Games that’d better as good or better than LA Noire

If you read this you will know I am not the biggest fan of L.A. Noire.  I’ve still not finished it – not because it’s difficult, it isn’t when all you do is press X, but because it is painfully dull and repetitive.

So I was chatting to Moff on Facebook and I thought I could come up with ideas for games that’d be as good or better than LA Noire.  So here goes.

Social Worker

This would be an adventure game where you work your way through the ranks or departments of Social Care – much like you do the police force in LA Noire – starting off with older people, moving on to working with children and also including people with learning disabilities or mental health problems.  You can play as a male or female and earn XP points for working over time and closing cases.

You could start off as a student social worker and learn the ropes as you move up the ranks before going into the full blown thrilling world of full on social work.

As rewards for good assessments and helping people you could earn costumes, from woolly jumpers, casual blazers, half-mast jeans and hush puppies.  You could would be able to drive to each visit you have to carry out and if you get bored of driving your Ford KA you could upgrade to VW Beetle and eventually get yourself a 4×4 to roam around the county meeting people.

Of course social work isn’t a walk in the park and sometimes you’d come into contact with difficult and challenging cases, but if you keeping pressing X you will get to the bottom of things without too much trouble.  Although beware of the dreaded ‘Media Challenge’.  If you do a bad job on a case and it gets reported to the press or your local MP you’ll have to jump in your car and drive away as fast of you can to avoid the evil reporters or even national news (if you really fucked up).

Other side games could include ‘Making the drinks’ when you have to go and make drinks for everyone in the office and get the right drinks in the right cups or you’ll fall foul of ‘Office banter’ and lose XP.

Football Hooligans MMORPG

The MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game – like what Warcraft is.  However in this game instead of fighting orcs, elves and smiting wizards you’d charge around England getting into skirmishes with other football hooligans.

You’d start off by designing your avatar.  First you would select your class, there are three classes ‘Ninja’, ‘Guvnor’ and ‘Casual’.  As a ‘Ninja class’ character you would be a young hooligan causing chaos on the streets whilst in your tracksuit and hoodie.  Whilst the Ninja benefits from added mystery -  being able to hide their identity – they fight best when in groups of fellow Ninjas.

The ‘Guvnor’ class is your classic hard man.  The Guvnor comes complete with skinhead which may seem restrictive but the benefit is an extremely thick skull, protecting a small brain meaning that you can withstand more fierce blows to the head.  As well as this the Guvnor can cast ‘Intimidation’ spells which when used your character will shout random racist views and sing songs to opposing hooligans and make them weaker when going into battle.

The ‘Casual’ is a hooligan whose main benefit comes in that he will fight with anyone and also has greater ability sniff out weaponary – suchs as broken bottles, shanks or traffic cones.  The Casual also has exclusive access to an extensive wardrobe of Lacoste polo shirt, Stone Island jackets and white trainers.

Once you’ve chosen your class you select your allegiance by picking your ‘faction’ – essentially which team you will support and therefore the crew you will fight with.  Allegiances can change if you’re a fair-weather fan and fancy ditching the Hollywood Meerkats in favour of the Golders Green Geese.

In the game you will tour England fighting opposing factions on game days, in the streets and outside the ground.  You can build your strength by drinking beer on the coach trip to the fight and heal yourself during fights by buying pies and drinking more.

Of course you must always watch out for the police who will come charging in with batons to control you – the last thing you want is to get a night in the cells and lose lots of XP.

As well as the standard fight scenarios there will be major game events that occur when international matches take place at Wembley.  On these events all players of all hooligan factions team up to take on the visiting foreign fans.

The first expansion pack for the game would be : European Tour

In this expansion of the game you and your faction would support your team around Europe in the continental competitions, but more importantly get the chance to lock horns with some of the fierce European factions such as the Bilbao Bulls and the Warsaw Whackos.  There would also be a new class ‘the Ultra’ allowing you the opportunity to play as an Italian hooligan giving you unlimited access to flares and knives.

Interior Designer

In this game you’d play as an Interior Designer who renovates homes, just like on the telly.  You would work your way from small renovations of flats or small houses up to earning enough money to buy dilapidated properties and do them up for a profit, before finally becoming so successful you would do the interior design on major projects.

The more successful you become the more money you earn and the more XP you gain.  More XP allows access to more extravagant ideas such as water features, fancy paints or wallpapers and patterns.  The main aim of the game is to quote a price for the design project to your customer but take forever in doing the renovation and overspending.  Of course a key tactic is in how you negotiate and speak to your customers, rub them up the wrong way and they might not pay up but if you keep them sweet they’ll pay more and more until you’ve rinsed them dry.

5 things more interesting to watch than the royal wedding

24 million people in the UK alone watched the Royal Wedding, I was not one of them – save for 10 minutes for fag breaks from the IPL when I couldn’t avoid it being on the TV.  Here’s a list of five things that would have been more entertaining over the course of the day.

1.  Zombie Wedding

2.  12 hours of Dad’s Army repeats

3.  24 hours of the Super RTL log fire

4. The Royal Wedding with commentary by Richard Keys

5. Ceefax

Let’s Go Away for Awhile

I’ve been waging war on the SKY + back log I have.  Although in reality I can’t remember what I’ve been watching…

Actually I can.  Today I finished True Blood season 3, the guy continuity announcer at the end of some episodes kept saying “is this the best series yet?” and I’m kind of inclined to say ‘Yes’.  The fact it was somewhat pared back on the all out bizarre nature of the second season helped.  The werewolves were frankly a little lame and Jason’s story drifted from good for the first half into quite dull, he’s one of my favourite characters and it felt like he was too much in his own show romancing panther girl.

