Mortal Blow

So Mortal Kombat (the new one, the reboot that has the same name as the original in another example of that most infuriating practice) has apparently been refused classification in Australia. As everyone should be aware by now, Australia still lacks an R18+ certificate for games and anything that would require it is refused classification and effectively banned. In the past I have frequently expressed my disappointment at this extremely backward and counter-intuitive practice.

But as of now, I am officially done. I give up. You win, Australian censorship. This is the last thing I will ever write about the R18 issue.

Because it has become abundantly clear to me that discussing it, making official complaints and reasonably explaining the entirely logical reasons why the R18 is necessary and its absence makes Australia a worldwide laughing stock, is completely pointless. I and people like me have explained and campaigned until we're blue in the tits. A recent poll showed that the vast majority of the population are in favour of the R18 and the government flat-out recommended that it be introduced.

The reason why we still don't have it is because the final decision rests with the Attorney Generals, who have very clearly demonstrated that their decision is rooted in ignorant personal bias rather than the desires of the majority. In which case, what is the point of being reasonable to people who take pride in their stubborn, pig-ignorant wilful deafness?

But the other reason I'm not going to talk about it again is because it isn't my problem. It'd only be my problem if it in any way stopped games with adult themes being created, and it doesn't. If a game gets RC'ed I will just import it. This almost always works out cheaper anyway because of the insanely high markups games receive in this country.

The people who should have a problem, besides anyone concerned with Australia being perceived as a backward nation, is the parents. Don't misunderstand the issue, breeders: preventing an R18 certificate from being introduced is not preventing adult games from entering the country and corrupting your precious sexcrement. Rather, it encourages importing and pirating, resulting in the game entering the country unregulated and freely available to children of all ages. It also results in the Aliens Vs Predator scenario in which games that deserve R18 certs are given MA15 for the sake of a quiet life, despite being unequivocally adult games.

Yes, this is the same point that has been made time and time again and which will almost certainly be ignored by policy makers just as it always has been, but let me close my involvement in this issue with the main thrust of the argument as emphatic and capitalised as possible. R18 IS NEEDED TO REGULATE THE SALE OF ADULT GAMES AND PREVENT CHILDREN FROM PLAYING THEM. THE ADULT GAMES THAT ARE ALREADY HERE. NOT HAVING R18 DOES NOT PREVENT ADULT GAMES FROM ENTERING THE COUNTRY. OPPOSING R18 IS LIKE OPPOSING VAMPIRE HUNTING IN VAMPIRE LAND ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT WILL ENCOURAGE VAMPIRES TO INVADE VAMPIRE LAND EVEN THOUGH VAMPIRE LAND IS ALREADY FULL OF VAMPIRES.

ZPs: Dead Space 2, DC Universe, Mindjack
XPs: American box art, Dead Space 2 and levelling backwards.

Trivia night: tomorrow! (Tuesday 29th). It's got Bulletstorm prizes and the usual evening of larks. Come along from 6:30 as usual.

Thrrrrrrrrp

ZPs un-linked to thus far: Fable 3, Minecraft and A Shadow's Tale. I'd normally link to the XP columns too, but today I think I'll let you track them down yourselves as a fun little exercise.

Last trivia night went off without a hitch, so hopefully it'd be safe to assume this Tuesday's (the 8th) will go off similarly. So here's the poster. Yes, we actually were able to get someone to sponsor this one.

Quiz-ats Haderach

Alright, this time trivia quiz is DEFINITELY coming back to the Mana Bar this Tuesday, the 25th, the night before Australia Day. Definitely positively no barley cross fingers. So now it has to happen because I've said so. It's going to be the same quiz we never got around to two weeks ago so still themed around the games of 2010. Kick off from 6:30, hope to see you there. THIS time.

ZP: Fable 3. XP: World of Warcraft. That is all.

Floody Hell

Okay, so trivia night fairly obviously wasn't on last Tuesday because someone upended a giant bucket of water onto Brisbane and everyone had to take time out to wring out their socks. To all those of you concerned about my wellbeing, rest assured I was largely unaffected. My street was in an at-risk area but the water didn't rise high enough. Plus I was on the second floor. So we didn't even have our power cut off and if I hadn't left the house and seen all the sandbags everywhere I probably wouldn't even have noticed. About the only times I was directly affected was when I had to have instant noodles for dinner, and when I had an open grill at a cafe I like and it came with very little salad.

The substantially larger number of you who expressed concern for the wellbeing of the Mana Bar (you unfeeling fucks), it wasn't even in the slightest risk, it's at the top of a hill. We even remained open during the flood's peak, not that many people showed up, but what did we expect. So waste none of your concern on me or my business ventures, there are a lot of people in this city who need your concern more. You can donate to the flood relief fund here. Help Brisbane out now and we'll do backsies if your city ever, I dunno, falls into the centre of the Earth or something. Maybe we'll drop some cold drinks down the sinkhole.

