It's an important topic that I discussed with my RE teacher and a few friends today. Are Jaffa Cakes true biscuits? Technically, yes. The reason they don't have Jaffa Biscuits is because if they did then they would have to pay a biscuit tax. I'm guessing you all think I'm making this up, but both my RE teacher and friends talked of this age old tax that was set upon Bourbons and Digestives. In my opinion, they're cakes, because they aren't crunchy. All biscuits I know of are crunchy, while the Jaffa Cake is softer, with a jelly centre.
However, in 1991 McVities defended the classification of "cake" due to the fact that it's ingredients were similar to one of a cakes. But, if you go into your local ASDA, Morrisons, Walmart, whatever, you'll find Jaffa CAKES in the biscuit aisle, and the fact that they are in the shape of a biscuit, not a cake.
The court favoured McVities argument for it being a cake and not a biscuit, I would've sided with them too. Because biscuits are crumbly, Jaffa Cakes are not.
So, are Jaffa Cakes real cakes?
Yes. Yes they are.
Tuesday, 21 October 2014
Monday, 13 October 2014
Eight Pain In The Arse Xbox Achievements I Have
It's safe to say that I have a passion (addiction) for games. But nothing makes my playing better than having a crazy objective to do while I play. They're completely optional, but add to my ever growing achievements list. Not all of them are fun though, like these ones:
Dead Rising 2 - Zombie Fu 20G
Killed 1,000 Zombies barehanded. Those were some killer moves!
While not the most annoying, it's one of the most time consuming things I have ever done in my entire life. One of the only reasons I did it was for the Shaun of the Dead outfit which is insanely awesome! But to do this achievement, you'll need a lot of spare time. Killing 1,000 zombies with your hands and feet is annoying, especially when your attacks do very little damage and sometimes take up to three hits to kill those obnoxious, undead vegetables.
Call of Duty: World at War - Gunslinger/Hardened War Hero 15G/100G
Assassinated General Amsel with a sidearm
Completed the game on Hardened or Veteran difficulty and won on all fronts
God, I cannot tell you how many attempts these two achievements take, especially the War Hero achievement, The Gunslinger achievement is all about aim, which I'm not very good at. I did manage to pull it off due to the luck however and it sits proudly with EVERY SINGLE OTHER Call of Duty: World at War achievement. All 66 of them. Which means I had to play through the campaign on Veteran to get the War Hero achievement, which is a task of it's own. War Hero literally drove me insane with how difficult it was to pull off and the Gunslinger was just plain annoying.
Halo 3 - Vidmaster Challenge: Annual - 0G
After 9/25/08, completed Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts.
When I first read the description for this achievement, I got a little frightened. The last level of Halo 3, which is called Halo, is one of the toughest missions in the game even on Easy. The Iron skull turns off spawning, which means that you need to rush through to each checkpoint to get your team back, of course you can't seen as though the enemies are tough as nails. Mind you, I did it with a pretty incompetent team and it's the achievement I'm most proud of getting, even though all it gave me was a piece of armour that every single player now owns.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare - Hunting Season - 50G
Vanquish 100 Soldiers, 100 Scientists, 100 Engineers and 100 All-Stars
This was such a grind-a-thon. 400 Kills in all, providing that you ARE playing as the Plants and you ARE on such a good team that you can easily rack up about ten kills a game. This achievement was bloody horrendous to do, I'm terrible at the game and don't like PvZ that much, but for 50G I couldn't resist...and went on to get 795 more gamerscore on the game...
Portal 2 - You Saved Science - 100G
Complete all test chambers in all courses of co-op
Not the hardest achievement, but none the less a pain in the arse. Especially if both people doing the playthrough are incompetent buffoons. For this achievement, you'll need two people who are good at Portal 2 (or have access to the internet so they can look up the walkthrough), enough time, let's say a good five hours or so and of course, internet. It took longer than expected, mainly because my "thinking with portals" ended up with my partner in science dying... a lot.
