You're Fucked! Thirsty Basset Hound Takes It!

Strolling along to work the other day, I reflected on how awesome the final four candidates must be to all make it into the Apprentice Final. This thought immediately gave pause; exactly how had any of them definitively proven they were fantastic? They hadn't! Good God. King Alan put them all through because he had nothing to judge on. They're all shite! A good chunk of them had just coasted at the back, just doing enough to see them through, then waved the stand-outs off as they departed. The swines!

King Alan's final task was to invent a new smell. He divided his four super candidates by two and came up two super teams (that's super maths that is): Alex and Helene; Lee and Claire. As a Claire fan I thought this pairing had sunk her chances. How's that for business acumen? That is why I own no businesses, and make no money. This smell was to be for men and cost £29.99. This is key. I'd jot that one down. Next on the business agenda came a wholly humiliating team picking scene. Returning firees were huddled together and each team did a pick. If I was 'best salesperson in the whole world ever' Icy Jenny, I'd have cried. Picked after Kevin. Sniff, sniff.

Anyway, on with the task. Helene and Alex argued over the name of their smell. A typical argument, as depicted, would have Alex making loads of suggestions and Helene dropping negative on the lot. Any suggestions her end? Not a chance. Does this constitute an argument? It's more like a negativity machine gun.



A quick aside on Helene: I feel quite bad for constantly referring to her as a cave dwelling troll face. When she smiles, her face actually lights up! It's an amazing thing. All the downward slopes of her face even out. Why doesn't she smile constantly? From Gulag body shoveller to catalogue vacant in one deft move.

Shrink faced liability Kevin is quite the albatross. Following Alex round, secretly hoping if he does enough he may still be in with a chance at the top job. Meeting with design experts, he filled the air with guff about Rubik's Cubes and stress balls. Alex cowered and tried to remain neutral lest they like his mouth fart. Sensing they're dealing with two vegetables, the design team wrestle the think away from them and invent a completely impractical, but aesthetically impressive, bottle. It's one big shampoo dispenser looking bottle with a snug fitting dispenser pull-out, you know, for your man bag. Thanks design team! This avant garde bottle seemed like the death knell for gobby Claire. Seemed. I'm stressing SEEMED. Helene managed to pick a fragrance that smells exactly like her favourite perfume, and chocolate. Judging by her reaction in the boardroom grilling, she did this unconsciously. "Oh God! I've never had an original thought or notion in my whole life!" she probably briefly considered.

Over at Team Claire /Lee, Lee remembers Casino Royale came out last year and that he thought he liked it. Roulette The Smell is born! Whether or not it stinks of stale-ale'd felt is undisclosed. Cue a 70s Hai Karate alike advert set-up in which two models grope against a bleeding orange background. Ugly! Lee talks up some porn direction and the models fumble. Claire does something else offscreen.



The lack of any real meat for the Lee / Claire coalition seems to confirm my worst fears: grotty no face Alex has pissed it.

Presentation time! Lee is terrified. So terrified he has a nosebleed. Despite a chronically sing-song opening line, he does okay. Claire fields some probing questions on whether or not her smell will promote gambling and cause debt / misery. Alex and Helene garner gushing praise from some chap with sunglasses on. Sir King Alan doesn't look particularly impressed.

Boardroom! King Alan swoops on Helene and Alex. Sitting at his table was a gentleman from Givenchy. Mr Givenchy reckons the fancy bottle will cost three or four times the usual amount to manufacture! Good lord! You done fucked with profit margin now. King Alan waves them off. Shock of shocks! It's just Claire and Lee.

After a couple of gushes from the firees. It's down to King Alan business: shout at me and bully me into liking you! Claire picks up a shout pace and drones a few empty business speak plaudits at him. No dice! Lee offers a lucid, fact based account of why he's the superior candidate. He's never been in the firing line don't you know?

Lee takes it.



I am genuinely shocked. I had him placed third after Alex and Claire. Again, I would like to stress this is why I own nothing.

Disaster Year Is Away

Playing Metal Gear Solid 4

Batman: Clenched Teeth.

