Hmm. I want to get my unwarranted Just Adventure bashing out of the way as soon as possible, so I’d better come up with something new to write about.

Erm. How about a link? Everyone loves links.

For programmers (or those aspiring to be one), have a look at The Daily WTF. It’s a daily compenium of hilariously bad code from “professionals”, who we presume are actually paid to write it. The site actually makes a handy learning tool - figure out what’s so horribly wrong with the code displayed, and reward yourself with a good laugh when you work it out. Oh, and it’ll probably make you feel smug and eminently employable, too.

Today’s target for my bile and rage is Just Adventure+, a rather smaller site than last week’s Slashdot, but no less deserving of a good cussing.

Follow that link and you’ll feel like you’ve been smacked in the face with a horrible design unchanged since approximately 1989, mostly because that’s what will have just happened. I can overlook that - looks aren’t everything - but what’s this tagline? “The largest and most-visited adventure site on the Internet”? I don’t know what they base that on, but even a cursory comparison of the membership and posting figures displayed on their forums and those of their less shit competitors will disprove that. Dubious claims aren’t cool!

On to the primary purpose of any good gaming site, the reviews. They exist to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. Unfortunately, what’s not hot on Just Adventure+ is, apparently, Monkey Island 2, considered by everyone except them to be one of the high water marks of the genre. There are two reviews on JA+, and the highest mark is a B-. What’s that mean according to their review guide? It’s “a superior game”, but “lacking either the innovation or perfection required for a grade of ‘A’”. Hmmm.

That should be enough by itself, but hey! This is a rant! Let’s take one more of their reviews, this time with reference to a review I trust more from vastly superior site Adventure Gamers. The game: Hauntings of Mystery Manor.

Have a look at that review from Adventure Gamers. Looks a pretty lame game, doesn’t it? The sort of game someone could (and indeed, did) knock up in Adventure Game Studio by themselves? Yes. AG’s score of 1.5 stars (out of 5) looks entirely justified. Now let’s have a look at Just Adventure’s version.

“Nothing short of remarkable” it says. “Final grade: A” it says. That makes it “one of the best games available”, and it “should be on the shelf of every adventure gamer”, according to the grading system guide. Tally-Ho, when you wrote this review, did you have a crush? Are you the author’s mum? Why weren’t you edited into oblivion?

Again, as with Slashdot, it’s not so much the concept of the site I mind. Everyone is free to create their own little corner of the Web - I should know that. It’s the fact that JA+ loves to tout itself as the biggest and (by implication) best adventure gaming web site in existence, when it’s clearly rubbish, that rubs me up the wrong way. If a single person arrives at JA+ and think it’s representative of adventure gamers as a whole - basically undiscerning idiots who will welcome bad games as the second coming because they are “produced and published by ONE PERSON![!!!!]” - then JA+ has done everyone a great disservice.

Phew, that rant was a long time in coming. More cussings-in soon!

“Do you get paid for this shit?”

Slashdot is a horrible site, but for some reason I still feel compelled to visit it on a daily basis. The only thing worse than reading a story on Slashdot is reading a comment on Slashdot, but for some reason I end up doing that too. Why? I don’t know - probably the same reason I keep buying stuff from the iTunes Music Store, despite it repeatedly shagging me in the face in new and interesting ways. The concept of Slashdot is good, just like iTunes should be good in theory - but the execution, oh man.

I really wouldn’t mind so much if it was a little site run by one guy in his spare time - although there are countless such sites better produced than Slashdot - but this thing is huge. And owned by some big technology firm. But what do we get? Stories full of bollocks, people asking the same stupid questions every week (”how can I organise my books at home” just today!), and the ‘Funny’ comments. Oh, those ‘Funny’ comments. I think I must have broken my funnybone or something.

Their links to positive Linux stories (Linux nearly ready for your nan!) are often good for a laugh, at least. Now that’s funny.

Do they get paid for this shit? The sad answer is yes, they do.

Mmm, I think I’m onto something here. You can never go wrong talking about sweets!

Fruit Pastilles, then. As I alluded to in my previous update, Fruit Pastilles are simply my favourite sweet thing of all time. And I’m not kidding: I’ve been through an entire cinema-style bag of them tonight. It’s not for nothing I have nightmares about all my teeth falling out.

