V-Game Review – Imagine Girl Band

Can you? Can you imagine a girl band? I bet you can’t. I bet, when you try, all you have is a blank space and the feeling of hopelessness when your favourite steak knife (?) is out of stock and you have to settle for second best.

The ‘imagine’ games were a series of shovelware nonsense pushed out by Ubisoft to capitalise on the casual gaming market that was en vogue during the Nintendo Wii and DS era. Don’t fancy your kids shooting soldiers in ‘Call of Duty’ or smashing deities in the face in ‘God of War’? Get them into some harmless touch screen fun on a Nintendo. They covered a lot of bland topics and you can regularly find them taking up space in charity shops and lining the walls of CEX because parents and grandparents bought them in droves and now nobody wants them.

You start by choosing your name and what instrument you want to play. I went with Fluke, cos I’m cool, and bass guitar, because everyone knows that’s the coolest. You also get to choose one of three genres of music to specialise in so I opted for funk. After some perfunctory story about being in a band and looking for a new member, you start practising. When I say “practising” though I mean engaging in a basic version of any rhythm game from the past 20 years. My band is called The Oppress because funk music is very music about sticking it to “the man” and how much he’s holding us all back. Fluke and the Oppress. Yeah.

The song plays in the background and coloured buttons move across the top of the screen. When the button reaches the circle at the end, you tap the corresponding button with your stylus. The closer it is to being perfectly in the circle, the higher the score you get is. You can choose to practise with the rest of your band mates at home or you can perform… in the library?

This, to me, had “bar in the aquarium” vibes. Do music and reading go together? I get distracted when trying to do both but each to their own, I suppose. I was practising the whopping three songs our band had in the library and getting fairly good scores, however the game wasn’t moving forward so I took the girls to the mall instead.

You can buy instruments, new items of clothing and accessories at the mall like a real mall. As my character is a teenager and we hadn’t done any gigs yet I didn’t have a lot of money so I bought a new top and trousers to complement the funk style the band was going for. Still nothing. I went home to speak to what I thought was my brother but was actually my boyfriend who I never see because I’m either at school or with the girls trying to kick out the jams. Still nothing. With very little options, I went back to the library and performed each song until my score was off the charts.

Success! By smashing the songs, I opened up a brand new place to visit on the map; the park. I also earned some decent cash from performing at the library so I headed back to the mall to buy another bass guitar. I needed my instrument to match my new outfit, of course. It was then that my thirty minutes were up and I decided to stop.

It’s not an inherently bad game albeit one that’s so bland you wouldn’t be able to pick it out in a line-up some six months after last seeing it. If you aim for the lowest common denominator then you’re guaranteed to refrain from offending anyone. It blows my mind that someone will have paid full price for this once.

*5 out of 10 funk trousers*

Obligations

I’m a man of my word and let nobody say otherwise (unless it’s me stating I’m going to get new tyres for my car because I keep saying it and I still haven’t done it yet). It’s this simple principle that I stick to in order for people to believe and trust me as their brother, boyfriend, friend or tree surgeon.

When I recently returned home to visit family, my brother surprised me with the admission that they had been round the charity shops and my nieces had bought some video games for me. A lovely gesture, or course, and one which didn’t initially fill me with a sense of dread. It was only when I remembered the quality of video games available in charity shops that my stomach turned upside-down and inside-out: previous years FIFA games, cricket and other lame sports titles, shovelware Nintendo Wii games where the quality is the same as my arse.

I was handed four Nintendo DS titles and, boy, am I a lucky person. Four excellent condition clangers for my collection. I am not a snob, dear reader, for as the keen chef can tell the good fruit from the bad fruit I can let you know mostly what a good game is and what isn’t. This stack was given to me to review by my brother and that is exactly what I am going to do. I certainly don’t want to play them and you certainly don’t want to read what I have to say, yet this is how it’s going down.

It was either that or trade them in for 40p.