So trivia night (the same trivia night we never got around to doing) will be put off a fortnight, to Tuesday the 25th. We like to keep it to a fortnightly schedule, and Tuesday 18th has already been set aside for the Uwe Boll Movie Marathon, which should be a lot of fun. We'll all sit around and make snarky comments in order to feel superior for once in our petty lives. Do come along from 5.

XP this week was a bonus helping of 2010 retrospective. ZP was World of Warcraft, of all things. That was what I did at Christmas instead of buying people presents.

Quizzle Stick

Yes, Yahtzee's Trivia Night returns to the Mana Bar on Tuesday the 11th of January, smeared with lipstick and freshly hung over from new year, and that's why it's going to be a special quiz about the games (and some of the events) of 2010. This will be one of the rare occasions when you have a chance to swot up on the subject matter. As always show up at 6:30 for team registration and we kick the fuck off at 7.

ZPs of late: The top and bottom 5 of 2010. Blimey, was that all? Have I actually updated with timeliness for once? Oh, wait, there was that clip show we did over Christmas, too. Blast. And there's an Epic Mickey XP column as well.

Ho Ho Etc

Blimey, I am being lax in updating this site. It's like I'm incredibly busy with various exciting projects like my second novel for example. Anyway, it's the Christmas season and that means next week will be my traditional week off for the holidays, and there won't be an XP or a ZP, except for a clip show filler episode I think Russ and the lads are putting together. Hope you're all having a lovely time resenting each other.

Anyway, here's all the stuff I haven't linked to yet. XPs: little touches in games and the fun of extravagant gore. ZPs: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Epic Mickey and Splatterhouse.

Splatterhouse I want to dwell on for a second, because I want it on record that I don't usually play 'challenge rooms' in games when I'm done with the main story. But in this case, I did. I played the Splatterhouse challenge rooms. Why? Because it unlocked extra pictures of titties. Divided into four scraps and bestowed throughout the course of the battle, and the last scrap would almost always be the one with the actual titties on, the coy sons of bitches. Kudos to Splatterhouse for figuring out my personal carrot and stick.

Now, I know full well that it's easy to find pictures of tits, in fact, on the internet it's hard to get through a day without seeing a least one lovely pair of bouncing judders. But as any sixteen-year-old sweatily bringing a Playboy up to the counter of a newsagent's expecting everyone in the room to suddenly point and start screaming like the guy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers will tell you, titties become considerably more satisfying when you have to work for them.

Throw me a frickin' phone

Last week there was an XP on why human beings like zombies so much. Here's a quote.

"Few if any of these petty hatreds are rational. They exist because humans can't function without an enemy, something to hate, and indeed to blame for the injustices we believe we suffer. Zombies are a permanent foe. To our "us" they are eternally "them." No redeeming qualities, no moral ambiguity. I guarantee you, in a zombie apocalypse scenario, relationships within the human strongholds will be considerably more courteous than they are now. We'll reserve our hate for those rotting punks outside. They want to eat us for no good reason. What dicks."

This week's XP was a selection of short Iphone (not iPhone, learn how to capitalise properly) game reviews. Here's a quote.

"The Iphone's virtually unique one-touchscreen no-buttons nature also means that games are basically forced to innovate in their controls and design. A lot of publishers have simply tried to port old 2D games like Sonic the Hedgehog or the first Prince of Persia, but they don't translate well to the format. Innovation is what gets rewarded, because if the download charts are anything to go by, there's absolutely no style of gameplay that's guaranteed to sell well. The top 25 contains shooters, physics puzzlers, platformers and whatever the hell you'd classify that Where's Wally thing as."

This was intended to follow on from last week's Zero Punctuation, which was also about Iphone games.

"I don't have a quote for this one because ZP is a video series, you dolts. Click on these words to watch the video."

I know some of you have been a little disappointed by this coverage, and now you know how I feel when faced with most of the half-arsed triple-A releases in the games industry these days. Sue me, I wanted to fill some time while WoW: Cataclysm is making every other publisher too scared to release anything that could possibly compete with it. And I genuinely think Iphone games and other small-scale indie markets are where a lot of the really interesting, cutting-edge innovation stuff is going on, while the massively advanced graphics engines of mainstream gaming produce little but big piles of indigestible overdesigned slop.

Anyway, in other news, those of you still dubious about my debut novel Mogworld's quality may wish to know that the entire first part of the book is being serialised on ABC.net.au's technology section even as we speak. And if you find yourself enjoying that, you should be aware that most critics agree the rest of the book is even better. Have I mentioned that it would make a perfect Christmas gift?