Nestle have tried to liven up Fruit Pastilles by releasing special limited-edition packs, like the ‘alien’ themed ones from a few years ago with their weird flavours. They don’t need livening up, though - as the premiere jelly-based sweet covered in sugar, it’s impossible to beat them. Maynards have tried with their ‘Wine Pastilles’ and their ‘Sours’, but nothing can come close to the simple elegance of the classic Fruit Pastille.

If you get bored of eating them individually - we’re all only human - try combining opposing colours for a whole new taste explosion inside your face. Red and green work well. The only downside is that you get through them twice as fast. :(

On the plus side, the sugar rush is twice as immediate and effective. It’s like drugs, probably!

Urged on by Thrik, I have decided to follow the lead of The Remi and review “cultural” things. Things like Chewits.

Do they even make Chewits any more? I’m more of a Fruit Pastilles man, even though I’m faintly behind the whole ongoing Nestle boycott thing. Hey, I don’t buy any of their other products! Ahem.

Anyway, Chewits. Little cubes of sticky, sugary goodness. A bit like Opel Fruits (sorry, Starburst), but not quite as good. I lost at least one baby tooth to Chewits when I was a young ‘un, which was useful for me as they were going to come out anyway and that way I didn’t have to deal with the trauma. The Tooth Fairy believed me when I left a note explaining why I had swallowed the tooth.

What?

Anyway, Chewits are great. You should buy them immediately, probably. They used to give me really weird poos, but did you really want to know that? I doubt it.

“This is a part from earlier on in the game. It’s called ‘jump over a tramp’. It’s a lot of fun.”

Ooh (shut that door) - the drought of Consolevania episodes is finally at an end! And what a cracking episode too. It’s well worth watching just for the review of Mark Ecko’s Getting Up - I have no idea who Mark Ecko is either - but there are other gems too.

A dramatic expose of game shop staff, only a tiny bit fabricated! An exclusive preview of Rockstar’s new table tennis game! And a review of Shadow of the Colossos that should prove an infinitely better marketing tool than the PR stunt Sony decided to pull in Manchester city centre a few weeks ago, where gameplay images were projected onto the side of a grimy 1960s office block, where the grey concrete and streetlighting below conspired to reduce them to little more than a smudged mess.

Go and download Consolevania 2.3 immediately.

We’re all supposed to be abandoning our cars and taking to either using public transport or cycling everywhere, apparently. I stumbled across a brilliant site (linked from BBC News) with some excellent examples of why taking to your bike might be a very bad idea indeed.

While some local councils spare no expense in marking their cycleways clearly, some prefer the alternative approach. Some go out of their way to make the cycleways as unobtrusive as possible, while others are high-visibility and their use is highly advantageous. Forget those bike lanes in Germany where you have to share with buses and get your own set of traffic lights at junctions to allow you to cross before cars start cutting you up - we deal with the problem much more cost-effectively with well-designed filter lanes and completely segregated stretches of cycleway!

Seriously now, what the hell? I can only assume that local councils are paid by central government per cycleway. The stupidest one I’ve seen with my own eyes was in Scotland, where the incredibly narrow cycleways added on either side of the road made it too narrow for two cars to pass without - guess what - encroaching on the cycleways. Nice one Scotland. That was as nothing to these horrors, though - more hilarity on the site.

Yay, it’s 24 season again!

I still think my idea for Asian-style 24 is worthy of consideration at the highest level. In fact, I’d be shocked if scripts weren’t currently being drafted, actors hired and shaky sets being constructed for such an undertaking right now. It would be tough to beat the series opener for this season of 24, but I’m sure Indian television can rise to the challenge!

Eagle-eyed viewers of the latest series may have spotted a domain name for CTU floating around. Would tapping the address into my web browser device transport me to amusing sites set up by the producers of the show, a la those sites set up by the BBC for Doctor Who?

No, alas, although CTUGov.net may be registered by 20th Century Fox - just to keep those nasty cyber-squatters at bay - they haven’t bothered to do anything awesome with it.