Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Site News
A good question, seeing as only one has appeared here, displaying the Eggmen’s manly prowess at making a mockery of how to talk on a podcast. The truth of the matter is, we’ve all been exceptionally busy to quite a number of things and in due course we will be producing more material for you to feast on, like those lovely grizzly bears do on dead people.
For now though, take heart. We are still alive and we go great with Bacon on Toast.
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November 20th, 2008
Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
Now some of you people may have seen a certain article on Gamers With jobs written by myself about FarCry 2 and the turmoil that came with it about it being remarkably close to Grand Theft Auto in many respects. But as you will have probably have guessed that was not the first version of the article. It took 4 rewrites to make it to that point, but something did stir at the back of my head.
It occurred to me that people may wonder what the first iteration of the epic perspectives piece was like and how far removed it was from the final version. Hence for your reading disdain, here was the original piece.
In a change of venue from the country manor, it was time to escape the issues of modern society for a brief time and embrace the shores of a distant land.
Yes, it’s been a fun filled weekend in Africa.
(Normally this is where the music stops in a comical fashion when given news of a “What the f**k?” nature)
Ok so what if it was a budget experience to an armpit of the world where warlords rule with an iron gun, disease rages through the deserts along with fires the likes of which we never see here in broken Britain. Villagers live in fear, and there is no working understanding of the offside rule found in that strange game where grown men fall down after someone looks at him funny.
Truly, it’s only just worse than living in Grimsby.
But what other place would you have fun blowing up rebel faction guard posts, assonating various rogue agents and running over the odd zebra who happened across the road?
Far Cry 2 actually.
Basically the weekend was devoted to driving around the wilderness of an unknown oil-less country (I say oil-less as no-one from the outside world appears to be giving a s**t), acquiring old guns, shooting bad guys, getting missions, driving some more, shooting. Missions, Shooting, driving, rinse and repeat and in a rare spectacularly bizarre twist, Far Cry 2 actually reminds me more of a different game, one of which most people cry out in terror over.
Grand Theft Auto.
What we have here is GTA, given a new haircut, a suitably horrible disease and then having it’s aspect changed to first person shooter. It just seems to cry out this so much that you expect the Yakuza to turn up, guns blazing all the while shouting “Die Yankee bastard man!”
Stop crying, it’s not as bad as that.
But wait, hang on a second. Does that mean you get to be the lone guy as in all GTA games, working his way up to rule them all while swearing huge amounts? Well, sort of.
This time it’s to kill a naughty man called the Jackal, an arms dealer who is more than happy with helping various countries fall down the toilet using his stock of hot dogs, grenades and those dolls with the realistic…err never mind.
Your first glimpse onto the arena is a lengthy taxi ride from the airport, where you see a wonderfully vibrant safari-park world turning upside down, people starting to do what they want, the feeling of not being safe, and then all of a sudden it appears you have either a bad case of man flu or Bangalore belly and pass out. It’s all played out for you with quite dramatic flare.
In true fashion, it all goes wrong, the aforementioned naughty man knows who you are and you are left fighting for your life when someone for some reason helps you and provided you give your services, you will learn more about your Dr. Evil villain and perhaps you get your change to get him after all…
So that’s the story out the way, let’s get to the malaria of the matter.
After the intro to all the relevant parts you will need to make your mark on the African world, which involves some auto repair and rescuing a buddy, you are cast out. It’s all up to you how to proceed if you so wish, and you have no restrictions in where you can go. But in terms of getting anywhere, that just won’t do, so man the f**k up, face up to what you have to do, and do the f**king missions!
The missions come from a bunch of different people who seem to have the unique ability to talk endlessly at 100 miles an hour with coming out for air, just like a Taiwanese prostitute except she would be doing something else more pleasant at 100 miles an hour.
Lo and behold they all involve huge amounts of violence killing lots of baddies or blowing up tracks or blowing up baddies with tracks, hell I’d be amazed if that wasn’t there at some point.