Quantom of Solace - The Best Player In Service - 15G
Be a top player in an online match.
Doesn't sound difficult at all now does it? Well, what if I told you this:
Nobody ever has and/or will play the online of Quantom of Solace. Not only that, but if you do find a game, then you'll have to be very lucky that you don't find a game full of hardcore players who play private matches and all of that sort. I got lucky, very lucky.
WWE All Stars - The King of Kings - 50G
Defeated the entire WWE All Stars roster as Triple H
This has to be the most time consuming achievement ever. Not only do you have to beat EVERY SINGLE person on the roster, you'll need to unlock them as well. So, hours and hours are put into this, gathering the characters and then beating them all. Time consuming and annoying, because All Stars wasn't the best game.
Dead Rising 2 - Zombie Fu 20G
Killed 1,000 Zombies barehanded. Those were some killer moves!
While not the most annoying, it's one of the most time consuming things I have ever done in my entire life. One of the only reasons I did it was for the Shaun of the Dead outfit which is insanely awesome! But to do this achievement, you'll need a lot of spare time. Killing 1,000 zombies with your hands and feet is annoying, especially when your attacks do very little damage and sometimes take up to three hits to kill those obnoxious, undead vegetables.
Call of Duty: World at War - Gunslinger/Hardened War Hero 15G/100G
Assassinated General Amsel with a sidearm
Completed the game on Hardened or Veteran difficulty and won on all fronts
God, I cannot tell you how many attempts these two achievements take, especially the War Hero achievement, The Gunslinger achievement is all about aim, which I'm not very good at. I did manage to pull it off due to the luck however and it sits proudly with EVERY SINGLE OTHER Call of Duty: World at War achievement. All 66 of them. Which means I had to play through the campaign on Veteran to get the War Hero achievement, which is a task of it's own. War Hero literally drove me insane with how difficult it was to pull off and the Gunslinger was just plain annoying.
Halo 3 - Vidmaster Challenge: Annual - 0G
After 9/25/08, completed Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts.
When I first read the description for this achievement, I got a little frightened. The last level of Halo 3, which is called Halo, is one of the toughest missions in the game even on Easy. The Iron skull turns off spawning, which means that you need to rush through to each checkpoint to get your team back, of course you can't seen as though the enemies are tough as nails. Mind you, I did it with a pretty incompetent team and it's the achievement I'm most proud of getting, even though all it gave me was a piece of armour that every single player now owns.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare - Hunting Season - 50G
Vanquish 100 Soldiers, 100 Scientists, 100 Engineers and 100 All-Stars
This was such a grind-a-thon. 400 Kills in all, providing that you ARE playing as the Plants and you ARE on such a good team that you can easily rack up about ten kills a game. This achievement was bloody horrendous to do, I'm terrible at the game and don't like PvZ that much, but for 50G I couldn't resist...and went on to get 795 more gamerscore on the game...
Portal 2 - You Saved Science - 100G
Complete all test chambers in all courses of co-op
Not the hardest achievement, but none the less a pain in the arse. Especially if both people doing the playthrough are incompetent buffoons. For this achievement, you'll need two people who are good at Portal 2 (or have access to the internet so they can look up the walkthrough), enough time, let's say a good five hours or so and of course, internet. It took longer than expected, mainly because my "thinking with portals" ended up with my partner in science dying... a lot.
Quantom of Solace - The Best Player In Service - 15G
Be a top player in an online match.
Doesn't sound difficult at all now does it? Well, what if I told you this:
Nobody ever has and/or will play the online of Quantom of Solace. Not only that, but if you do find a game, then you'll have to be very lucky that you don't find a game full of hardcore players who play private matches and all of that sort. I got lucky, very lucky.
WWE All Stars - The King of Kings - 50G
Defeated the entire WWE All Stars roster as Triple H
This has to be the most time consuming achievement ever. Not only do you have to beat EVERY SINGLE person on the roster, you'll need to unlock them as well. So, hours and hours are put into this, gathering the characters and then beating them all. Time consuming and annoying, because All Stars wasn't the best game.