According to DVD Times, Yoshiaki Kawajiri is directing the Deadshot portion of the upcoming straight-to-dvd anime tie-in Batman: Gotham Knight. This is cause for much celebration! What's Gotham Knight? It's basically the Animatrix for Batman, released mid-July to boost marketing presence for The Dark Knight. The anthology is made up of six animated shorts, and are written by comic luminaries such as Brian Azzarello and Greg Rucka; as well as Blade Trinity director (and Dark Knight jettisoned scriptwriter) David Goyer. We'll gloss over that last one.

Director credits were remarkable by their absence in pre-release shilling - every segment (despite widely divergent art styles) got lumped with a Bruce Timm credit. Do Warners think these people have no currency? They do in my house! Lets hope AOL are a little kinder with final cut than Anchor Bay were with Kawajiri's animated Highlander movie.

Anyway, who's Kawajiri? Why not check out the short that made his name? Tense vegetable-men racing hyper-Formula Zero space cars; from the Neo Tokyo / Manie Manie anthology: The Running Man.

Mr Kawajiri forged a career delivering occult hyper-violence classics, usually featuring a laconic forever man. Highlights include: Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Expect cold blues, stinging pinks and fraught, bubbling meta-men.



Deadshot apparently sees Batman up against the firearms dripping titular assassin. Expect teeth shattering machismo and navel gazing on the application of guns.

Extra love for the technologically aspirational: the blu-ray release of Batman: Gotham Knight features four best-eps from the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series: Heart of Ice - the debut of the Mike Mignola redesign of Mr Freeze, and a sympathetic backstory by Paul Dini, this episode won an Emmy. Legends of the Dark Knight includes a portion adapted from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, and swipes at Joel Schumacher's 'efforts'. I Am The Night sees Bruce Wayne struggle with the Batman persona, and the positively apocalyptic Over The Edge sees the Gordon / Batman relationship dissolve into violence. Treats one and all.

Shinobi: Kill Them All Sneaky Joe!

A rather short review of the first game I ever owned: Shinobi on the Master System.

Multi-plain spam attack, obstacle course, platform genius. Sega's bite-back response to Namco's Rolling Thunder arcade series sees one-man-army Joe Musashi going up against kidnapping mobsters Zeed. They done a steal on a load of kids. Rascals! As well as being able to hurl infinite shurikens Zeed's way, Joe can crouch into a little crafty crawling crab-ninja form and lash out with a swift shin-kick. POW!

Levels are broken up with slightly astounding first-person bonus stages where our Joe hurls ninja death stars at advancing, conveyor-belt surfing enemies. Let one slip through and it's curtains; annihilate the lot and you're rewarded with Ninja Magic.

This Master System conversion lowers the arcade's difficulty by gifting the player an energy bar rather than a one-hit death. There's also a wider variety of ranged and melee attacks too - including hand grenades, pistols, nunchaku and the mighty manrikigusari - a giant weighted chain. Scaled back detail wise from its Arcade forebear, Master System Shinobi makes up this deficit by pumping the gaudy colour factor up as high as tech permits. Block colours never age. Gorgeous. Followed by an avalanche of sequels over nearly every format ever.

This, On The Other Hand, Is Definitely Not How It Ends: Big Boss Part 3

The Kojima-less NES port of Metal Gear sold extremely well outside of Japan. It shifted over a million copies in North America alone. Konami sought to generate extra coin by putting together a more action orientated sequel specifically for the Western market: Snake's Revenge! Never officially regarded as part of the 'official' series, Snake's Revenge is the red-haired step child of the Metal Gear family. It's widely hated, although not widely played. Again, it's the story of Solid Snake (now known as the double ranked Lieutenant Solid Snake) infiltrating a wonkily aggressive nation that purport to have a disaster weapon.

Snake gets two allies this time, John Turner and Nick Myer.



Both trot off and promptly get themselves dead. No help what-so-ever. Lt. Snake battles on. In an red jumpsuit. With jaundiced skin. Sneaky! There's even side-scrolling spam sections. Upset the faithful!

Big Boss pops up at the end. The Cobra Commander look alike spouts some perfunctory revenge speak, then gets his run and spam on. Shoot him enough and he does an explode and mutates into a twenty foot tall death-bot. Oh my giddy aunt!

"Ha, ha, ha! I have no weak point you can penetrate."

