Want to talk about something, but can't start a thread? Don't derail existing ones - this one's just for you!

Fat Controller is a a paedophile. And in a holiday brochure. With Thomas the Tank Engine. Who looks, err, concerned.



HAHAHA, check the image filename as well.

If anybody is looking for more up-to-date Xbox emulators or programmes (original Xbox), you'd be best trying xbins (click on the app link).

A QUESTION OF SOME IMPORTANCE

Right, this weekend, for reasons that I am not going to disclose, I am going to Bath. I require suggestions of public houses, and other vendors of alcoholic beverages, preferably in 568ml format which satisfy the following criteria:

1) Fit barmaid.
2) Decent beer.

If barmaid is not fit, an uggo barmaid with cheap beer is an acceptable alternative as I'll keep drinking until they look good.

3) MAybe an outdoor bit.
4) not in the arse end of nowhere.
5) Maybe food.

Good one, Stu. In fact, I have two nagging questions/thinkythinks bothering me.

First, here's a sloppy copy'n'paste job of something I wrote elsewhere:

Well, that's one. Second in line, and I think I *may* have asked this one already but I get a bit lazy when I haven't had any coffee. Bluntly, is there anything out there right now that bears some resemblance to Cannon Fodder? Last year I replayed a favorite underdog of mine, Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 and without meaning to sound like a heretic or to challenge the faith of the Church of Fodder, I believe its got some of that feel.

It's a 2004 release that's been pegged in the RTS genre but has a few nifty features. First, it allows for direct control of individual units, well before everyone went gaga over it in Company of Heroes. It's also, in my mind, not so much of an RTS - although there is certainly a similar structure in it, it does seem to pay more of a homage to a game like CF (and a bit to Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and Hidden and Dangerous as well) where you are overwhelmed by superior forces and have to outwit and outmaneuver the opposition. You can man turrets, pick up equipment from downed soldiers, drive vehicules, and destroy a lot of the background through its use of a smart physics engine. Though I believe it's the sense of scale and odds that place it as a descendant of the games I've mentioned. It's ludicrously hard and unforgiving from the beginning, sometimes with little more than a handful of soldiers trying to prevent a small army heading their way. And since your dead personnel is irreplaceable, this ramps up difficulty quite nicely (and sadistically, in a delicious way).

And the only other games I remember to achieve this feeling were the ones I mentioned, CF included. So the question would be, to any who may have played it, am I off base here or are there really some similarities?

I thought you didn't like bits + bobs threads?

"Fat Controller" in itself sounds like a peadophile name.

Or a really lousy, but amusing x-men power.

Speaking of which, did anyone see X-men 3 the other night? Fucking hell, that was a bad film.

I like the bit with the house, the bit with the bridge, and the bit with the walls. The rest of it can fuck right off.

You've been given permission to derail the thread, but NOT our fond memories of Thomas The Tankengine.

Ahhhhhh! Derail like a train goes on rails!

I actually just thought this. Goodnight!

Diogo, I would love to help, but please, summarise you're questions into one line! I am too lazy to read all that.

This, therefore, may not answer your question, but:

1. Play Outrun 2006, it's awesome, but not multiplayer IIRC. Many friends seem to enjoy the Burnout series but it's not objectively good, because you can't see the track ahead, and therefore have to learn them, but it is fast and you can race head to head with your pops on one screen if you like.

2. I can't think of anything like CF off the top of my head, unless you want something like Ghost Recon 360 or SWAT 4 or Rainbow 6 Vegas or something, all of which are squad based FPSs. I know nothing of RTSs full stop, although you might want to have a look at some flash games, since it would be pretty easy to do CF in flash.

Tottenham, 3-1 vs Stoke, still shit in defence, but now we have some firepower back the result swings in our favour. Also helps that Stoke are bottom, but plenty of clubs get relegated to the bottom four if they lose a few on the trot.