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Would the GameCube Have Sold Better With A Mario Launch Title?
The GameCube is, for me, the best video games console of all time. Maybe it's because I grew up with it and was never off it, but one thing is for sure, I prefer it over every other console. But the GameCube didn't sell as well as Nintendo thought it would. This could be for a number of reasons, lack of disc space, the competition with Sony and Microsoft or maybe, just maybe, it was the launch titles.
NES launched with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt.
SNES launched with Super Mario Land, Pilotwings and so on.
N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64.
The GameCube changed things up a bit, three games launched with the system. One being Super Monkey Ball, another being Wave Race: Blue Storm. The final, was Luigi's Mansion. This was the first Nintendo console to launch without a traditional Mario platformer. But why the change? Was it to give the Mean Green Machine the LIMElight (See what I did there? No, oh...)
But would the Nintendo GameCube have sold better with, say, Super Mario Sunshine at launch? In my opinion, no, it wouldn't have. The biggest reason for this was because the Playstation 2 was also released. The original Playstation was critically acclaimed and millions were waiting for the arrival of the next gen console. Also, Microsoft entered the gaming market with it's Xbox, so competing with those two behemoth companies would be pretty difficult, especially with the exclusive games coming onto the Xbox like the new Oddworld. Not to mention the PS1 was an RPG buff, so people were expecting more RPG's for the Playstation 2.
So, in short, the GameCube wouldn't have sold better with a Mario launch title because of lack of space on the discs and other competitors such as Sony dominating the market.
NES launched with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt.
SNES launched with Super Mario Land, Pilotwings and so on.
N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64.
The GameCube changed things up a bit, three games launched with the system. One being Super Monkey Ball, another being Wave Race: Blue Storm. The final, was Luigi's Mansion. This was the first Nintendo console to launch without a traditional Mario platformer. But why the change? Was it to give the Mean Green Machine the LIMElight (See what I did there? No, oh...)
But would the Nintendo GameCube have sold better with, say, Super Mario Sunshine at launch? In my opinion, no, it wouldn't have. The biggest reason for this was because the Playstation 2 was also released. The original Playstation was critically acclaimed and millions were waiting for the arrival of the next gen console. Also, Microsoft entered the gaming market with it's Xbox, so competing with those two behemoth companies would be pretty difficult, especially with the exclusive games coming onto the Xbox like the new Oddworld. Not to mention the PS1 was an RPG buff, so people were expecting more RPG's for the Playstation 2.
So, in short, the GameCube wouldn't have sold better with a Mario launch title because of lack of space on the discs and other competitors such as Sony dominating the market.
Saturday, 6 September 2014
Why Is The Movie Coraline So Disturbing?
Just a quick note:
SPOILER ALERT
I was watching E4 as they had their usual How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory episodes on, then I saw that Coraline was on afterwards. So I thought to myself, "I'm a big movie fan, you could even consider me a movie buff and I haven't seen Coraline before. Let's see what it's like."
My GOD it's disturbing. I like the style of animation, very Nightmare Before Christmas-y and it's lovely and I could go on but you get the idea. The opening scene made me think it was a different movie, I was genuinely freaked out by it, when the doll is getting pulled apart, stuffed and so on. So the movie goes on and she finds the door. The door is basically what I'm calling Limbo, the other side is literally the opposite of everything. Where her mother has time for her and her dad doesn't look like he spilt a bottle of mascara on each eye.
Seems ordinary, apart from everyone's eyes are sown shut and are buttons...
This movie. Makes buttons. Look scary. I feel slightly afraid to put any of my shirts on now, only problem is that's all I have to wear, because I only wear the richest and finest clothes as I'm eating my Lobster on my patio, with a glass of the finest red wine.