Quite. At this point you're absolutely sunk unless you immediately hightail, and are packing landmines. See the whole sorry / awesome episode here. Me likes!

After all that Snake storms off to shoot rockets through a tunnel system at a stationary Metal Gear Mark 2. Glowing weak spot!

Despite everyone hating Snake's Revenge, Kojima seems fairly pleased with it. He's quoted as saying it's a faithful sequel. He's still down on the NES version of the original though. Ah man. Don't get him started. He hates them damn life-draining dogs in the tacked-on Jungle entry point. Who can blame him? They suck!

Credits! See our hero smile!

This Is How It Ends: Big Boss Part 2

1990 saw the MSX2 exclusive release of Hideo Kojima's follow-up to his sneak classic Metal Gear: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Solid Snake is plucked out of his Canadian wilderness retirement to infiltrate the fictional Central Asian country of Zanzibar Land, again, controlled by Freudian nasty pop: Big Boss.



How did Big Boss survive Outer Heaven's destruction? We're never told. He's just wily like that. Accept it! Rescued hostages recount to Snake that Boss may no longer be entirely human either; sly allusions to Kojima's synthetic human point and clicker game: Snatcher, and his RoboCop-esque fate in unofficial Western market only sequel: Snake's Revenge abound during in-game Codec calls.



Seizing control of the fictional country, Big Boss recruits war orphans from all over the world to be molded and raised in his image; the foundation for a great military empire that will venerate and honour their warriors. In order to create this techno-Sparta, Big Boss has captured several tinker-king scientists, and commissioned another Cold War tipping nuclear tank: Metal Gear D. It's Snake's job to blow everything up and rescue the hostages.



Sounds simple eh? It isn't. Clear cut good and evil? Nope. The first boss Snake encounters on his sneak mission is disguise master ninja: Black Color. Black Color is the last remaining member of a NASA special forces unit created to fight in extraterrestrial environments (fight them Chinese on the Moon!), cybernetically enhanced and doped up to the eyeballs; Black Color teleports and hurls shurikans in a psychotic froth. Upon defeating this cyborg menace it is revealed that your enemy is none other than Kyle Schneider, an ally from the previous game.



Schneider was snatched up against his will surely? He fought alongside you against Big Boss in the previous game! He hated Outer Heaven! Schneider reveals that after Snake successfully completed the first game's mission, NATO carpet bombed the entire area to nothing. Their goal was to wipe out everything to do with Outer Heaven - including Schneider's resistance army. Schneider was captured and subjected to torture ascension implants for a short-lived experimental space combat unit. NASA disbanded the unit for being too cool, and Schneider managed to escape the purge. He was offered sanctuary in Zanzibar Land and took it, growing to admire his former enemy, primarily for taking in all survivors of the Outer Heaven incident - including resistance members. These are the actions of the 'bad-guy'.

Tune in about 5:45 - This is how it ends for Kyle Schneider.

This is a common theme throughout the Metal Gear series: Big Boss as a champion of the downtrodden. In Metal Gear Solid, Kurdish guerrilla Sniper Wolf considers Big Boss to be a hero. She recounts her life as a child soldier and her eventual rescue and molding by Big Boss. She calls him Saladin, after the 12th century Muslim political and military leader.



Is Snake's mission just? Or just a loyalty bending wetwork clean-up? Wouldn't it be better to let Big Boss live and really stick it to the corrupt Western powers? Following the character's gross disillusion with the US at Metal Gear Solid 3's conclusion, it looked like this was precisely the line of thought going to be expressed in the PSP spin-off Portable Ops, especially considering the announced recruitment mechanic. Sadly that didn't quite happen - instead you formed the FOXHOUND unit from the ground up to combat your gone rogue predecessors. Ah well.



Schneider aside, another former comrade sympathetic to Big Boss' agenda is Frank Jaeger / Gray Fox / Null. Phew!



Jaeger was the FOXHOUND agent originally assigned to infiltrate Outer Heaven, his failure ensured the re-assigning of new recruit: Solid Snake. Following the destruction of the Metal Gear tank and the fortress nation, Jaeger absconded with Big Boss, deserting his former unit. Jaeger became Boss' right hand man, leading the specialist Dogs of War unit, and piloting Metal Gear D during the second game's conclusion.