In the meantime a load of Africans seem to get jolly upset at you almost immediately and therefore take it upon themselves to kill you onsite everywhere except for a bar (I would prefer if it was Cheers with a bloody stained Norm but we can’t have everything) and the DMZ zones where if you start firing, the cease fire keepers all turn their guns on you and it’s a race to the finish line.
And you will do a hell of a lot of driving. That is no understatement, you will drive across the country and back again, and then back out to where you’ve just been. The missions take you all over the place, perhaps just to make sure you do see all the huge countryside Ubisoft has built for you. If it wasn’t for the GPS built into all cars and that handheld version you have on your person, you would never find anything.
One question, why in a country where the law has gone out the window, does no-one steal the one technology known as GPS which is immensely valuable?
Never mind that, because everywhere you go, there are at least several outposts between you and your objective all firing, there are random patrols with guns trained at you and you just can’t help but wonder if these people weren’t hugged enough as children for them to turn away from that award-winning career at McDonalds for a life of tyranny and driving around a lot. And if they aren’t driving but you are, guess what? They get in their brightly coloured clown cars with mounted machine guns and chase after you.
So the game already begins stacking things against you with, add to the fact that you have Malaria which seems to rear its ugly health destroying head when you least expect it, making the screen go all Andy Warhol on you and without magic pills which make it go away for a while, you fall to the ground.
So after all that, are you thinking “This doesn’t sound like fun at all?”
Well you’d be wrong for thinking that. This game basically through the missions gives you nothing but the opportunity to shoot people and if that is all you are after, then you’re in heaven. This amount of carnage with blowing up the baddies, setting them on fire, running them over, for some reason it’s a one trick pony and yet I’ve not been able to stop. All the hallmarks of digital crack cocaine.
The fact you have to keep moving and can never truly know if the area is secure or not, is one which on most levels works very well indeed. You never seem to run out of ammo as you can pick up their weapons, but if that is fraught with issues, the crappier looking the gun, the prone it may be to getting jammed, which during a massive fire fight is the last thing you want and adds an element of “Oh s**t” to an already messed up situation.
If you want shiny new weapons, go and see your local friendly arms dealer, which seems kind of bizarre considering it’s an arms dealer which started this mess in the first place but there we are. Do some blowing up stuff for him every once in a while and you get better weapons to order. Note you can order better weapons, it appears his generosity only extends to allowing you to buy more guns as opposed to giving you the odd weapon for risking your life. Bastard.
The game is beautiful, it really is. That cannot go without saying, just like the original, it’s a game you want to take home to your parents, making them proud you managed to score a hot one without needing pills in the drinks. It may not have been done by Crytek, but that seems to be out the window here. They have some remarkable work on the vistas, the lighting, the way you can cut down trees with gunfire, and even the driving car part isn’t overly annoying to the point you can’t steer the damn thing and would be better off waiting for the bus (Yes Crysis, I’m looking at you).
Sound is excellent, the music adds to the atmosphere, and the only thing which lets it all down is some bad voice over work, which is surprising as they actually start very well. Really, I know some South Africans and they do not talk like they do in Far Cry 2. They breathe for a start.
The Multiplayer option is there for you to catch diamonds, death match and various other things, and so far the experience has been painful. Unless you are fantastic at first person shooters, don’t try as for some reason, perhaps the woeful net connection here at the country club is to blame or perhaps I’m just that bad, but I couldn’t hit for any naughty word you can think of.
But that may not mean a thing, after all just going round an immense landscape blowing and shooting things up, are you going to feel like it was worth the money? After all you pay good money with the promise of so much, and does the second Far Cry deliver above what was set before?
Well for one, you have a chance of progressing. They seem to have held back on the impossible situations for this game, the game is far less story driven, you get all the bodies you want and there aren’t any mutants. Nice. But it’s a massive one trick pony, the comparison to GTA cannot be shaken off and I can really see the time coming when you put it down and never pick it back up. They do change some things every time you start a new game but at it’s core, it’s there for you to shoot s**t in Africa.
