years.” – crying shame. If only it were 1999.

It’s been 17 days since PlayStation 3 users across the globe were sent into the dark ages, and reports have been circulating that several of their users have now reverted into a pre-historic state. Run down estates such as Clifton and The Valley have decended into war, as those who can’t afford to pay for a proper service struggle to find anything to do except stab each other and burn cars.

Few lucky enough to afford £5.99 a month have upgraded to a proper gaming network. Unfortunately this price is beyond that which the average PS3 user can afford, and as such I’m launching a new charity, “Live for Live”, to help get those suffering onto Xbox Live.

Please donate just £1 a month to help a starving and frightened young poor person onto Xbox Live. Your donation will provide;

• Clean servers for a child for an entire year, free of hackers.
• A reliable and functional online experience.
• The comfort that their online service will always be waiting for them when they get home.
• An online store that won’t loose their credit card details.
• Sanctuary from pointless law-suits, illegal data mining and privacy breaches.
• Access to a network run by a company that isn’t entirely incompetent.
• A gift bag and monthly letters from your adopted gamer.

You can make so much difference to a person’s life just by donating toward’s the Live for Live donation campaign. Thank you.

1. Kamala

Billed as the Ugandan Giant, Kamala’s real name was James Harris and he was from Mississippi, which is sometimes mistaken for Uganda by Kentuckians. Part of his gimmick included eating live chickens or, as you might expect, holding a chicken, waiting for the camera to cut away, then spitting feathers out. The idea of a giant African cannibal (or whatever the hell) who weighs around 400lbs is clearly awesome because this sentence can’t be ended in a logical fashion so here comes the period. On the bright side, James is still around and he writes music now, according to Wikipedia.

2. Yokozuna

Yokozuna is a real title for sumo wrestlers when they prove to be the most immovable of immovable objects. Because racial sensitivity is very high in the WWE’s list of proprieties, like Kamala, Yokozuna portrayed someone he wasn’t. In this case, he was a Samoan named Rodney pretending to be a Japanese sumo wrestler. All you really need is black hair, a giant diaper and a hell of a lot of body to fill that diaper and you qualify as honorary Japanese, it’s in their constitution. Anyway, Yokozuna is often credited as being the fattest wrestler ever, weighing in at around 600lbs. Do you know what else weighs 600lbs? 6 Keira Knightleys.

3. Mabel/Viscera/Big Daddy V

Look at that bosom. Holy crap. Big Daddy V, aka guy with a terrible name, has spent a lot of his wrestling career wearing parachutes and other billowy fabrics because he is pretty spherical, with the exception of those taters. Dude carries his weight poorly. He has gone in and out of the WWE under a number of different nicknames but pretty much the same cup size. His awesomeness was cemented, however, when he took up The World’s Biggest Love Machine gimmick and tried to do Trish Stratus, which is offputting yet somehow fantastic.

4. Earthquake John Tenta

Tenta had one of the best debuts in wrestling history. The camera kept “accidentally’ panning across this really huge guy in the audience during the broadcast, until the time came when Hulk Hogan, in a display of bravado inspired by his desire to forget he was married to a leather bound CHUD (I assume) asked for anyone at all in the audience to come sit on his back while he did push ups. Any volunteer at all. A little girl pointed to the innocent-looking fat guy on the end of the aisle. How could this go wrong or be staged? Long story short, Earthquake totally sat on Hulk Hogan, like a lot. Because when you’re that big, sitting is actually an offensive maneuver.

5. Rikishi Solafa Fatu

Sometimes known as Rikishi, he was a big Samoan dude. The only thing I know about the Samoan people, as a matter of fact, is that they breed wicked huge wrestlers. What you need to know about this particular wrestler is that his uniform, for quite a while, consisted of a thong up his ass that facilitated his very athletic signature move the “Stink Face.” Yeah, he just rubbed his giant ass on people’s faces.