Dear Beans… hot groin action

Dear Beans,

Monday seemed like a regular day. I had woken up, gone to work, come home and eaten a hearty meal of mince, mince and mince. It was a good day.

It was a good day apart from the weather. It was freezing. I couldn’t feel my hands and feet, I clearly needed to do something to warm my flat up. But what can a regular Joe do in these awful times? Modern life is so expensive and there was no way I was turning the heating on for anything less than a blizzard. We were still several hundred flakes away a blizzard.

I therefore turned to my old friend, the hot water bottle. It has saved me from the cold on so many occasions and after a period of ten years was still going strong. I boiled the kettle and filled it up, and got comfy on the sofa with it positioned on my lap. I could feel the heat and it was so nice. I warmed my hands up on it then moved it to my back when it got a bit too much for my stomach. That’s the best thing to do with a hot water bottle, give it five minutes somewhere and then move it on. You have a whole body to warm up and there’s only so much one little HWB can do. Perhaps someone should invent a device that moves it round for you so you don’t have to?

I was sat in front of the TV watching a film with the HWB on my lap again when I noticed something was amiss. A searing kind of shock suddenly sprung forth between my legs. I’ve never set my testicles on fire however I would imagine the uncomfortable feeling I felt that day was very much akin to that. I pulled the hot water bottle from my lap to stop whatever was happening. Then heat turned to wetness, I could feel a wet sensation which confused the hell out of me. “What on earth is going on?” asked my prehistoric brain still trying to catch up with everything.

It was then after some close examination that I saw it; a little cut at the neck of the hot water bottle. Something (or someone) had cut a little slither meaning that any pressure applied to the bottom would force the water to come spurting out. I had accidentally burned myself with my own salvation during this chilly evening. Oh the shame I felt. Oh the humanity of it all! Who could have done such a thing to me, of all people?

My question therefore is what is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done to yourself either on your own or in public? I await your responses.

Yours painfully

Socket Mephistopheles

Nonna

Nonna knows best,
Nonna wants you to know
That Nonna likes pizza,
Pizza toppings on pizza dough.

Nonna needs num-nums,
Nonna kneeds the pizza dough,
Needless to say by evening
Nonna’s certainly ready to go.

Nonna can’t let go,
Nonna wants a side dish,
I can’t make garlic bread,
Side dish is a side wish.

Nonna isn’t happy,
Nonna lets me know,
Left for dead in a dustbin,
Mozzarella, cheese and pesto.

Excuse me!

Typical. You need to use the payphone and some idiot decides to jam a collection of old storage boxes folded into the tight space along with packing material thus taking up all the area I need in order to make my phone call. I mean I can hardly use the phone on the street, everyone will hear my conversation.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me.

Disappointment squared

What does disappointment look like to you? Is it a flaccid (easy now) aubergine that hasn’t managed to grow fully in your allotment? Is it a shiny new 50p coin with a huge dent in the edge? Is it learning that Claire Richards from Steps is coming back with a new solo album? It comes in many shapes and forms and sadly there is no escaping the silky, wet glove that is disappointment.

I recently went on a ship and sailed to a different part of the world. It was excellent all the time (whispers, “all the time”) and even though I must have eaten twice my weight in steak and burgers a good holiday was had by all. The ship was swimming in luxury. If you wanted to sit in a hot tub all day sipping champagne and eating tiny desserts you could. If you wanted to go to their cinema and watch four films back to back you could. If you wanted to watch a questionable stage production by one time flatmate of Robbie Williams, Jonathan Wilkes, then you could (the only time we went to the theatre was on the last day when we were leaving and there was no more time for japes).

Families with children were also catered for on a higher level. In addition to the various play rooms and activities there were pools, swimming pools, pools with pizza stations next to them and some kind of sports facility on the very top deck. I would have investigated however we all know I am allergic to 85% of sports in the general population. Did I mention the pools? They even had a night time nursery service so if you wanted to leave little Billy with a responsible adult so you could go get shit-faced in the bar and then return around 1am to pick him up then you could. You really, really could.