But it turns out the mother wants to sow up Coraline's eyes. You get the subtle hints, when the show Coraline see's is over, the mother stands at the door, points to her friend (name escapes me) and points to her mouth, giving her the most grimacing smile, ever. Afterwards, things start getting weird immediately. She sits down at the table and she gets a gift! Hooray! What could it be? Perfume, clothes, buttons-it's buttons. Two black buttons and a needle.
It gets even MORE disturbing when the father is playing the piano, the gloves come out and keep forcing him to face the piano, playing and playing. This film is starting to creep me out, but it can't get any creepi-it turns out everyone has been stuffed by the mother and is being controlled by her. The cat shows this by biting one of the circus mice, which makes the grains fall out of it, turning it into a rat. But, if the rats were stuffed, were the people stuffed as well? Like, the father, was he stuffed? Some poor bloke got killed, emptied, turned inside out and buttoned up to live in this creepy fantasy.
The mother turns into a giant spider, thing and runs after Coraline. That's when I drew the line. Mostly because the face and the ghost children were creeping me the hell out. So I did a bit more searching and this damn movie. It's somehow a PG film. I'm serious, the ghosts in that thing are the creepiest things I've seen, One of them has their mouth permanently hung open and starts FLOATING towards the screen. I can only imagine what the 3D on this movie would have been like if they did put it in 3D.
The movie thinks it's a good idea to keep zooming in on the gho- more creepy stuff follows. Honestly worse than the ghosts. His mouth was stitched up, permanently. Just like The Joker. I don't want to spoil the rest of the movie, mostly because it's still on and I haven't seen the ending yet, but I honestly recommend this over a lot of horror movies today, because this is seriously creepy.
Just, keep away from the cupboards.
SPOILER ALERT
I was watching E4 as they had their usual How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory episodes on, then I saw that Coraline was on afterwards. So I thought to myself, "I'm a big movie fan, you could even consider me a movie buff and I haven't seen Coraline before. Let's see what it's like."
My GOD it's disturbing. I like the style of animation, very Nightmare Before Christmas-y and it's lovely and I could go on but you get the idea. The opening scene made me think it was a different movie, I was genuinely freaked out by it, when the doll is getting pulled apart, stuffed and so on. So the movie goes on and she finds the door. The door is basically what I'm calling Limbo, the other side is literally the opposite of everything. Where her mother has time for her and her dad doesn't look like he spilt a bottle of mascara on each eye.
Seems ordinary, apart from everyone's eyes are sown shut and are buttons...
This movie. Makes buttons. Look scary. I feel slightly afraid to put any of my shirts on now, only problem is that's all I have to wear, because I only wear the richest and finest clothes as I'm eating my Lobster on my patio, with a glass of the finest red wine.
But it turns out the mother wants to sow up Coraline's eyes. You get the subtle hints, when the show Coraline see's is over, the mother stands at the door, points to her friend (name escapes me) and points to her mouth, giving her the most grimacing smile, ever. Afterwards, things start getting weird immediately. She sits down at the table and she gets a gift! Hooray! What could it be? Perfume, clothes, buttons-it's buttons. Two black buttons and a needle.
It gets even MORE disturbing when the father is playing the piano, the gloves come out and keep forcing him to face the piano, playing and playing. This film is starting to creep me out, but it can't get any creepi-it turns out everyone has been stuffed by the mother and is being controlled by her. The cat shows this by biting one of the circus mice, which makes the grains fall out of it, turning it into a rat. But, if the rats were stuffed, were the people stuffed as well? Like, the father, was he stuffed? Some poor bloke got killed, emptied, turned inside out and buttoned up to live in this creepy fantasy.
The mother turns into a giant spider, thing and runs after Coraline. That's when I drew the line. Mostly because the face and the ghost children were creeping me the hell out. So I did a bit more searching and this damn movie. It's somehow a PG film. I'm serious, the ghosts in that thing are the creepiest things I've seen, One of them has their mouth permanently hung open and starts FLOATING towards the screen. I can only imagine what the 3D on this movie would have been like if they did put it in 3D.