I liked how it began as a thoroughly overcast day. Then, as they moved the bridge, it was bright, blue skies. But it must have taken them several hours to walk the few feet to the end of the bridge, because by then it was completely night. Continuity as good as the script, there.

And yeah, this is clearly a Bits and Bobs thread, isn't it? A Bad Idea.

I agree with Rob M, in a way, since it's much more fun to use an old thread for a new purpose, but I also disagree with Rob M, because I only found a Sensi World Cup thread / Forum Rules thread where I could jibber-jabber about Tottenham, which is not really the best place for it.

I, however, accept my place as a second class forumite, and the problems that accompany it, so I'm happy with whatever.

Ho ho! I agree. As regards continuity, see also the initial airbase scene of Michael Bay's Transformers, too. He LOVES that, he's a devil forrit.

Does anyone know of any online articles regarding the Lunar Jetman trailer myth? Links please.

I'm not in much of a position to help here, as I've been almost teetotal for three years now and only go in pubs to play poker once or twice a month. (And when I'm drinking, I drink mostly spirits.)

One beer I have enjoyed recently is Hobgoblin, a lovely, chocolatey "ruby" beer made by a brewery who also own the pub of the same name in central Bath, where I presume it would be sold. It's an old-style pub full of bare wood and dark corners, but is inhabited by the town's youth - especially but not exclusively the goth community - so I imagine it'll have young and pretty staff.

For lovely surroundings and cute barpersons the Chequers on Rivers Street is definitely recommended, but it's pricey (especially the award-winning food) and I can't comment on the ale range. At the other end of town, the Curfew just off London Road has a cosy downstairs and a fancier upstairs with comfy sofas, old-style jukebox and pool table. (NB Comfy seating is very hard to come by in Bath drinking establishments.)

The New Inn on Monmouth Place (just along from the original Future offices) is a great little pub, with mature but very friendly proprietors and enormous dogs, and is cosy and quiet even at weekends, with a well-regarded stable of beers and good simple pub grub too, all at sensible prices.

If you're after something livelier and you want to see the hottest girls in town, head to Mandalyn's at the bottom of Lansdown Road, which is a brilliant weekend pub full of atmosphere and £1 shots of novelty vodkas, but don't get your hopes up - it's a gay bar, so when they turn you down it really will be because they're lesbians. Bath has the foxiest lesbians in the country, I believe science has recently proved.

Other than that, take random guesses and you probably won't go far wrong - Bath is crammed with pubs, and most of them are pretty decent as long as you avoid the big chains.

Hmm, I am also off to Bath this weekend, although not in pursuit of fit barmaids. Sadly.

Just out of interest, what prompted you to knock alcohol on the head Stu?

My own little rant concerns football games with fucking dirty cheating CPU opposition. I've loving Fifa '08 at the moment, but the number if times that you can almost see the CPU decide it's going to score, before waltzing through your entire defence and unleashing an unstoppable pinpoint drive into the top corner is infuriating. Or, occasionally, in the interest of fairness I presume, it will actually allow you to tackle the attacker, for which you will concede a free kick just outside the box on every occasion, which ends in the same way as the above. Or the number of times that it's played a seemingly random amount of extra time, which promptly ends when the CPU scores. Or the way that my players are entirely incapable of holding the ball, yet the CPU's seem almost armour-plated and tank-like. Or the way my defenders will gaze uninterestedly at loose balls inches away from their feet, yet the CPU players seem to swarm forward in an almost-perfect display of attacking football, in which there is always a player available to receive the invariable perfect pass before ending in one of the outcomes above. I could go on forever. I hate it, yet I can't stop playing.

Speaking of pubs, has anybody here taken a shine to horribly insular, local bear pits that are mostly dead save for the same few purple faces that haunt them every single day from 11am sharp?

There are loads along the main road near me, and I must 'fess up to quite enjoying nipping into them with a pal for some absurdly cheap Strongbow (out of a can), even if I don't feel particularly welcome.

