It’s a terrifying and unfortunate situation for all concerned, and the senseless spate of violence really needs to stop.

But what really turns my jizz sour is a report in London’s very own Evening Standard newspaper quoting a police constable who blames Grand Theft Auto for the violence.

Here’s the knee-jerk diatribe:

The source called the perpetrators, “Kids out of control.” and continued, “When I was young it was all Pac-Man and board games. Now they’re playing Grand Theft Auto and want to live it for themselves.”

Utter horseshit.

Reality:

Fantasy:

Reality:

Fantasy:

Reality:

Fantasy:

I’ve been woken up at 5am by the incessant squawking of seagulls. Inconsiderate bastards…

I will refrain from doing one of those utterly retarded status updates I see all too often on Facebook that typically read:

“ugh it’s 5am, why am I still up? LOL”

Or if they’re a member of the Twitterati:

“ugh it’s 5am, why am I still up? #FML #JustinBieber”

Well, my foolish friend, you’re still up and awake because you’re POSTING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS!

Needless to say, I hate anything of wings and flight right now.

Goodnight Internet.

Behold! The face of someone who thinks we give a shit...

OK, so I was only just introduced to the phenomenon that is the Crazy Cat Lady meme on YouTube today.

It’s basically a dating video taken by a girl who really likes cats. “There’s nothing wrong with that?” you might say, but hold on a minute bucko…

…she really, really, REALLY likes cats.

I mean, try to imagine the kind of obsessed lunatic that collects every piss they ever had in glass jars and stows them in their house, or one of those assholes who still believes that Elvis is still alive and is living fat on a diet of burgers and smoothies made of blended sequin spandex.

The video starts off innocently enough, with the girl in question talking about her hobbies and how much she loves cats then, well just watch…

Christ…

Thanks to my mates for bringing this to my attention.

So, after a year of this blog lying dormant, I’ve decided to turn it into something therapeutic, namely a place for me to talk about non-gaming stuff and things than pique my interest outside the games industry.

Let’s see how this goes…

Many people have conflicting ideas about how the world will end, but I’ll wager that destruction by pixels wasn’t one of them…until now. This video show New York under attack from a slew of classic 8-bit characters thanks to some truly stunning special effects.

Everyone shows up to wreak havoc on the world; Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, the Space Invaders, Tetriminoes and Frogger. Created by Patrick Jean of One More Production, a Paris-based special effect studio, this is sure to become a massive hit on YouTube and similar site.

Well played guys, this is nothing short of amazing. Check it out below the cut

Now then, this is a controversial one isn’t it? You don’t stick the tag-line ‘Defining Online Warfare’ on your cover art unless you are baying for the blood of Modern Warfare 2. Developer DICE has done just that and, sly digs at Infinity Ward’s franchise aside, there are many factors here that elevate Bad Company 2 above its competitor, both on and offline.

While the first Bad Company introduced us to some truly likeable lead characters, brimming with personality and smatterings of humour, the campaign perhaps felt a tad overlong, with repetitive missions and massive stages full of little more than identikit houses and trees. The scale was impressive, but maps felt under populated and lacking points of interest. Here, the developer has opted for a much shorter six to eight hour campaign with a diverse range of missions, complete with thrilling set pieces.

Where the first game saw the members of Bad Company wading knee deep in mercenaries across rural Russia, the sequel is a thrilling globetrotting experience, sending you to the dense jungles of Bolivia, the lethal cold of the Andes and more, culminating in an action packed finale in a Columbia dock yard. Once again the villain is a maniacal Russian, this time developing a devastating new EMP weapon capable of knocking out the entire U.S. military defence and power grid, paving the way for a red invasion. Sound familiar? While it more than borrows from Modern Warfare 2’s big book of plot devices, it does so with a cool dry wit that provides many laughs, offset by the odd bit of drama.

The characters may be cliché, such as good mannered geek Sweetwater and the Danny Glover-inspired ‘I’ve got one day to retirement’ Sergeant Redford, but they are great leads. This is most evident when you simply stand still and listen in on their conversations. At one point I jumped out of a boat after zooming down a jungle river to avoid sniper fire, only to be greeted by a hilarious conversation about which of the two Predator movies was the best. Well and truly inspired stuff. It just sounds like actors are having a ball too, playing off one another and acting like real people do.