6. Giant Haystacks

This one’s a bit of a classic but worth mentioning because there are few land animals in North America that are bigger than this man used to be. Giant Haystacks, another wrestler victimized by terribly terrible nicknames, looked like every Deliverance nightmare you ever had. He was nearly 7 feet tall, nearly 700lbs, bearded and used a rope as a belt. Fun Fact – dude didn’t need a belt. Rumor has it he ate 3lbs of bacon and a dozen eggs for breakfast every day. I tried that once and shit an oil slick for the next three days.

7. Happy Humphrey

Another blast from the past, Humphrey used to wrestle back when the world was all in black and white and men wore hats just because. And why was he so happy? Hard to say, he weighed 800lbs. Obviously I never saw this guy wrestle but I find it hard to believe he did more than simply exist in the ring. Word has it Humphrey was discovered on a farm and made his debut by wrestling a bear for half an hour. I appreciate how none of what I just said sounds even remotely real, but it’s still the story we’re supposed to believe. In his prime, it’s said he would eat 15 chickens in a single sitting.

8. King Kong Bundy

An icon and one-time guest star on Married with Children for no other reason than the word “Bundy”, King Kong Bundy was the fat guy when wrestling rose to prominence and a generation realized for the first time that a fat man in a unitard could be seen as more than a neighborhood sex offender.

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9. Tugboat

Also known as Typhoon, Tugboat also had a brief stint as The Shockmaster, known for being one of the awesomest gimmicks ever because it was unintentionally butchered by Tugboat when, during his debut, he tripped and fell on his ass. A fat guy falling down? Priceless.

10. Abdullah the Butcher

It’s said that Abdullah the Butcher was raised in the Sudan and was batshit insane and that’s almost true. He was raised in Windsor, Ontario and his real name is Larry. Windsor, for those who don’t know, is Detroit of Canada, so like Detroit of America, only with beaver traps and drunker hobos. With a skull full of grooves that may or may not have been surgically implemented, Abdullah is famous for being insanely hardcore and for having what has to be a pair of K cups. He also owns a BBQ in Atlanta. Tasty!

11. Bastion Booger

While none of these men are particularly attractive, Bastion Booger wins an award for looking like a Gorg from Fraggle Rock. Arguably if your name is Bastion Booger odds are your gimmick isn’t going to be that of a suave lady’s man, but damn, look at that guy. And his Barbarella-meets-seatbelts outfit wasn’t helping either. However, if not for Bastion Booger, where would Larry the Cable Guy be today?

12. The Big Show

Big Show suffers the same condition as the awesomest wrestler of all time, Andre the Giant, acromegaly, though he has had surgery to stop the condition from progressing any further. However, thanks to its effects, the man is pretty much a giant at over 7 feet tall and about 480lbs. The most notable moment of his career, however, involved a guest appearance on Conan O’Brien in which he, along with Tom Selleck, were scared into a pale-knuckled panic by elderly sex educator Sue Johansson as she strapped the Accommodator, a chin-mounted dildo, to her face, on live TV. Can a giant cry? Yes he can.

I’ve decided to celebrate the new year by looking back at the post I made last year, and seeing which of my predictions came true, which did not, and which were so hilariously off the mark it now looks silly! You can click here to view the blog I wrote last year.

The first thing to note is that, at the top of that post, I do give Matt Smith a hard time as the 11th Doctor, calling into question his jawline and the bow tie. I now feel very silly as, having watched the series, I do love Matt Smith as the Doctor and, of course, now realise that bow ties are cool. I really should learn not to make snap judgments like that.

Anyway, let’s begin!

Manchester City might actually win something.

- Well, uh, didn’t happen. We bombed out of the only cup we had a chance of winning. But things are looking good for the premiership this season I understand so, there’s still time, just not in 2010.

Michael Jackson will return Tupac style and release a new album.

- Sadly not, but as predicted, every single type of re-release, remix and even a new Kinect video game did come out, but until he walks amongst us again, this one is also a “didn’t happen”.

Woolworths will return to the high street.

- Eh, uh, again, nada.

Sonic The Hedgehog will return to his #1 spot as the king of all Video Game time.