(Quote edited)

Nothing particularly significant, just the fact that I'm now old and as a result hangovers last four days, which blows hard. Also, three years ago cash was tight (still is) and life was pretty rubbish (not so much), and I didn't see the wisdom of spending a fortune pouring depressants into myself. I was going out socially three or four nights a week (mostly with lesbians, who can swig a lot better than you think) not getting hammered but having a few, and worked out it was costing me £300-400 a month, which is an awful lot of money when you're poor. I replaced booze and pool with poker for social purposes, and started making a profit out of my social life instead of a loss.

Because I didn't and don't miss alcohol per se, I recently realised I'd gone too far, because near-total abstinence destroys your tolerance, plus it's generally held that a small alcohol intake is better for you than absolutely none, so I've tried to make sure I have at least one alcoholic drink a week now - hence knowing what Hobgoblin tastes like. (Since I'm only having occasional ones, I buy fancier stuff just to try it.)

Which brings us neatly on to the question - is FIFA now better than PES?

I played the most recent version on 360 and noticed the following:

1) Everyone plays as if they've taken a shitload of Valium.
2) Passing is slow as all hell.

*something about being good at laps*

'kin hell. I buy more ('aspartame') than I can realistically get through, each month (since it's mostly for physical health benefit, and I'd rather not be left short). It costs me about £200, and that's if I'm basically spending each evening getting caned, forcing the stuff down (and I've not done this in ooo, ages). I buy... a bottle or two of JD and a few cans/bottles a month - say £30 or so on booze.

Me too. I didn't change anything though. I just set up a webcam to film me sitting around wanking in a grotty little flat all evening. It works for me.

Would you like a Fancy Drink RMD?

Ah, thanks :) And sorry for being longwinded; sometimes I can't help myself.

1. I'll try Outrun 2006 as soon as possible, along with Burnout - though, wasn't the latter a console only game? In all that wordiness I seem to have forgotten a crucial aspect, which is I primarily play on the PC and NDS. No track ahead in Burnout? Hmmm. Heads will roll.

2. Oh, I played my share of GRs and R6s back in the day. SWAT4 is brilliant, too :)

I'll try to find the time to give a good playthrough across the 4 campaigns of Soldiers, maybe write something up on how I feel there are some similarities. I'm overload with writing stuff and work at the moment, so that might take a while :(

PES 6 > FIFA 08 > Recent PESses?

Where does PES Wii 08 fit into all this, I wonder? I keep nearly buying it, but I fear the unknown. Someone convince me to buy it! Unless it's shit.

the new version is out soon so might as well wait unless it's very very cheap.

fifa 09 > pes 2009 > etc. IMO.

Well sure, but that's if you're sitting at home. I can buy name-brand lager for 50p a bottle/can at home, but in a boozer it's 5/6 times that, plus 70p a game for pool. I was spending £20-25 a night, which isn't a vast amount on any one evening, but when you're out every other night it mounts up.

Go for it. I don't like sour, watery English bitter, but a rich, full-flavoured ale like Hobgoblin was close to Scottish-style heavy, and therefore well tasty. The only English non-lager I enjoyed before then was Newcastle Brown.

I played both briefly in a shop (a game on each) and found Fifa better, PES seemed to be a bit slow and unwieldy, but as I say, only a brief test.

I think so. There certainly seem to be far fewer instances of 'why the fuck did you pass there' and 'why the fuck did my player do that'. It suffers from similar flaws, in single-player at least, but it just feels more solid and enjoyable to play IMO.

Burnout: it's just hard to know where a turning is unless you've already played it, bad signposting, maybe, or too fast, I forget which. (Edit: there are loads of them, so it might only apply to a few)

I think Stu's already said the NDS has a lame selection of racers, but if you've got a PC you could easily emulate a lot of the old classics, otherwise something like Rock Paper Shotgun made a few recommendations in their end of year write up, GRID, I think.