Once the campaign is finished with, online is the real meat of the package, offering some truly enormous maps that can be played over a variety of game modes. Players can choose one of four classes; Medic, Recon, Engineer and Assault. Each of these is pretty self-explanatory, coming complete with dedicated weapon, equipment and gadget unlocks. Gaining experience through battles is more than a case of killing enemies and winning matches. Take the medic class for example; players have the ability to drop medi-packs for team mates to use at will and can also revive fallen comrades by jolting them back to life with a defibrillator.

The EXP rewards for using these unique abilities are generous and they really do encourage team work.  Assault class players can drop ammo refills, Recon snipers can spot enemies using motion mines and Engineers can repair damaged vehicles. At first I thought players would use the selfish ‘every man for himself’ tactic you see so often in Modern Warfare 2, but I was happy to be proved wrong. Everyone really does band together and support each other, which is incredibly refreshing to see.

Rush is perhaps the best game mode of the bunch, pitting teams of 32 against each other in a battle to destroy or defend com stations. If you’re a Call of Duty player, think Sabotage and you’re on the right track. In this mode maps start off small with teams spawning on either side of the area. However, once the first pair of com stations have been destroyed, the map expands greatly, forcing the defenders to fall back to protect another set of stations. This happens three times until the fourth and final push. The attackers get 64 respawns to destroy each set of stations, if the defenders manage to hold out they win the battle. It’s online warfare on a grand scale, complete with attack choppers, controllable UAVs and hulking tanks.

The best part is that it’s so painfully well balanced that you won’t find knife or akimbo shotgun spammers here. In fact, shotguns are classed as primary weapons here so the choice between playing as a ranged or close quarter troop is pivotal. Since launch there have been complaints that too many players snipe due to how vast the maps are, but quite frankly, snipers are just as vulnerable to attack as any other class. These complainers clearly just need to get better at the game, sorry to be so brutal if you fall into that category but it’s true.

The icing on the whole shrapnel-filled cake is the return of the magnificent Frostbite engine that produces some stunning environmental destruction effects. If someone’s camping in a building, simply demolish it with them still inside. Also, bullets can penetrate most surfaces, meaning camping is rarely an issue. Metallic structures twist and contort, brick walls topple and trees collapse, crushing flimsy objects under their weight. It adds a real punch to the action that Modern Warfare simply cannot match.

Once again, I’m a massive fan of Modern Warfare 2, having shelled out the frankly disgusting 1200MS points for the Stimulus map pack at launch, but I prefer the team work element of Bad Company 2. With a packed schedule of forthcoming DLC and superb servers, DICE and EA have finally brought their A-game to the FPS table. Your move Infinity Ward.

Now see, this is exactly why the internet was made – to collect the greatest quotes ever uttered by Austrian Oak Arnold Schwarzenegger and present them in one hilarious ten minute video on YouTube.

You can see the video by clicking here, be warned! It’s hilarious

Created by YouTube user hh1edits this is a bumper compendium of cheese, delivering lines from films such as Raw Deal, Conan, Terminator 1 & 2, End of Days, Kindergarten Cop, Jingle all the Way, Twins, Red Sonja, Last Action Hero, Commando, Predator, The 6th Day, Collatoral Damage, True Lies and the absolute shit-bomb that was Junior.

All of the greats are in there, including some of my personal favourites from Last Action Hero (hey, it’s a damn funny film if you take it with a dead sea’s worth of salt)

Take this nugget for example, where Arnie depicts Shakespeare’s Hamlet in suitably violent style:

Genius.

The full video can be found below, be sure to leave hh1edits a nice comment for his superb work. 

It’s no secret that I’m a raging No More Heroes fan. It’s one of the few reasons why I still own a Wii. Sorry Miyamoto, I know your intentions were pure but I’m finding less and less to love about the console these days.