The movie thinks it's a good idea to keep zooming in on the gho- more creepy stuff follows. Honestly worse than the ghosts. His mouth was stitched up, permanently. Just like The Joker. I don't want to spoil the rest of the movie, mostly because it's still on and I haven't seen the ending yet, but I honestly recommend this over a lot of horror movies today, because this is seriously creepy.
Just, keep away from the cupboards.
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
Is It Worth Watching: The IT Crowd
The two frequent readers of my blog will probably know I enjoy games, books, movies, music etc...
But, please remember like always.
SPOILER ALERT
I especially like comedy, it's my favourite thing, especially when I actually wanted to become a stand up comedian for a few years. More of my humour is based on sarcasm, much like The IT Crowd.
The IT Crowd takes place in the basement of Reynholm Industries. A business that sells...well, we don't know. The basement is home to the industries IT Technicians Maurice Moss and Roy Trenneman. New employee Jen Barber is made the Relationship Manager of the Tech Support Team after she is hired by Denholm Reynholm.
I should just note that the casting for this is absolutely brilliant. You have Richard Ayoade, who is a geek in reality. Chris O'Dowd, who's sarcasm is some of the finest quality, almost as good as mine. Jen Barber is played by Katherine Parkinson, who is well known for her role in this show, along with Doc Martin and voicing some of the Worms Games. The final main cast member I'd like to talk about is Matt Berry. He plays Douglas Reynholm, son of Denholm. I have to say, Matt Berry's voice is absolutely amazing. I'll leave a link to a video displaying his best voices,
Anyways, I'm not going to spoil anything too major but I will spoil this:
None of the episodes link together, They do make little nods to each other, but the previous episodes never have any consequences. For example, Moss and Roy get arrested, next episode they're acting as if nothing happened. Scrubs however, my favourite show of all time and I adore it dearly, links each episode together seamlessly. I worship Scrubs for doing this but shun other shows like The Big Bang Theory for not linking them together. Don't get me wrong, they have a plot, but it's loosely threaded.
Another thing I don't like about the show is the character Richmond. He seems unnecessary and breaks the flow of the story. It doesn't help that I'm not the biggest fan of Noel Fielding's comedy as I find he just doesn't flow through it as good as others such as Frankie Boyle, Michael McIntyre and Russel Howard.
But, the question remains.
Is it worth watching?
Yes.
Matt Berry's Voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNc0ErvirBE
But, please remember like always.
SPOILER ALERT
I especially like comedy, it's my favourite thing, especially when I actually wanted to become a stand up comedian for a few years. More of my humour is based on sarcasm, much like The IT Crowd.
The IT Crowd takes place in the basement of Reynholm Industries. A business that sells...well, we don't know. The basement is home to the industries IT Technicians Maurice Moss and Roy Trenneman. New employee Jen Barber is made the Relationship Manager of the Tech Support Team after she is hired by Denholm Reynholm.
I should just note that the casting for this is absolutely brilliant. You have Richard Ayoade, who is a geek in reality. Chris O'Dowd, who's sarcasm is some of the finest quality, almost as good as mine. Jen Barber is played by Katherine Parkinson, who is well known for her role in this show, along with Doc Martin and voicing some of the Worms Games. The final main cast member I'd like to talk about is Matt Berry. He plays Douglas Reynholm, son of Denholm. I have to say, Matt Berry's voice is absolutely amazing. I'll leave a link to a video displaying his best voices,
Anyways, I'm not going to spoil anything too major but I will spoil this:
None of the episodes link together, They do make little nods to each other, but the previous episodes never have any consequences. For example, Moss and Roy get arrested, next episode they're acting as if nothing happened. Scrubs however, my favourite show of all time and I adore it dearly, links each episode together seamlessly. I worship Scrubs for doing this but shun other shows like The Big Bang Theory for not linking them together. Don't get me wrong, they have a plot, but it's loosely threaded.
