Resident Evil 5 – Demo

Christmas came early for me this year, I heard a rumour that there was a Resident Evil 5 demo out on the web after it was released in Japan (UK owners will not have access to this demo, as usual PAL gamers get stiffed). I managed to track it down and have a quick go, and am happy to confirm that it was well worth the wait; the Resident Evil series is my absolute favourite and I have been waiting for this game to come out since it was announced months and months and months ago.

The first thing I noticed on the demo was that it was called Resident Evil 5 and not Biohazard 5 (Japanese name), so this must always have been intended as a UK/USA release but they perhaps changed their minds? The xbox 360 is starting to do very well in Japan now, so perhaps that’s why they got the exclusive on this one?

When I eventually got into the game I immediately noticed how familiar the controls are to Resident Evil 4, almost to the point you could be mistaken for thinking it’s an expansion of the previous chapter in the saga. The visuals are amazing, definately the best I’ve seen on the machine to date, crisp clear graphics which look like most of the cut scenes in RE4. The inventory works well, the weapons are acurate and so is the collision detection. Top notch stuff.

I really enjoy how you’re partnered up in this game with a rather foxy looking sprite called Sheva, it reminded me immediately of Resident Evil Zero where your partner follows you around intelligently and backs you up, heals you and kicks major arse. You seem to be able to supply them with pickups and all sorts in a bid to gain a tactical advantage over the enemies. Speaking of the enemies, so much controversy surrounded the fact that you’re shooting black people in this game (the game is set in Haiti apparently), it never ceases to amaze me really how quick the media are to demonise games. Where were the cries of outrage as you happily saunter around shooting white folk in the first 5 games eh, plus all the carnage you bring upon hispanics in Resident Evil 4? Oh well, we’ll gloss over that, the sheer fact is that whilst walking around in a shanty town, you get rushed by a raging hoard of zombie-like beings (who have the same sort of parasite it would appear as the Ganado’s in RE4). What are you gonna do, open up a politically correct dialogue with them and exchange gifts?

In summary, the demo was short and sweet and at the end I could feel my heart racing when trying to escape the hooded axe-wielding tyrant character (the axe is almost as big as the Eifle Tower); sadly you can’t kill him in the demo but rest assured I will be returning to blow the hood (and his head) clean off and finish the job!

This is most definately going to be my game of 2009, and I can’t wait till it comes out. If anyone wants information on how to get this working then leave me an e mail in a comment on this thread; you don’t need a modded machine in order to play it!

Capcom rules!

Black or mixed plagarism?

I can’t sleep, my mouth is hurting like a mofo; thought I’d have a quick browse at the BBC and what should I find?  An article debating if Obama is black or mixed race?

I’ve a good mind to e mail the author and tell her she’s about 7 days too late.  I may even sue!!!  BWAH HA HA HA!

It’s actually a good article, so if you fancy a gander, go here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7735503.stm

My motorbike – Aprilia RS125

I thought I’d throw up a few pictures of my first motorbike. Click a photo to enlarge, click it again to shrink.

No jokes about spending all my time polishing my helmet please?

Kev’s Low-fat prawn soup/casserole effort

In a bid to shed some weight before my works Christmas party (and generally because I’ve been rather greedy of late) I’ve decided to revisit my self-fashioned ‘low saturated fat’ diet. It’s simple, eat what you like as long as there’s no saturated fat. Oh, and drink lots of water. Sod fad diets, no blocking out food groups for temporary fixes. Dodgy stuff that. Mini-rant over.

I popped into my local supermarket tonight before going home in order to grab some chicken (grilled chicken with peppers and tomatoes is a favourite of mine when I diet) for dinner. The chicken looked a bit ropey/pricey and I decided to browse the seafood section for some inspiration when I saw some tiger prawns which were half price so decided to give them a whirl. When I got back home I decided upon a soup/casserole.


INGREDIENTS:

  • A pack of tiger prawns
  • Button mushrooms
  • Spring onions
  • A single green pepper
  • Plum tomatos in tomato sauce (tinned)
  • Fresh garlic
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Sea salt
  • A packet of wholemeal pitta

HOW TO MAKE IT
Use a decent pyrex dish (one with a lid is best), pour in a little olive oil and place into the oven without the lid on at around 93oC (200oF approx). When the oil is heated through, chuck in the prawns (including the prawny water stuff) along with two crushed cloves of garlic, some of the tomato sauce from the tin and a generous pinch of sea salt. Mix it around well and put the lid on for about 3-4 minutes.