This is (sort of) how it ends for Frank Jaeger: A one on one fist fight in a minefield.

Jaeger'd be back as a cyborg ninja too. A recurrent fate for Snake's soldier friends.

Anyway, I'm getting way off the point. This is all dressing. This a Big Boss article after all. It's hard not to get sidetracked by Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The more I see and read of the game, the richer it seems. See? It's happened again. More than being a template for the subsequent Metal Gear Solid series, it neatly comments on, and upturns our assumptions on who these characters are / were their loyalties lie. In that sense it has much in common with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, MGS2's relationship with Metal Gear Solid is almost post-modernist deconstruction. Snake is largely abscent, and your left with blonde doll Raiden as he muddles through a samey adventure, that eventually turns this (minute) shortcoming into central text: a despotic AI system specifically engineered the situation to be an exact replica of the previous game to create another, more pliant, super soldier. Literal cloning had failed, so now psychological conditioning was the order of the day. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake friends are enemies, and enemies are philanthropists.

So how does Big Boss finally get it once and for all?

During your fight with Grey Fox your backpack is set aflame forcing you to ditch all your weapons / supplies. You muddle down a dark corridor, tech-naked, to tackle your ex-commander / retcon clone father. Big Boss chases you (using doors!) around a maze of rooms as you desperately try to find something, anything to take him on with. Tense, haphazard and overwhelmingly unfair - it's a fitting end to the original series.



This is how it ends: Solid Snake's final battle with Big Boss.

Come the Solid series, Big Boss would be recast several more times. His phantom spectre looms over the first installment, the Liquid son attempts to fulfil his dream of a soldier paradise - even invoking the mantra name: Outer Heaven. The Liquid son also demands the return of the retrieved and cryo-frozen father's body - he wants to harvest it for soldier genes and mutate his faceless guinea pig army.



Sons of Liberty visually introduces a third 'perfect' clone son: Solidus (the state between a liquid and a solid), the image of the father. Codenamed King and a former President of the United States, Solidus is still just a puppet outmaneuvered and manipulated by the Solid series' unseen esoteric antagonists: The Patriots. Both these sons are unable to pass beyond legacy aspirations, and are undone by legacy oversights: discarded family. Respectively: the Solid son and Raiden - Solidus' literal adopted son, and the product of Solidus' small boy unit - assigned to the Liberian civil war. It'll be interesting to see if Metal Gear Solid 4 recons Patriot involvement / aggression onto either the Outer Heaven or Zanzibar Land incidents, perhaps the garrison countries were built to stand against their meme plutocracy?



Big Boss features in the third Solid game, this time as the hero. Cast into the midst of a Cold War favour plot a young Big Boss, codenamed: Naked Snake must rescue a scientist, destroy a bastard nuclear tank, and murder his mentor / lover - who has defected to the USSR.



Starting out as a patriotic taciturn green beret, by game's close Naked Snake is deeply dissatisfied with his soldier's lot. Even going as far as snubbing the director general of the CIA during his 'crowning' ceremony. As it turns out the mission has very little to do with heroism and everything to do with a secret unclaimed slush fund belonging to a group of self-proclaimed Philosophers, the renegade American branch of which would become the AI overlord entity: The Patriots.



All the little Snake toys dance to their merry jig.

Wackiness Alert! Transformers 2!

By all accounts, the above is the combined form of two transformers in Michael Bay's rush-it-out-quick sequel to last years summer blockbuster. Is that shit or good? I can't tell anymore. Not the film I mean, I assure you that's going to be shit, rather the idea of two intergalactic soldiers entrenched in a four million year long civil war choosing a dilapidated early 70s ice-hawker as their alternative spy-mode. Is it funny? Or is it pathological psychosis?

I can't decide. If the two were akin to Decepticon yes-man Soundwave's slave heavies: Frenzy and Rumble, and the hide mode was played as a genuine attempt at deep cover infiltration, I could climb aboard.