It’s actually good, but I have a suspicion it will be forgotten quickly. Just as GTA4 seems to have been.
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November 20th, 2008
Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Podcast
How it begins.... [64:26m]:
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And so it begins, Episode 1 of the epic adventures into gaming and body parts beyond with your hard-shelled hosts. (Yes the puns get worse.)
Enjoy the first hour from the Eggmen, with more to come as and when we are clever enough to come up with epic award winning content which win us the Nobel Peace Prize and showers of ladies make themselves available at our supreme eggyness.
Any comments, please leave them here or email us at: podcast@eggmen.co.uk
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October 21st, 2008
Posted by James | Filed under Opinion
Oh joy! I’ve just discovered (via the network of EGGmen’s top secret spies) that Far Cry 2 will come with the much-loved and vaunted ‘limited installations‘ schtick that every publisher and their dogs are doing.
Frankly i’m fed up with it. Barring all the “pirates don’t put up with this” “it’s punishing the legitimate customer” crap (which is true) it’s insulting that none of the companies involved treat their customers with any respect. Every single time there is a game with limited installations/activations released the only way of finding out is via a leaked document or a developer accidentally spills the beans - it’s never through official channels. This information should be right up there next to the purchase along with the system requirements and the reason it’s not is because publishers don’t want to jeopardize their sales. It’s preying on people’s lack of knowledge because i know for a fact that a portion of the great (unwashed 
) public that buys the majority of videogames would not shell out for a full price game that was limited in this way.
There is, however, the perfect way to get back at these publishers. Unfortunately it doesn’t involve PC gaming You can also rent PC games though not from shops which is where this trouble is centred. Nor does it involve piracy or not playing games. No, the best way to get at these company’s pockets and still be able to game
is two-fold:
1. Play old games (yeah this is kinda obvious - Ed)
2. Rent console games (sucks if you don’t have a console - Ed) - or use a download service such as metaboli.
Okay, so it’s not a perfect solution but it isn’t as unpalatable as saying, “Don’t buy any games… therefore don’t play any new games”. However from places like Tesco i can rent games each month for less than £10. Coupled with the fact that most games are now 10 hours or less and cost upwards of £25 when new (for PC and definitely consoles!) then you end up with great value for money and you deprive the publishers of some of that revenue that they want. However, if people do this (and it would take a large portion of people for it to work) each and every time a game comes out with limited installs people would have to write to the publisher involved and tell them that instead of buying the game they switched to a console rental - making sure to state that you would otherwise have bought the game if not for the limited installs.
I believe that this is the only way to make the publishers respect their customers and change their ways back to something that is more palatable.
Tags: DRM
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October 15th, 2008
Posted by James | Filed under Random Crap
We seem to be taking our time at getting the site off the ground
So i thought i’d post up something to start the inevitable stream of content…. Hopefully there’ll be something akin to this once or twice a week from myself. Hopefully :/
I’m a dirty game-buying whore, a corporate shill of the highest degree and capitalist slave to houses ‘publisher’. This is who I am and this is my confession…
It all started in the mid eighties when I acquired a Nintendo Entertainment System, no… actually that’s a lie. You see when I was growing up, although i did play a lot of games on consoles ranging from a NES to a Sega Gamegear along with rudimentary PC and Commodore releases, I was never really into games: I was a player but not a gamer. Perhaps these days I’d be labelled ‘causal’ due to my maximum of around 4 or five titles owned per console over the period until 1995 and the fact that I did not retain my previous console when attaining the next. I did not buy gaming magazines nor did I talk with my friends about games; we did not devise speed runs or tactics to defeat foes innumerable and I missed out on the N64 generation of consoles until I bought myself a PS1 in 1999. The only game I remember completing in that 10+ year span was Megaman 2 and for good reason that memory will live with me until the day I die.