- Sonic 4 did happen. And then it came out. There’s still time for the situation to be redeemed however, and Sonic Colours is doing really well so, this one sort of happened, but perhaps not as strongly as I had hoped.

Star Trek II will be properly announced.

- More rumors but nothing substantial yet. This year is turning out to be a real letdown, huh?

Red Dwarf Series IX will air on Dave, over a decade since Series VIII aired. Rejoyce.

- ……ditto. Filming begins NEXT year now. God how you must make me wait for all my favorite things.

Nothing at all will happen with the Afghanistan situation.

- DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER! I sware we’ll be having problems in that country for the rest of my lifetime, just last week there were more deaths involving our troops over there. It’s just all so sad.

President Obama will improve the lives of all working class Americans, and in return they’ll remove him from office.
George Bush’s new son, Bushdroid, will take office.

- Yup. In comes new healthcare reform, and in return he’s now a hated character. Joy. Thankfully he’s not out of office yet and the democrats managed to defend their senate seats earlier in the year. No sign of Bushdroid thankfully.

GLADoS returns to extract revenge, and ensure that she triumphs in huge success.

- Portal 2 indeed announced and, it does look rather awesome.

The Conservative Party will return to power for the first time since 1997 and privatise the last remaning public services.

- Oh boy, where to begin? David Cameron has indeed managed to grab power thanks to Nick Clegg and his Liberal Pussycat party, and we’re all now feeling the devastation of that decision. As a nice new year present, welcome to 20% VAT.

David Cameron will stop riding his bicycle to work.

- Yup. Like that kid gives a shit about the environment. Have you ever seen him go NEAR a bike since he took residence at No. 10?

The New Doctor Who will either Flop or Fly.

- He flew. By God he flew. What an awesome series it was. And Karen Gillian is so hot.

Bioshock 2 for Xbox 360 will be made of epic win.

- And it was. Not to mention as an added bonus. Bioshock Infinate was announced and that looks to be made of even more win. Win all round!

Finally, as a footnote, none of my predicted deaths occurred except perhaps for one. I made reference to the following; “Smithy from The Bill will be killed off in a freak handgliding accident.” – while this did not happen, rather ironically The Bill itself died as, after 20 years, ITV canceled the show. Yes, ITV sucks. The Bill, you will be missed.

And that’s it for this year. Coming soon: more fun and frolics in 2011!

Happy New Year everybody!

Me, I’m somthing different. I am founding the NLCALP, the National Liberaly Consevative And Labourers Party. We’re the party who does what it says on the tin. We’re the Ronseal party. We’re the party that just say’s NO. I mean seriously, check us and our key policies;
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MEET THE CABINET

Danny King, Prime Minister	Christy McDermott, Chancellor of The Exchequer	The Ultimate Warrior, Minister For Transport	James Last, Minister Of Culture	Doctor Robotnik, Minister For Defence	Bobby Davro, Minister Of Agriculture	The Iron Sheik, Minister For Education

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Free Tea & Biscuits for the Elderly
Old people spend the majority of their time sat indoors eating custard creams, slurping tea and watching Countdown. Did you know that nearly £240,000,000 of state pensions are spent on tea and biscuits every year? This is a huge void that needs to be sealed. Our proposals are clear on this pivotal issue; Nationalise the biscuit and tea industries, and make tea and biscuits free for all people over 60. All biscuit and tea manufacturers will be amalgamated into two companies, British Biscuits and British Tea (Note: “British Telecom” will be renamed “British Phones” to avoid confusion. “British Petrolium” will become “British Stuff That Make My Vroom-Vroom Go!” in turn). All tea and biscuits will be excempt from tax, and all profits will go into the research and development of products, with a percentage returning to the national coffers. I will be provided with an unlimited supply of biscuits and tea.

The £9.99, £19.99 notes and 99p coin
It takes no dummy to realise the real cause of the economic crash; and that is people loosing their change. The economic upturn caused a surge in pricing down among retailers, resulting in various “99p”, “£9.99″ and “£19.99″ offers. The resulting wave of shrapnel entering the economy has been unprecidented, with nearly £240,000,000 of 1p coins being lost in shopping centre fountains every year. Millions more are lost to grids, the backs of sofas, and piggy-banks that are never opened. This money needs to be recirculated into the economy, and fast. These new denominations will prevent the wastage of change.