I did love Russell Edgington the 3000 year old vampire king of Mississippi who was played by Denis O’Hare wonderfully.  A completely OTT and extravagant villain.  I thought Anna Paquin was great, her comedy timing is brilliant (or the editing is good but that’s quite cynical), I probably laughed more at Sookie than most of the other characters – aside from Russell.

I didn’t like Sam’s storyline, I find him a pretty boring character and the whole thing with his family was pretty boring.  Eric and Pam are great, so glad there was more of them.  I’m hoping season 4 will have more of Queen Sophie-ann, although from the cliffhanger ending that might be unlikely, she’s great.

My mate, who has hardly watched any True Blood, did describe it wonderfully via text ‘never more than 15 minutes from a pair of ace tits”, which, as a male viewer, is of course another voyeuristic plus point.

I’ve also been watching The X-Files which has been showing from the start on SKY Atlantic and it has mostly renewed my teenage love affair with Gillian Anderson.

What else…

Oh, Arrested Development has been on FX – two episodes per week – and it’s great watching that all over again.

That’s been a terrible ‘review’.

I’m going to Northampton next week for pool and drinks with the Ariba boys.  CANNOT WAIT.  Haven’t had a day off (bar weekends) since my birthday and the end of my Christmas break in early January.

At the end of the month I have plenty of time off, cannot wait for that.  If I can find the time to look for a flat between now and then my plan would be to get in at that point.  Easier said than done though.

I’m getting a new automobile (and enjoying parentheses)

How d’you like them apples?

Why not enjoy my driving themed playlist (not so much driving themed as songs that are good to listen to whilst driving)

http://open.spotify.com/user/matyus/playlist/20lojBE4P7wzDRjxvcrA9Q (You need Spotify of course)

And this picture of a car (not the one I’ve bought).

My 5 Point Plan to Clear The National Debt

Well I have hardly posted anything on here that isn’t something old for a while so I thought I’d get into stupid rant mode and try my hand at solving the national debt of the United Kingdom in one small post.

So here is my, as the title says, 5 point plan to clear the national debt.

1. Send the Royal Family on a global stadium tour. If Jerry Seinfeld can charge £100 per ticket then I reckon the Queen & Co can charge at least £105.

They can all pull out their party tricks, Prince Phillip can do stand-up and point out the foibles of foreigners in the front row, Charles and Camilla can do a series of duets and the Queen herself can do an on-stage demonstration of how to throttle pheasants.

2.  Everyone hates bankers right? So let’s put them in stocks, one banker, per day, outside each bank until the debt is done.  To kickstart the economy we’ll charge £2 a turn and for that £2 you get £1 of left over fruit from the shops to hurl at them.

3.  Cancel Christmas. Perhaps the most controversial one I know, perhaps.  But I can’t be the only sick of frittering their money away on gifts for people.  Instead of paying out 100′s of pounds on present, let’s all just make a contribution to paying off the debt.  It’d probably only take three years, then we can get back to putting all the pressies we buy back on a credit cards and everyone will be happy.  Perhaps Oliver Cromwell got it right.

Granted this will probably mean a load of shops shutting because of the lack of festive shopping and might hinder the economy further.  Still, I reckon I have just as valid a grounding in economics and finance as George Osborne.   We both got 2:1′s at university, we both started out doing data entry, although I’m sure his working at Selfridge’s qualifies him better for his job as Chancellor better than my 2 1/2 years in the finance department of social services.

4.  Make crack legal.  Life sucks.  People are out of work, they can’t pay their mortgage, we’re getting no interest in the banks so we need something to spend our money on.  Why not crack?  Phil Mitchell had a great time smoking crack all day and listening to The Who, so why can’t the rest of us?  Crack is everyone’s friend (@Moffaloff, 2011).  Obviously the reason for legalising crack isn’t just to make life a little more bearable for everyone but to slap a tax on it and bring in lots of money for the national coffers.  In addition to crack we could add marijuana, prostitution and polygamy to the list.  Why polygamy?  Sounds like it could be fun.

5. Pay it off in kind. Dave, George, Vince, Nick and their colleagues in the coalition seem so eager to pay off the debt why not send them all to pay it off in kind whether it is to the banks, China or any other of our creditors.

I’m sure we’d all be more than happy to see them bend over and take one for the team.  As our dear leader said himself “we are all in this together’ that is not a cry for help but a call to arms…it’s fair that those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load.” I guess that means George Osbourne gets it’s twice as much or twice as hard.  We can even flog it as Cabinet Cumfest on DVD and Bluray, probably not 3D though, no one really wants to see Dave’s perfectly formed quiff flapping around in their face whilst he’s getting rammed from behind by a sweaty old man.

It’s a fez.

I found this here via someone on Twitter.

I liked so much I had to borrow it. 

It reminded that it is Doctor Who next week and that means more Amy Pond AND Michael ‘Wash Your hands’ Gambon. I couldn’t find the “Wash Your Hands” scene that I’m sure exists in reality and not just in the heads of me and James but this one is good anyway.