No, I became what I am today through my lust for technology. It was my mum who introduced the PC into our lives for pure reasons and my dad who corrupted its intent in a strange reversal of the stereotypical garden of eden tropes. The PC was for university work but quickly descended into depravity and sin once it had been introduced to the (as yet unnamed) ‘warez’ scene. Once self aware, no longer could it hide its nakedness and at once sought ways to cleanse itself and return to the garden. If anyone remembers those dark days before the glories of more modern OSes you too may recall having to wipe your system weekly, sometimes more often, to start afresh after mistakes were made when tinkering. I never partook in this ritual of death and renewal until my dad, on a trip to visit family in Canada, brought back the game that would start it all: Diablo.
On receiving the box (so large back then, with unnecessary flaps and plastic) I gazed longingly at the beautiful graphics on its rear then carefully placed the CD into the tray on our computer and watched as nothing happened. My, er I mean ‘our’, PC back then was a 486 DX2 (that was the extent of my knowledge) and it would not, even with the turbo button firmly depressed, run this game that i needed to experience. So I did what every young man must do - go and pester the adult with whom this fault must surely lie. My dad, a canny sort, immediately diagnosed the problem: an incurable disease known as obsolescence - and apologised for buying a game which was as good to me as a coaster… then proceeded to promise an upgrade ’someday’. I had realised at an early age that this day was not on any human calendar and duely returned to replace the CD within its jeweled case and instead experience the game via the proxy of the manual.
Several months later while at a computer fair with my dad we spotted a deal on a pentium 200 MHz CPU with matching motherboard. I saw then the lust that lay in my dad’s eyes - he saw the ’shiny’ and the phrase ‘It takes one to know one’ held true in this situation: i wanted it too. We conspired ‘without’ the knowledge of my mum to purchase these items there and then on the pretense that they would constitute parts of my birthday and christmas presents and I signed my soul right there on the dotted line. There was no turning back now.
Upon returning home the mammoth task of installing and configuring these bits of technology along with their brother and sister components began and several hours, possibly a fresh OS install later, ‘the beast’ was finished. I played my game, I played many more and when we were unable to play a new game we would venture forth and bring back the sustenance that fed our desires.
The story doesn’t end there, as there was a brief period in my early university days when I did not participate in the hunt at all, but sooner or later my desires took root and I returned to the pursuit of technology, of gaming - the two were synonymous.
As technology has improved the pursuit of that technology has, to a degree, separated itself from the pursuit of lifestyles as it has become integrated into the mainstream. Ease of use has all but killed the will to upgrade your PC along with your games even though the cost of doing so has decreased steadily and one result is increased console use. The emphasis lies more on the throughput of games rather than the throughput of technology to play games and I have been complicit in this transfer of desires (in accordance with subsection 3 paragraph 4a). I still upgrade my PC - though that timescale is akin to the console lifecycles - however the number of games I buy has increased exponentially. Once upon a time I would have a couple of games to satisfy me for years. Now I don’t have enough time to play all the games I purchase - let alone each through once.
I am consumer incarnate - limited only by my means. What have I become? What have I lost?
Tags: Introduction
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October 9th, 2008
Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Site News
As you can see, some changes have taken place on the website, including the look of the snazzy new logo type background thing that shows us, for what we really are, people with eggs for heads, though Phil’s head is multi-coloured, which is kind of unfair but there we are, perhaps that shows he is the more creative of us all.
Further updates are to follow, including the very first podcast released on the internet for you all to enjoy, some posts about some of the gaming news out there right now, and of course, some place to park yourself while we destroy the world with our death ray….err…I mean, play with fluffy kittens.
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October 4th, 2008
Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Site News
Welcome to the world of tomorrow, or at least a website catering for the gaming public in Europe, expect some designs and extra bits and bobs to be put on at some point by the team.
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August 5th, 2008