New National Bank Holidays
44 new bank holidays will be introduced, in addition to the curernt 8, making 52, to cover the various religous and historical events that should be celebrated in Britain. These will include; Man Day, Eating a Bionic Limb Day, Fish With Three Eyes Day, One Time Pad Day, Radio Manchester Day, My Lordz Day, Eating a Nappy Day, Woman Day, What’s That Boy? Day, Mug Day, Monday Monday Day, Good Lord is That The Time Day, Sunday 2.0 Day, Can’t Be Arsed To Day, Boy Day, Fire Me I Dare You Day, Not Getting Out Of Bed To Day, Girl Day, Chocolate Day, Cake Day, Biscuit Day, Toffee Day, Candy Day, Food Day, Burger Day, Hotdog Day, Bread Day, Brandie Tschauner Day, Carbon Fibre Day, Instant Gravy Day, Saussage Patte Day, McDonalds Straw Wrapper Day, Cracked Floor Tile Day, Traffic Cone Day, Plastic Bottle Day, Flonger Day, One Stop Knocking Shop Day, Protectatron Day, Baby Day, Rapture Day, Jim Ross Day, Fire Evacuation Drill Day, Tiling Grout Day, Sellophane Wrapper Day, and Inconspicuous Cloud Shapes Day.

Investment in Green Technology
White Goods will be renamed Green Goods in order to help create a greener technological landscape for Britain. All white goods will be green by the year 2014, a year that was arbitrarily picked by a “think tank” because it sounds close but far away simultaniously. All electrical goods and personal electronic devices will be green by the year 2016, which is a bit further but still, just the round the corner so, it’s real change, real quick, y’know?

Benefit Reduction Scheme
Benefit funding will be cut and several initiatives will be used to force the unemployed back into work. These include various pilot schemes, including, forced labour, slavoury, iron cuffing, mame and slaughter, and bycicle pump. Should these initatives prove sucsessful in their pilot regions, they will be rolled out on a national basis. Those who are “on the sick” or claiming incapasity benefits will be taken away, locked in giant warehouse, and plugged into a giant supercomputer, which will be used for mundane everyday tasks that you don’t need to concern yourself with.

Our Other Policies Include:

• Re-opening Jillys Rockworld
• Opening a Subway on every street corner.
• Mandatory playthough of all Sonic The Hedgehog games every year.
• Reduction on taxes for video games.
• AceyBongos from Xbox Live to be replaced with a robotic version of Sting.
• NHS to offer additional “services”.
• Mortgages to be written off and replaced with a complex bartering system involving Jaffa Cakes.

So forget the other parties, and vote for the NLCALP on May 8th. I mean 4th. Or is it the 6th? Yeah, 6th, better go with that one. AND MAKE BRITAIN, OURS AGAIN!

Sponsored by Doctors Assosiates, Inc.

The news that thousands upon thousands of a particular model, worldwide, can’t stop under certain circumstances is quite hilarious if it wasn’t so potentially dangerous. What ammuses me most about this, though, is the fact that this isn’t caused by a faulty brake disk, wire, cable or component – it’s a software error.

And the fix for this problem? Well, a firmware update, obviously.

A bug in computer software can be an annoyance. It might stop me from getting my spreadsheet into the boss on time, or stop me from getting to level 21 in a game, but for a software bug to stop me from being able to stop my car properly?

Of course, this particular firmware update requires the owner to return the car to the Toyota dealership. But what about the future, when people receive firmware updates to their car’s dash over the air?

Software controlling output on a screen is fine, but when it governs the physical interaction of the world, it needs to be right. Sure, things can fail mechanically, too, but traditionally, you need to be near someone’s car to cut their brake line.

The thought occurs that, one day, someone might find a way to send some kind of software modification to a model of car, and cause every single person’s brakes to fail simultaniously, or invert their steering or somesuch. And the idea that we might be closer to that day than we all think is frightning.