Imagine! Holographic moustache man hands out non-existent ice cones to a harassed crowd of confused children. Suddenly the van erupts into two psychotic robo-thugs! The children scatter! Rumble and Frenzy have spotted an Autobot! Time to trash him up. This approach has real appeal for me. Imagine pinky gliding around in the back of the frame being menacing - tracking Bot-cars with a faintly run-down, sinister jingle. Perhaps even some sniggering too. We'd sit there on the edge of our seats waiting for them to morph out of tramp van mode and pounce some punishing pile driving violence. They'd tease and stalk. We'd edge out further. It'd be like a pink Michael Myers.

This is unlikely to happen.

Although a few sources are reporting the duo as Decepticons, most have them pegged as Autobots - going by the tentative title of 'The Twins'. Imaginative no? If I had to guess, I'd side with the 'they're-Autobots!' camp. I think irony's too insidious a concept for a Bay popcorn shifter. Hark at me eh? It's lovely up here.

If they really do have to be goody two-shoes Autobots, hopefully the twins moniker will reflect the dream casting of the two Venezuelan teenagers - The Crazy Babysitter Twins - from Robert Rodriguez's recent Planet Terror. Elise and Electra Avellan play a pair of impatient vengeful (crazy) babysitters. They bicker and fight throughout. They are charming and funny. They don't fawn about waiting to be rescued, they tool up and fall-in, exterminating the rot-cannibals. All the while working out some twin-envy thing by constantly berating each other.



Picture that. Two argumentative, stroppy little girl robots constantly bitching and fighting and generally being a thousand times more charming than the soppy Arcee fem-bot they've got lined up instead. They could trail behind the other Autobots punching and kicking each other, and arguing over which of them Optimus Prime is actually talking to. Come epic climatic throw-down they would be a right little pair of no nonsense shitkickers.

This is unlikely to happen.

Instead it is most likely two 'comedians' will voice two insipid cute bots created specifically to appeal to the very very young and retards. "Huh huh. That one fell over!"

Someone give me a job writing something. I promise 50% less grammatical errors.

You're Fucked! Oh The Ennui!

Goodbye Lucinda (played by Linda Hamilton)! Like some batty butterfly aunt, she drifted into our lives and gave them colour. Now she's gone. S'not fair. She was a dead capable team leader and everything! Oh well.

What happened last night then?! Well! It's Week 11: The Interview Round. King Alan decides to rope in four lieutenant goons to put the shits up the contestants. Zoot alores!



Goon Roll-Call!

Paul Kelmsley! A stubble faced cave-man property tycoon. Open shirt! No tie. Paul is a strength of character torture specialist. Watch as he subtly undermines the contestants confidence by luring them into comedy traps / making them fall in love with him. A bewitching Ogre. Curse his eyes!

Bordan Tkachuck! This wiry little stickler heads up Viglen Computers. Technological backhand chop! This grey fox will be your facts undoing! Don't lie on your CV! He has VIP access to the Internet!

Troubleshooting shitkicker Claude Littner! This handsome mason oiler will kosh your friggen head in if you make even the slightest spelling error. "That's not how you spell 'tomorrow' you fucking dog tongued CUNT!" Make sure you spell-check contestants.

Token fe-male Karren Brady had pretty hair success at age twenty-three. That's well younger than you, YOU FUCKING LOSER. Pull your socks up. Fucks sake! Karen will flirt will Alex and be NICE TO THE GIRLS.

Each of the remaining candidates was grilled and grubbed by this heartless cabal of backlit undoing-bots. How did they? Did they triumph mightily with debonair ease? Or did they struggle to string syllables together in a dry-mouthed panic?

Yet Another Roll Call! Plus! My actual findings! Imagine everything from this point on being shouted at you by a Green Power Ranger.



Him!

Alex! This pursed lips schmoozer got into a scarlet blush harrumph with Brady. "Have you found being dead fit a problem?" he was sort-of asked. This made his head go angry. Alex revealed himself to be a man of many talents: he's fluent in English and only twenty four years old. The man's a snowflake. The later point was repeated like an alcoholic's abstinence mantra throughout; hopefully to curry some cute points credibility. Thankfully, everyone shot him down instead. Karren Brady was managing the world when she was six, Alex you dick. Alex is also super dynamic and agile. Get him working in a circus then. He can tame the Lions. Don't train him! Just let them loose on him. He'll clean up I'm sure.