Another thing I don't like about the show is the character Richmond. He seems unnecessary and breaks the flow of the story. It doesn't help that I'm not the biggest fan of Noel Fielding's comedy as I find he just doesn't flow through it as good as others such as Frankie Boyle, Michael McIntyre and Russel Howard.
But, the question remains.
Is it worth watching?
Yes.
Matt Berry's Voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNc0ErvirBE
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Mario Kart 8 DLC?
Well, Nintendo has finally succumb to the first step of becoming EA. Making useless DLC to promote some sort of sporting event that is happening in one country. In this case, they added... Mercedes Karts? Well, we're off with flying colours seeing as though about five people will look at that and say: "Wow, a Mercedes in Mario Kart? Just what I've always wanted!"
It's a ridiculous idea. You have all of these unique, creative cars and you decide the first of many DLC's will be a Mercedes? To be honest, I do think this marks a step for Nintendo. It's the first time they've added DLC from what I can remember and I want to see where they can take it. I'm sure they'll be adding more Karts, hopefully some of the classic maps that weren't featured and maybe some new characters. Of course, you would have to buy a Wii U first, which not many people have done and I'm also guessing that this DLC will not be free. It'll probably cost you roughly 69p, the same amount as a cheap iPad app.
This could be a big break for Nintendo, but it could also break them.
It's a ridiculous idea. You have all of these unique, creative cars and you decide the first of many DLC's will be a Mercedes? To be honest, I do think this marks a step for Nintendo. It's the first time they've added DLC from what I can remember and I want to see where they can take it. I'm sure they'll be adding more Karts, hopefully some of the classic maps that weren't featured and maybe some new characters. Of course, you would have to buy a Wii U first, which not many people have done and I'm also guessing that this DLC will not be free. It'll probably cost you roughly 69p, the same amount as a cheap iPad app.
This could be a big break for Nintendo, but it could also break them.
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
In Memory of Robin Williams
Well, I woke up this morning expecting a nice day, was going to watch some IT Crowd followed by a session of writing my book, but that changed when I looked at Facebook and saw "Rest In Peace Robin Williams, you were taken away too early from us." Obviously after two minutes of being awake I was rather tired and didn't know what to make of the situation so I fired up my laptop, went to Wikipedia and searched for Robin Williams.
Believe it or not he has died. He was found dead in his home and was pronounced dead there.
As soon as the news hit many celebrities such as Simon Pegg, Eddie Izzard, Bill Lawrence and so on took to Twitter to share their grievances. I'm sure a lot of his fans are very upset, including me. Robin Williams shaped a lot of peoples childhoods with movies such as Jumanji, Flubber, Mrs. Doubtfire and Hook. Not only was he an outstanding actor, but he was a superb stand up comedian and amazing person too. The whole intro to Aladin was improvised by Robin Williams, using his creativity to think up the beginning.
Obviously Robin Williams will be missed dearly by his family, friends and fans. Just remember how creative the man was and all the work he did to make us laugh, cry and share our emotions with his work.
"You're only given one little spark of madness You mustn't lose it."
- Robin Williams, July 21 1951 - August 11 2014
Believe it or not he has died. He was found dead in his home and was pronounced dead there.
As soon as the news hit many celebrities such as Simon Pegg, Eddie Izzard, Bill Lawrence and so on took to Twitter to share their grievances. I'm sure a lot of his fans are very upset, including me. Robin Williams shaped a lot of peoples childhoods with movies such as Jumanji, Flubber, Mrs. Doubtfire and Hook. Not only was he an outstanding actor, but he was a superb stand up comedian and amazing person too. The whole intro to Aladin was improvised by Robin Williams, using his creativity to think up the beginning.
Obviously Robin Williams will be missed dearly by his family, friends and fans. Just remember how creative the man was and all the work he did to make us laugh, cry and share our emotions with his work.
"You're only given one little spark of madness You mustn't lose it."
- Robin Williams, July 21 1951 - August 11 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)