So next time you open a dodgy e-mail, look out for Pryus’ coming towards you. All might not be as it seems….

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the iPaper.

It’s a new, ultra-soft, lightweight toilet paper, that looks really pretty. It’s exactly the same as our larger rival’s silky-smooth bog-roll, you know, the one they released four years ago, except it looks a bit prettier. It also fits on less toilet roll holders than our competitors, and it’s kinda restricted to people with an arse the size of a cat’s, but don’t worry; the price tag won’t let you down!

The new iPaper retails for just $599USD, that’s nearly $598 more expensive than our nearest rival!

So, the new Apple iPad. I had the chance to see one of these things in the Apple store the other day, and I really had to restrain myself from kicking the nearest dog. Or Apple store regular.

For you see, the iPad isn’t a “new” or “revolutionary” idea either, folks. I appreciate that nobody who orgasms over these stupid things will listen to that, and they’ll just drink Steve Job’s kool-aid until it makes them giddy. Frankly they can do, there’s nothing wrong with the iPad as a product in theory. Infact, it’s very good. It’s stylish, functional, and it does the job it’s designed to do very well.

The problem is the fact that one, it’s mis-sold, and two, Applefans are going to find every Windows laptop owner in the land and wave their iPad in their face like a spack, not realising that Windows users have had tablets for years now.

As you can see, this Tablet PC here is exactly the same size as the Apple iPad. It’s about half the price of the iPad. And it actually runs a proper operating system, the full version of Windows, bells and whistles, rather than some limited iPhone interface derivative, that probably only exists so you can spend money on downloadables.

Oh, and it came out four years ago now.

I really want to know what this fucking revolution Captain Job’s is waffling on about actually is. I really don’t understand how you can just take existing technology, not even make it that much prettier than what’s already there (lets face it, the Tablet PC pictured is pretty sexy) – then just slap a stupendious price tag on it and watch the kids and middle aged people like Stephen Fry lap it up like Jelly Babies made from pure platinum.

Now, bets until one of these things sets someone on fire, anyone?

Let me explain. I’m sure we’re all no doubt aware by now of the awful events that have occured in Haiti. It’s a sad occurence and a real tragedy for anyone involved and their loved ones, and of course, a lot of people do want to help with whatever donations and aid they can provide.

Enter Bungie, who immediately sounded the Public Relations Alarm, and came up with this rather clever way to milk tragedy to increase their public image;  any gamers who play Halo 3 or Halo 3: ODST on Xbox Live any time on Wednesday or Thursday will need to wear a “special emblem signifying [their] commitment to the cause.”  That special emblem is a red heart that can be added to the user’s player by visiting the “Appearance” menu. Bungie will donate $100 to the Red Cross for every 1,000 gamers that participate. Gamers need only to play one game to qualify.

Bungie will keep donating cash to the Red Cross, up to a total of $77,000.

Sorry, but fuck that.  There are several problems with this that piss me off right now, and the first one of those is the cap. Just donate the $77,000. No, instead, they’re using the tragedy in Haiti to get people talking about Halo, and play the game, despite already knowing what they’re going to donate.  Just like any good marketing campaign, they have a budget.

Now I don’t mind this sort of thing when done properly. Microsoft for example donate a few pence for every IM sent and recieved that contains a certain special emoticon, the IM emote. This is fine, because they don’t cap what they’re donating, and it’s ongoing for a charity that is an established organisation, regularly taking dontains.

This is a personal tragedy for millions, and the aid is needed urgently. There should be no need for this PR crap. Donate the $77,000. Sure, tell people you’ve donated it, but don’t use this event as a excuse to generate cheap fucking PR. It really boils my blood. I just know for a fact some fucker in a suit has sat down and said “Hey, we can use this disaster to get more people playing and up our image!”

I don’t play Halo anyway, but I think I’ve decided not to start. If you really want to help the people of Haiti, visit Google’s page at http://www.google.co.uk/relief/haitiearthquake/ instead.