Alex is a right shit: Doll-head actually had the sheer backstabbing gaul to actually bring up Lucinda's briefly vocalised job doubts. I was stunned. There's forced opponent cannibalism, then there's soul selling shit-eating with a smile. "but I want the job!" he tantrumed.

Winner Worry: Alex impressed Bordan for working on a commission only basis - sorts the men from the boys apparently. Isn't height or something a better indicator? Facial hair? Kind of an oblique sifting method. Maybe that's why I'm not in big business. Alex's emergent young malleability is a proven win-clincher. Check out the grinning goon last series. Brady was impressed also, but Cave-Paul weighed in that he was a bit shite and Junior. Ha! Didn't expect your age byline to feature so heavily it your criticism did you Alex? Get that lippy off too sir. You look like a whores-man.



Claire fell in love. Paul Kelmsley's raw unshaven manliness swept her right off her fucking feet. She was all a flutter. A slow-mo recap on the supplement show revealed flustered dithering and a winky you-did-great-kid. Claire assured the other contestants that sexual assault was definitely on her mind. Claire was in her element, banging on about great she is blah blah blah. I'd like to think King Alan looked on wistfully via CCTV, in his stratosphere scraping tower-room. Gab-slams aside, concern was expressed over her Daily Mail revealed club rep past. Shocking! Bordan weighed in with a Birdysong wise-crack that cast him in a smug chub-hating light. Misjudged! Unimpressive! Still, Claude dug her, describing her as a kind of all-business shock trooper. Brady even stated an intention of employing Claire herself.



Lee's CV was shot through with spelling mistakes. Not to mention hand-wringingly inept diatribes about being 'recognisuseded for achevmunts' or something. Jesus wept Lee. Spell check! You're only posting this to the BBC and ALAN FUCKING SUGAR. Lee's disaster talk didn't end there; Bordan's only gone and actually contacted his university! Lee quivered. You weren't there for two years were you Lee? It was more like a couple of months wasn't it? Lee fans the country over tumble out of their chairs. Their champion is a liar! And what's even worse is he's been caught! The humanity. Fortunately though, King Alan's a street-schooled cockney wide-boy. "Fahk all that book learning, his uni lie shows moxy! He bhladdy wants it!" Al probably thought. CV-gate even got spun into a kind of inferiority complex sob-story. Lee's bullet-proof. The thirsty dog lives to blather on spit-less another day!



Helene boxed from room-to-room doing her best impression of sweary plain-speak. Unbelievably everyone was impressed. In a last minute worry-push, her bleak childhood was raised as proof of qualification. Remember when invisible Michelle from a few series back had a similar "she's actually had it dead rough!" push? Could Helene be working her grubby punish hands round King Alan's neck? Is she the dead eyed Apprentice?



And the loser:

Poor Lucinda. Turns out efficiently leading teams to victory doesn't mean shit. Nope! Being dumped into unsuitable positions and not excelling is your real apprentice barometer. Who cares if you objected several times, clearly citing the exact reasons why you're unsuitable, before actually doing not that bad? No-one that's who. Claude talks her up with gushing platitudes, before doing a comedy rug-pull and actually stating he thinks she's barmy and would drive everyone potty. The tyke! Claude and Paul then have a comedy argument about the extreme shortness of time before King Alan tore his own head off in frustration with her; Claude wins with: "Less than that!" Not just a pretty face that Claude. King Alan actually jumps to her defence: these grasping little backstabber have actually complimented her on leadership. It's like peace in the middle-east! No goon's impressed. She's out for herself. Crucially, she earns loads of money anyway, so a firing at this stage is more like a mercy killing than a bludgeoning horror show.

"Lucinda, you're too bhladdy zany! You're fired!"

I weep.

The Worst Thing Of All Time, Ever: T3

Yes, worse than AIDS. I hate Terminator 3. It's just awful. It's just a yuck-yuck brain-in-neutral parody for dunces. Fuck Terminator 3. Fuck Terminator 3 and its stupid tank robot things. Fuck Terminator 3 and Kristanna Loken's constipated mugging. Fuck Terminator 3 and Ahnoldts jerky "I am a robot!" acting. Fuck Terminator 3 and its neutering of John Connor. And especially fuck Terminator 3 and this ridiculous deleted scene.

