The Richie Report: Batman, Birds and Brutal Battleships
by Richie
That’s right. The Richie Report is back and, handily, after a couple of months of bugger all getting released, there are actually games out now. Yep, Xmas-slippage-February is here and brings with it the following tasty morsels of release-o-news.
Soul Calibur 5. Right, admit it. Soul Calibur is fucking balls. All that ‘the soul still burns’ bollocks. Fuck off. It’s Tekken with swords and nowhere near as good. The only good one was the Dreamcast one in my opinion, and Soul Calibur 4 was a big bag of wank. We, or rather the extraordinarily pretty Dom, reviewed it for the site, and gave it an 8. So it might be good. Don’t ask me though. I won’t be touching it until it’s a fiver from whatever games chain replaces GAME later this year.
Final Fantasy er… XIII-2 (are you fucking kidding me) is out. I started and stopped playing these fucking things with the seventh one (a game that was simultaneously good and absolutely bollocks). Expect lavish cutscenes, stupid hair, big swords, stacks of numbers fighting each other and Japanese story-writers pretending to understand what emotions are. I’ll be skipping the fuck out of this one.
Kingdoms of IAMTHELAWWWWW!!!! Okay, call me a massive racist but I hate Skyrim. That’s a lie. I don’t hate Skyrim. It just bores the cock clean off of my body. It’s all a bit too much like having a job. It’s all ‘take this fucking vase over to the woman in the neighbouring continent and bring back a dog’ or some shit. The combat’s rubbish too. Amalur solves a lot of that by having genuinely exciting combat. At least in the demo. Bit heavy on the midgets, but if I can stab those fuckers then it’s all good. Fucking midgets, man.
Last up is The Darkness II which had a rather swish demo even if they’ve shoved Nolan North’s gob all over the fucking thing. Brutal action and crispy graphics are a combination that the Richie Report can get behind though so this is looking like a day one purchase, if only so we can remind ourselves what it’s like to buy a game again.
Right, that’s our EXTENSIVE, HIGHLY DETAILED review round-up. Now you want the news. Third-person references aside, I’m just a man. One guy against a torrent of gaming journalism bullshit. Still, lets sift out the news sweetcorns from the sewers that represent all the other sites and see what gives us a stomach ache.
Loving The Alien. Quite possibly, literally.
Despite the fact that the WHOLE WORLD knows it’ll suck and that same WHOLE WORLD hating trailers that clearly have fuck all to do with gameplay, Sega have shoved out a trailer for the now-delayed Aliens: Colonial Marines. It looked like a scene from Aliens, albeit with the lovely plinky-plonky piano score from the Moon movie. Graphically speaking, it looked kind of shit but for a moment it was a little exciting. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me ten times, I’m a fucking Aliens fan.
Two things I fucking hate more than anything are Angry Birds (it’s shit! It’s not even a game!) and the ‘rock’ band KISS (‘Crazy Crazy Nights’ is by far the lamest rock song of all time). Well colour-me-fucked-off, the two are combining. Yep, Rovio (purveyors of casual shit for cunts) are making a KISS-flavoured version of the bird-flinging physics-’em-up. Fuck this world.
Flight sim bores will be as excited as a slug in a maths lecture with the news that Microsoft Flight will be free to download on February 29th. That said, it’ll be stripped of 99.9% of the game’s features as the rest of it will be released as premium DLC. The overall price for completionists is expected to be equivalent to buying an actual plane and a year’s worth of flying lessons.
In equally fuckwitted DLC news, Gotham City Impostors (oh my fucking God, is Batman the new zombies or what?) will cost you 1200M$P via Xbox Live Arcade but had over a hundred pieces of DLC made available before the fucking game even came out. You see a lot of this sort of bullshit on iOS but if this little experiment works, expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing on your Xbox. Holy Corporate Cocksuckers, Batman!
Are you a Star Wars loving Kinect owner? Wondering when Kinect Star Wars is getting released? Well, go spit on my cock. I’m not telling you.
Meanwhile, Tim Schafer (overrated developer of tedious adventure games) has bleated to gamers worldwide that he needs funds to start his latest point and click adventure game. In a rare display of unity, the gaming world has actually responded and now he’s got the best part of 400k. I’d happily pay him 400k to not make Brutal Legend 2, if that helps.
You have sunk my battleship with your putrid shit missle
I’ll leave you with the most depressing news you’ve ever heard. Activision (force for global evil) and Hasbro (toy makers who haven’t done anything good since the first Transformers) are teaming up to make Battleship. The game of the movie of the board game. Even if you can get past the obvious initial question (a fucking movie about Battleship?) and the fact that it already has a game (part of the Hasbro Family Game Night XBLA collection), this story will still have the capacity to fucking blow your mind.
Get ready. Sit down. Strap yourself in.
It’s going to be a fucking FPS. I wish I was joking but I’m not. Some shill twat from Hasbro actually put his name to the following inane comments: “The merging of tactical and action elements immerses players in an epic maritime conflict. Activision is completely up to the task of delivering a high-intensity thrill ride that’s perfectly suited for today’s console owners.”
That’s all for now. If you want me I’ll be booking tickets to THE FUCKING DIGNITAS CLINIC.
Last five articles by Richie
- The Richie Report: Et Velum Ultimum
- Sky Force Anniversary - Review
- Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 - Review
- The Final Station - Review
- Ninja Pizza Girl - Review
There’s simply far too much for me to love in every Richie Report.
Unlike Whitney Houston, I hope this never stops.
Zombie Batman!!!
I think the Richie Report is trying to subconsciously make me swear – I’m away to scrub my brain clean.
Gnus.
Fuck Angry Birds. If it’s not Magnetic Billiards I don’t want to know.
Lovely ending. Perfect post hangover read.
I quite like Angry Birds
it’s a good flat time filler 
You think Soul Calibur is like Tekken, but worse? I need to lie down…
Did I just stumble upon the blog of some angry 12 year old who just learned how to swear or is this what passes for an article on this site?
I agree with Walt! DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!!!
Richie must be the hairiest 12 year old since Sierra Morena!
In all seriousness. My author page spells it out;
“Hello, Loves. If you’re looking for nonsense and hyperbole then vote Richie. I’ve been into this gaming lark for as long as I can remember and so sometimes I’ll write about it. Nothing I write is to be taken too seriously because it’s just games and stuff, yeah?”
It can get a bit sweary and a lot stupid but it’s a stylistic choice. It’s not going to appeal to everyone but equally neither is it representative of everyone on this site either. It’s just a thing about games. It’s fun to do and all a bit silly. Hopefully no-one needs to get offended. Well, apart from Activision. But then again, they are born of jackals.
There are plenty of IGN type guys out there or (eesh) Eurogamer types who’ll give you the usual style of games journalism. I like to think of them as the Westlifes to my Sex Pistols. They’ll sell millions. I’ll die in a New York hotel with a face full of heroin. We suffer for our art!
I keep swithering over Colonial Marines. One part of me thinks that it will be excellent (and wants it to be), having seen some of the gameplay at E3 last year, but on the other hand, part of me kind of thinks that it will be a bit duff. Graphically, last year at least, it wasn’t that great, but to give the devs credit, they have tried to be faithful as far as the films go, so that’s a plus as far as they actual settings and gemplay go. Graphics etc. can be polished, so hopefully the gameplay they’ve concoted will then be decent enough to make it awesome. Hopefully.