With a concrete release date of May 28 in the UK, the second game in the series, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is set to give my console a second wind. If American and import reviews are to be believed, the game is something very special indeed, upping the ludicrous, playful nature of the original while offering completely uncut blood and gore this time around.

But hold the presses! In a video interview with The Guardian series creator and head of developer Grasshopper Manufacture Suda51 confirmed that a third game in the series is already being planned.

The creator of PS2 and DS point and click adventure Flower, Sun and Rain and the fiendishly dark Killer7, Suda 51 had this to say about where his inspiration comes from:

“With No More Heroes 1, the idea came when I was literally sitting on the toilet. It was the result of trying to empty my bowels, if you like. With No More Heroes 2, I tried to get rid of whatever was left in my bowels, and luckily it happened. What we are hoping to do now with No More Heroes 3 is probably to digest everything we eat, and then purge absolutely everything in our guts, just like diarrhoea.”

Lovely. Quick, get this guy some harsh laxatives so we can play No More Heroes 3 quicker!

Well a very good morning to you all. Following on from my second Streets of Rage tribute week, The Week of Rage:Stage 2, I can now reveal that The Cookbook will be moving in a few weeks to a proper domain, a flashy new website and will now feature content from other writers. It will still be very much a personal blog, updated whenever myself or my friends have something interesting to say. It looks like it could be a professional gaming site, but rest assured, it’s still a personal blog.

On there we will have reviews of new and retro titles, industry news and gossip as well as a wide range of digital media, tech, gadget, music and movie articles. Just whatever takes the fancy of myself or the other writers really.

So once the new site is open I will redirect from this page so you know where to go.

Thanks again,

Dave

Well that’s it, yet another Week of Rage tribute done and dusted. Will I do a third one? Well that depends on how much more content I can find to write about. It’s encouraging to see the Streets of Rage fan community growing over time, so who knows? Perhaps the devoted players will give me more than enough to write about in future.

The reaction to my tribute and Matthew Drury’s Streets of Rage 4 petition has been a real eye-opener. Some of my regular readers and friends signed the petition, letting their nostalgia run riot. Others, decided not to sign it, simply for fear that SEGA would ruin the franchise like it has sadly done to other greats like Golden Axe and Shinobi. It’s fair enough. After all, would you be happy knowing you fuelled the downfall of something you held so dear?

Absolutely heartbreaking.

I remain hopefully optimistic however. The new screens for Sonic the Hedgehog 4 released today are a total hark back to the roots of the series. Even though a new Streets of Rage is miles off SEGAs radar right now, maybe this game is indicative of other classic franchises getting the same treatment? Maybe we’ll see Toe Jam and Earl 4 with Xbox Live capabilities, a new Ecco the Dolphin or hell, even the return of Alex Kidd?

Downloadable content market places such as Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and Virtual Console have done so much for retro gaming. They are a low-cost, low-risk outlet for studios to break new ground and roll the dice with anything other than a ‘safe’ sell. Just look at Capcom’s Mega Man 9 and 10 sequels. Released as a digital download, the games were never going to make the developer a massive profit, but who cares? It didn’t cost them much to make or market it using Xbox Live Arcade, but in the end, the fan service earned them a lot fo love from gamers.

Pure, unfiltered fan service, the way it should be done

With that in mind I write, just in case, by the smallest miracle that someone from SEGA ever visits my blog – Please SEGA, do the same for us and make a new Streets of Rage in the same style as the old titles. You have nothing to lose after the way you destroyed Golden Axe, Altered Beast and Shinobi. If anything, you will only gain credibility from the gamers that helped fund your early, less stable years. In that regard, you owe us, just as much as we owe you for keeping us entertained for so long.

Thanks again readers, hopefully I’ll see you here again for Week of Rage: Stage 3 if it ever comes around.

Many thanks to all of the contributors who help keep the spirit of Streets of Rage alive today: Yuzoboy, Sidd the Kidd, Gil Costa, Bobi and Rosen, Roel Mastbergen, Bomberlink, Red Rum, the team at OverClocked ReMix,  and last but by no means least, thanks to the tireless efforts of Matthew Drury, you rule man!

All the best,

Dave – Streets of Rage fan since 1991