As two adults with no small people there was little chance that we could take advantage of any of these facilities. Not that we wanted to but, hey, nobody likes being left out. When the holiday was being booked there was the hint made by the company that some celebrities who would be onboard for a meet and greet. I heard ‘Wallace’ and ‘Gromit’ and I knew that I had to get involved in this kind of action. For four days there was no mention of them anywhere in the leaflets they left outside your day to inform you about the daily activities going on. Nothing whatsoever. Finally on Wednesday morning, cowering towards the bottom and wedged between something called ‘Jukebox Hero’ and ‘Pilates’, was the following:

“Wallace & Gromit Special Appearance – A special appearance from Wallace and Gromit. Come and say hello to the cheese-loving inventor and his faithful four-legged friend.”

We had to go. There was no way we could miss such an event as this. The queue was very long and started snaking through the whole of the atrium; clearly this was a big event for all. We decided to keep back and watch from afar rather than getting too close. Our location meant we could see everything. Like a couple of divas they were ten minutes late. What then happened can only be… well it needs… look at the damn photo:

Not even two people in suits. We’ve got a fully-sized Wallace and a tiny Gromit that he can fully pick up with one hand, no doubt sewn to his hand because he never put him down. I don’t know if the organisers of this even have ever seen ‘Wallace and Gromit’ but they’re fairly even in height due to the latter walking on his hind legs for a lot of the time. The kids that were hugging and posing for photos were fine with the arrangement; not a single one asked to speak to the manager or had some quiet words with a member of staff. It was clear that we were in the minority so we slipped away and discussed our respective disappointment over coffee and cake.

Sad Viennetta

The last time my sister visited from Sweden we went round to my brother’s house, as we always do whenever there’s a family gathering because he has the biggest house. We all brought food and had a general chit-chat. It was the same as it ever was.

It was, that is, apart from Sarah had a mild fascination with eating food from the 1980’s and kept bring it up in conversation. This continued for a while and when the desserts were brought out this included a very sad-looking Viennetta.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“Oh nothing really,” said Sarah, “it’s been in mum’s freezer for a while but other than that it’s fine.”

“Oh. Could I have a bit more information about that? Only the last time we emptied mum’s kitchen cupboards we found food and spices from Safeway which was very disconcerting given that it hasn’t existed since 2005.”

Sarah goes back into the kitchen to check the box which is still lying on the kitchen counter.

“It says…. 2019. But it’s sugar, right? Nothing is going to happen to sugar. You won’t get poisoned or anything.”

Yes, my sister, the doctor, ladies and gentlemen. I did have a small slice out of curiosity and it did taste a bit funky however it was in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The flavour was there, the ice cream, the wafer-thin chocolate bits, all were present. Still this lingering feeling of uncertainty kept me, and everyone else insane enough to have a bit, from fully enjoying it.

It also had some freezer burn and had to stand for a while before it all fell off.

Mmmmmmm!

Look at him (but don’t be inspired)

What’s going on here exactly?

Look at this berk. I took screenshots of this from some Twitter advert because it looked ridiculous. This guy is doing all these different kinds of exercises as though it’s supposed to inspire you to “reach goals easily” and “no gym, no problem”. What a waste of time.

I wouldn’t mind so much but for the last month or so this has popped up every other day. This guy needs to take a hint and get outta my viso/volto. My viewing eyes don’t need this kind of visual fungus. I don’t care if you can track progress and keep motivated, I don’t care if you can see visible results in four weeks and don’t think you can tempt me with silly muscular arm emojis.

What worries me most is the disclaimer at the bottom of the video: “The stunts in this video were performed by a trained professional. DO NOT ATTEMPT IT.” Stunts? It? They seem to have such a poor grasp of English that even if I wanted to “hit every single muscle” I wouldn’t trust them to do it given that they can’t even word a disclaimer properly.

I expect you may have already seen it but I wanted to spread the word regardless.

Also, Chris, get a real f*cking job, mate.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Not very good