(Oh, and taking a look at RPS:they've just announced that Burnout The New Version is out on PC in Feb, so in about 10 days you can try it, good-o.)

I think FIFA09 is superb. Management mode gives you all the tinkering you desire (i.e. either quite a lot, or virtually nothing) and the gameplay, once you've overcome your PES biases, actually works rather excellently. There's a good selection of British leagues, transfer windows, and European competition. The graphics on the whole are very good and the controls whilst fiddly are not terribly unwieldy. Special moves are a pain, but the basics of passing and sprinting are fine. I've just finished my first Premiership season with Everton and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Wasn't too keen on the "Be A Pro" mode myself. Lots of on-line modes too if that's yer thing.

The game has quite a few flaws (offsides are frustrating, some weird refereeing, no handballs, difficult to defend corners, tackling a little unrealistic etc.) but they're not deal-breakers.

Btw. Stu, is it possible to buy articles individually via PayPal? I quite fancy reading a few of the DS-related ones but don't really need a sub, or least I don't want to be a c*nt and start a sub, leech the articles then cancel. Guess it's too much arse ache to go On-Demand via email or something?

I second that heartily. A Bad Night in early 2007 sent me off the shandy for 6 months; took a wedding in Hong Kong to get me back on the pitch and, due to a gluten intolerance and an evolving palate, I choose finer wines (over beer) on special occasions now. No longer the Wetherspoons house red...

For those beerily inclined Innis & Gunn (Here and here reviewed and...no apparent website...) certainly smells divine when I've foisted them, out of displaced adventurism, on friends. Like whiskey, vanilla, toffee and lots of delicious things.

If your in an offy then Golden Champion is light and delightful.

Edit: obvious. I do apologise...you're. For flip's sake!

That there Innis & Gunn is indeed mighty tasty. Although I've got a pretty high tolerance for enjoying the alcoholic beverages so I could say that about many drinks. Anyway, when I tried that for the first time last year my face apparently did a really good impression of a BING! sound and I drank several more.

ANY games with cheating AI are vile.

The mobile version of Puzzle Bobble, for instance, in which during the endless vs (I forget what it is referred to as) mode the second character you play against a) has a bubble lined up at a set angle as soon as the screen loads, while you cannot set a position until the countdown has finished and b) can move quicker than you, meaning that unless you are just LUCKY you will lose.

It has finally broken me tonight. Playing as Wigan, I scraped a 1-1 draw against Chelsea, which really made me think that some of the problems I'd experienced may just be in my head and that I might be improving. Next up, a League Cup game against Southend. For the first five minutes of the game my players cannot tackle, they can't defend a cross, and SE score two. For the rest of the game, my team continues to be utterly inept no matter what happens (may I just point out here that I don't mind games being hard - I love the DonPachi and Giga Wing series' for example - I just don't like being cheated) and I eventually turn off just before the end of the match in disgust. This happens a further three times upon restarting the game, on the fourth attempt the CPU does nothing other than to bend in two forty yard free kicks in injury time, and on the fifth it lets me win without any resistance whatsoever, to such a degree that the outcome must be scripted or pre-determined as I'm loading from the same fucking point every time. I think I'm going to revisit ISS on N64 and Cube, because that was the last time I remember loosing at a football game (in single player) because I actually sucked.

On the subject of AI, don't play Populous DS. The pathfinding for your followers seems to be worse than that of the 1989 original. I often find them walking around between the buildings looking for somewhere to build a house, instead of walking over to the massive patch of flat land I've sorted for them. I'm glad I got a "review copy".

my loveletter on it: football is war

and as it's titled 08, i've seen it going for 15 euros orso, so try it

ISS 64 is still the best footy game EVER.

Why hasn't anyone copied its through ball setup? Hold the button down to set the player you're passing to off on a run, release to play the ball through. Genius!

Re: nice beer: this is off the scale.