This Is How It Ends: Big Boss Part 1

He looks so care free. Standing there, whoring a Japanese gelatin energy supplement. Simpler times.

Who knew that thirty years down the road he'd have one less eye, a nuclear-tank kingdom, and a clone offspring attacking him? Poor Big Boss. With Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots a little over a week away (be still my beating heart), it seems appropriate to have a little (minute really) look at the oft-forgotten portion of the Metal Gear series - the two pre-Solid MSX releases - and how they wrapped up the life of sometime series protagonist: Big Boss.

Set in disaster year 19XX; 1987's Metal Gear saw rookie special forces shitkicker Solid Snake infiltrating garrison country: Outer Heaven. Tasked with destroying a walking mecha-tank capable of launching ICBM's from any terrain, our hero receives intel throughout from FOXHOUND unit commander Big Boss. Towards the end of the game Big Boss' information begins to willfully mislead the player, endangering Snake. Oh no! Big Boss is later revealed to be the brains behind Outer Heaven, Snake's mission being little more than a training / misinformation exercise that has become too successful.



The years had not been kind.

This isn't quite how it ends: Metal Gear's final confrontation sees Big Boss battling his successor in the apocalypse countdown remains of his soldier empire. After Snake trashes the inoperable Metal Gear TX-55, he makes his way through a grim prison cell like warehouse and confronts his betrayer. Big Boss is dispatched with little fan-fair. He just sort of explodes and disappears. Interestingly no mentions are made of any biological link between Snake and Boss - an anti-development that was retconned for the first of the Solid series.



If the above video wets your appetite, why not have a crack at the bundled update of Metal Gear in the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence set? You'll regret you did! Not because of any lapse in quality, rather because it is 8-bit unforgivingly tough. It does not want you to win!

Failing that there's a truncated NES version floating around, Kojima himself tactfully describes it as "complete garbage". It's this version that was bundled with the Japanese Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes Gamecube console set. Check out Michael Biehn on the cover!



In the US version of the NES release, Big Boss suffered the indignity of being rechristened: Colonel Vermon CaTaffy by the snarky pack-in manual. Topical!

Death and several nuclear scale explosions didn't slow wily old Big Boss down though, he'd be back for both a 'true' Hideo Kojima helmed follow-up, and an action orientated sequel sop for Western audiences. Hooray! Look out for Part 2 tomorrow. It will follow much the same pattern.

Tom Yum Goong Quick Time Event!

Are you a fan of Thai shitkicker Tony Jaa? Are you also a fan of Yu Suzuki's never finished magnum opus Shenmue? Ever wondered what would happen if the two of them got tipsy and rolled into bed one stormy night? Ever scratched your head trying to picture what kind of awesome mutant child they might end up regretfully rearing? Ponder no more! Gametrailers.com user Exeros to the rescue!

All the psychotic melodrama of Tom Yum Goong mixed with Shenmue's frantic near-miss gameplay! Kill them all Mighty Jaa! Enjoy!

Games of Tomorrow: Resident Evil 5

There's a new trailer floating about for Resident Evil / Biohazard 5. Missed it? See it here.

More on that in a bit. First, here's a bunch of conjecture and things you already know.

Announced way back in 2005, the fifth (Pfft. More like eighteenth) installment of the zombie schlocker super series has had a glut of development time. Usually for Capcom this spells re-start doom - Resident Evil 4 went through umpteen revisions during development, even spawning an off-shot title that didn't end up fitting the main series' survival horror bill (Devil May Cry, take a bow). Couple that kind of perfectionism with having to follow up one of the best received games of the last generation, and it's a wonder we're seeing anything this side of 2010. Interestingly though, Resident Evil 5 hasn't really changed much since the first time it was seen. It's still Chris Redfield looming in shadows assassinating black people.



Producer Jun Takeuchi (Onimusha 3, Lost Planet) has spoken about Black Hawk Down being a major influence on the game. Although immediately daft in the context of a horror game, this statement makes a perfect kind of sense: Ridley Scott's version of the Battle of Mogadishu presents the invaded Somalians as violent, barely human, mob monsters. It's preferable to regard the film as a particularly spec-heavy soldiers vs running zombies action episode, rather than a deadly accurate historical document. Resident Evil 5 follows accordingly with Redfield on his own Police action, wandering in and around shadow heavy shanty towns, gun drawn ready to blast the frothing villagers. An unwanted, trespassing, invader. As with Part 4, it's just you plus guns fighting against armies of psychosis infected farmhands. Man vs riot. Much less fringe this time though.