While the prawns begin cooking, clean and chop up the mushrooms, spring onions and pepper; when you’ve done this, pop everything in with the cooking prawns along with the tinned tomatoes and remaining sauce. Replace the lid and shove it back in the oven for 10-15 mins (I like all my veg hard, so leave longer if you want yours softer). Just before the soup/casserole (sasserole?) is ready, heat a few of the wholemeal pitta bread under the grill. They make great dipping bread.

And that’s it 🙂 Apologies for the quality of the picture but I only had my mobile phone camera to hand! All in, the meal cost me less than a lady (£5). Bargain.

prawnsoup

Birthday Pizza………finally!

First of all, muchos apologies to Josie for the delay in posting these pictures!

I’ve been meaning to pop a couple of pictures of my birthday luncheon up on the site so that you can all salivate over the culinary delights I was presented with back in October (Muchos respect to Head Chef Alex and Sioux Chef Josie!). Both Al and Josie made the pizzas (and the best chips, sadly not pictured) from scratch, right in front of me I might add which was bloody torture. Thankfully, a Corona lager with lime made the wait that much more enjoyable.  Chin chin!

With no sign of the credit crunch or starving African children, the dynamic duo assembled what would be their masterpiece(s). A variety of different rolls and pitta bread were used for bases; add some homemade pizza sauce and sumptuous toppings and wang………..et voila! It’s also the first time I’ve ever had Mackerel (on pizza or anything else) and it was gorgeous along with the prawns, tuna and mixture of cheeses. I’m genuinely salivating again. Blimey.

So here we go, this is a picture of yours truly and Monsieur la calvacie. Josie seems to have captured the point perfectly after we’d scoffed the first round of pizzas, and were just tucking into the second round which included some dried chillis that burnt the tip of my tongue quite considerably!.  They were definately the best pizzas I’ve ever tasted, and I’m not just saying that!  I am only sad that there aren’t pictures of Josies chips, rum drinking shenanigans or video footage playing Guitar Hero dancing.  Twas the perfick birfinday and make no mistake guvna.  Fanks!

Barak Obama – President of the USA

Blimey, I hoped Barak Obama would get in; but I must confess I never fully expected it to actually happen; I’ve secretly been harbouring a genuine fear that the ‘good old boy’ network of American may actually come out in force to vote and push John McCain over the finish line. 

Everytime I saw something in the news about McCain’s campaign I began to picture old man McCain sauntering up the White House front lawn and suddenly croaking it; leaving Sarah “Medievally-minded Barbie” Palin in the hotseat.  I shudder profusely at the possibility.   

I am truly thankful he chose her as his running mate, I am now convinced that the majority of people in America couldn’t stomach her extremely narrow minded and backward Evangelical ways (for god sakes she’d already picked out what countries she wanted to nuke in the name of the Lord!).  I can feel myself staring at her whenever she’s on television or in the papers; purely to remind myself that people like her really do exist and it’s not all some elaborate windup.  Lets just hope she buggers off back to her cave along with anyone else who agrees with her Medieval opinions.

Anyway, I am hopeful that old Barak chops will continue bringing much needed change to America.  It flipping well needs it.

One more question (Columbo eat your heart out), can they sack George W Bush NOW please?

