How's that for a delay?! Best of Chatterbox has really surpassed itself this time. Forgive us, it's been something like two months since our last confession, but we're back again, this time with a new editor - step into the sickly limelight HumofEvil! He has produced something of a 'boutique' Best of this week; it's quick, it's simple and it starts with Heavy Rain. What could possibly go wrong?
Heavy Rain
This week saw the first of a flood of comments about the French murder mystery masterpiece, pretty much all complimentary but leading swiftly into spoiler blog. Massive chunks of bold SPOILER text soon filled the place.
It would seem not everyone was impressed by the game's unique approach to introductory pacing, however. Newbie idobsyn had this to say: "Building myself up to play Heavy Rain again tonight. The opening was so rank I'm fighting against simply letting it rot while I up the headshots on my SPAS-12."
We're hoping he's talking about a game.
End of the PS3 days
By around 9AM Monday it was clear something was up in the land of PS3. This day will go down in infamy as, 'the day PS3s couldn't work out when a leap year was and threw a wobbler'. Or maybe they will something more snappy. Whatever, rabid Sony fans across the globe got in a huge upset about it and demanded blood (or at least a free game!). The Blog was of course level headed about the situation and swiftly realised we could just not use the PS3 for a day! Gettingnervous had this to say:
"PS3 being broken by the calender,
Makes a change from the machine overheating i suppose.
Im going to buy me a Xbox. I will call it Clive.
We will have xbot babies called Tristan and Shaniqwa.
He will then leave me for an iPod"
Luckily by Tuesday morning usual service was resumed and the blog sighed a breath of collective relief. All except OfficePest that is: "My name is OfficePest and I've lost my Katamari Forever trophies." Bad luck!
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII being almost upon us brought a few JPRG virgins out of the woodwork looking for a description of what the FF series is all about. Killerbee stepped in with a graceful synopsis of the series:
"Basically, the core game ingredients are: lots of dialogue; awesome pre-rendered cutscenes; a 'saving the world' plot; menu-driven turn-based combat (or sometimes not so turn-based and more against the clock); a spikey-haired protagonist; a bloke called Cid and giant chickens (aka 'Chocobos')."
(Actually, I think that's a direct quote from Hironobu Sakaguchi - Keef)
Not Safe For Work Blog
Large portions of this week's blog were taken up with things best not repeated. Leading to this inspired (but sadly impossible!) suggestion from onedaveofmany: "Maybe you could offer up a 'worst-of' this week? There's been a few offerings served up today..." Oh how much easier life would have been if that could be done! (It can't - Keef)
Above and beyond the call of duty....
Discussion was given to numbers of hours spend playing a single game, with some stunning results. The hall of fame (or maybe shame) included:
Simian - 600 hours in four months on WoW
OfficePest - 524 hours on Warhawk
Matt 123 - 457 hours on Battlefield 2
Take a bow chaps!
Notable Quotes
"Got in on Friday night after a few too many beers and decided to have my first try at Demon's Souls, this was a mistake. Ran along for a bit, chopped some soldiers down, found a glowing hole in the ground, jumped in, died. Start back at the beginning of the level, kill soldiers, get back to hole, forget it's a pit of death, jumped in, died. Get myself back to the hole, remember this time it's a pit of death although still manage to fall in and die. Other highlights included:
* Find some big dude with a club, get whacked, died
* Come across red eyed knight, get whacked, died.
I eventually managed to fall asleep while playing, must remember to not play games while very drunk....."
Matt123 learns the hard way that Demon's Souls is not to be trifled with.
"Eskimo is a subset of Grime, not Goth. Anyone who's been to the Fridge in Brixton will tell you that."
Smellavision submits his application for tea boy at NME.
"What's the point of a vampire if it isn't a bloodsucking but ultimately urbane creature! And sparkly skin!? This isn't an episode of happy little elves go to Transylvania! Even Dead and Loving It had better vampires in than the new breed of crap being churned out to appease the Emo generation."
Simian. Absolutely not a Twilight fan.
Returning old faces
Riffmagus
Elquesodiablo
Welcome new faces
PipSickness
Marie2490
Tanglewood1420
Games
Borderlands
Darksiders & God of War 3 demos
Heavy Rain
Demon's Souls
Mass Effect 2
MW2
Films
The Dark Knight (the good old 'is Health Ledger the best joker' blog reared its ugly head again)
Akira
Brokeback Mountain
Music
Dubstep