Wizdum teef, moosic n Halloweiner

Bonjour to all (especially all you debauched ladies out there, honk honk).
Oh my, where to begin? Well, on the 28th October 2008 I underwent an operation to have two wisdom teeth pulled out. It was performed in hospital under a local anaesthetic (I would have preferred a dentist but one wasn’t available) and have to say that overall I’ve been rather lucky with the whole experience.
It involved a few injections, loads of pressure (they held my head and put all sorts of contraptions in my mouth), pliers on the tooth and CRRRRRRRRRRRRRUNCH, they were gone; the crunch bit was particularly awesome I have to say. I think I freaked the surgeon out a little because I was openly fascinated by the whole process; I was rather saddened by the fact I wasn’t allowed to keep the teeth. Medical waste my artichoke!
I count myself as very fortunate because I didn’t feel any pain at all throughout the procedure and the pain has generally been under control with some wicked strength Ibuprofen (except the last couple of nights where I’ve woken up in pain). So there we have it, I can only hope now that the left side heals as much as possible before I have the other 2 teeth out on the 11th November, 2008. Can’t wait.
Suprisingly, I was well enough to work from home the same day I had the operation and felt OK to return back into the office the following day. I would like to thank colleagues and fwends at this point for their well-wishing and generally putting up with me when I’ve been a bit grumpy and lathargic this week. Big shout to Baldy for recommending Warzone, a game I played a fair bit over the last few days. Very funky and I urge you all to try it.
Given the irritation of my teeth I spent the weekend relaxing and doing pretty much bugger all. On Friday night I finally took possession of my first motorbike (an Aprilia RS125) which I fell in love with upon sight (pics to follow tonight, oh yes, and I have pictures of birthday pizza which I’ll also post tonight). Can’t wait to get out and about on it, especially down to Selsey (South coast of England) during the summer.
Saturday I had a quick go at recording ‘Carry on’ with the new Latin arrangement, had a few ideas with the percussion, I was however a little peeved at how muddy the acoustic guitar sounded for the riff which is strange really considering how crisp it sounded for the chords on track 1. Strange, it’s just so bassy. May need to change the strings but think I’ll save some pennies and buy a nice new acoustic for Christmas along with a good mic and the decent pair of cans that Alex keeps telling me I must buy. Fwap.
Sunday I spent the morning checking over the bike along with scanning through the workshop manual; I can honestly say that I never expected to be so enthralled with the mechanics of motor vehicles as I do these days. That said, I took G.C.S.E workshop engineering at school and regularly used lathes so perhaps I’ve just come full circle to that? Interesting. I still have the pendulum I made somewhere for the practical. “Lube, you must use lube!!!!”. “But Sir, it looks like jizz!!!!”.
The rest of my Sunday was spent playing Red Alert 3 with a couple of friends, it’s by far the best real time strategy game I’ve played since Age of Empires 2; the units are so well balanced and the graphics are very snazzy. I don’t think zapping guard dogs or disgruntled bears using prism laser defenses will ever stop appealing to my dark sense of humour. ‘arrrf arrrf…..fssssh zing peooow…..ooook’.
I should like to finish off this particular entry by saying how chuffed I was to see Halloween so well organised this year; I have such amazing memories walking around strobe-lit American neighbourhoods that pumped out various spooky tunes and audio effects. People there go all out to get into the swing of things (You know who you are Brad! ) and it’s fantastically good fun.
In contrast, citizens of the United Kingdom normally get street urchins knocking their doors for cash rather than sweets (presumably to fund their Redbull addiction?) and are armed with fireworks, however this year I witnessed kids being chaperoned by parents, politely knocking for sweets. I can only hope that this trend continues rather than the old ‘tradition’ of letting off airbombs through Mrs Miggins letterbox because she’s too scared to answer the door!
Trick or treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I Carry On (With a latino twist)

Today saw me mark my 31st birthday; It got an A+.  Ho ho ho………….

I write this particular entry having spent my day revisiting an age old tradition of mine; spending it with Alex scoffing profuse amounts of food and writing/recording music.

I was very graciously received by my hosts (big shout out to Alex’s bird, Josie for the rum induced Guitar Hero entertainment) who quickly bestowed upon me the very finest homemade pizza and chips I have had the fortune of consuming; I am still rather full now (photos of said pizza to follow courtesy of the bird shortly!).

After Josie nodded off, Alex and I retired to the lounge with the acoustics and sat working out the ‘Marvin’ riff with the original chords from ‘Carry on’.  My post on the 7th October centers around a quick recording I did of the original chords coupled with the riff; click on the sound sample below to get a rough idea of what we’re moving way from.  Apologies for the dodgy guitar FX sound; I used one built into my Tascam and it’s a bit pants but I was in a rush!

The older version of the marvin/carry on

Both Alex and I became bored of the slow tempo and also how rigid the arrangement was, Al then proposed a new direction and fortunately we found it pretty quickly, a change of rhythm and a slight change to the riff produced a Latin version of ‘Carry on’.

I have uploaded several videos (my favourite is Alex and the bassline due to the banter) onto youpube (please see below) which were taken at various points in our little session, I was really glad I had my camera because we worked out several guitar ideas, the bass, and also a new vocal line.  All in all I’m really excited about this track; hopefully we can get something recorded down properly onto the desk in the coming weeks.

Thanks again Baldie and Bird for a funky day. Areeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeba!

I should add that I am the main guitar player on video here (it’s a little dark) and Alex is generally out of shot but playing as well or providing percussion etc.

How the Marvin riff has changed

The first take using the new riff and arrangement

Alex’s new idea for the rhythmn, caught on camera!

Baldie comes up with the bass line

A reasonably good idea of how the song sounds at this point in time