So what's Capcom done in the intervening months regarding 5's less than delicate approach to race relations? Even up the cultural divide among the zombies? Change the games location entirely? Harp on about the concept of Zombie originating from West African religions (cradle of un-life)? Ignore the problem and hope it goes away? Nope! The answer is to introduce an ethnically non-specific sidekick!



Hooray! It's like Vin Diesel: The Girl. Enough colour to go some way to redress the racism accusation, but not enough to turn off middle class white people / racists. It's compromise, compromise! Said lady hasn't been blessed with a name yet, but will apparently form the other half of a much mooted co-op mode. It's the Dead Rising wish that never happened. Bad press appeasement, knowing fan hug, and a mechanic heist of Gears of War's sole trump card in one swift move? Capcom, you spoil us.



Tag along co-op character will be able to drop in and out of play for multiplayer, and hopefully entirely abscent during single play: I don't particularly want to be saddled with either a drone I can command to engage enemies, or an AI led fight-bot that makes the game a cake-walk. Atmosphere's a worry too, I'd rather the series strayed further into tense creep-walk territory rather than Gears' mindless NFL cover seizure. Mind you, Capcom effortlessly juggled a couple of varieties of sidekick in Resident Evil 4 - hostage de jour Ashley consistently kept her head down, and back-to-back fight assist Luis muddled on unobnoxiously. Knowing the pedigree, there's little reason to do an outright balk. More a cautionary heavy burp. Unless of course you like playing with other people. In which case much of the preceding paragraph will seem like the inane grumblings of a friendless grouch. Guilty as charged (My total lack of broadband / Xbox LIVE doesn't help either).



Digression: Resident Evil 4 always had uncomfortable overtones of racial philosophy for me. I remember finally unlocking the machine-pistol on the Japanese Famitsu demo, booting the preview back up and racing into town. Aryan superman Leon, clad in Gestapo fop sheepskin coat, armed with a compact death pistol repeater rushing headfirst (invading!) into an Eastern bloc rural village. Gunning the simple village folk down and stealing respite in their houses. It was like an ethnic cleansing simulator.



Couple that with the notional objective (you know other than destroy the underclass), rescue the attractive blonde girl from their creepy foreign clutches - they even had a non-Christian socialist workers religion that worshipped the Earth (or things born from it). Pagans! Wipe them out! Sounds like a particularly despotic invasion justification pot-boiler. Take charge of the mighty blonde superman and crush the Slavic work-hordes! They're beneath our perfect contempt.



Luckily 4 does a volte-face come the end credits, punishing our efficiency by portraying the devil villagers as victims of circumstance. They had families too Leon, you dick! End of digression.

So how's the trailer looking? It's Resident Evil 4 in HD drag with Africa accessories. Is that bad? The same basic stalk types appear: shambling zombie villagers, burlap bag-hatted chainsaw heavies, and face burst Blade 2 Venus fly-mouths are all present and correct. Looks like the Plaga parasite, or a form thereof, are back - force mouth, gang-rape body seizing (as is usual). Ugh. Maybe we'll get to intervene in a mobile plague spread this time? 4 always teased a land swarm religious fever among the Ganados, it'd be fun to see the cult ploughing a missionary tract through Africa, leaving vacant stare shuffle-stabbers in their wake.



The added oomph of Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 looks to be directed at producing aggressively darting crowd mobs, 4 was no slouch in this area to begin with. If constant harassment is the brief, it boggles the mind what Capcom could throw at us this time. 4 never quite topped the improv siege at its outset: the quick mix of an ever advancing limitless enemy, a roaming 'boss' character, and a multiple entry house-puzzle hideout was a videogame immediacy masterclass. Constant variations of that particular set-up is a solid set-piece backbone. Looks to be new ways of dealing with the hassle-mobs too, multiple context sensitive push-strikes have migrated over from Mercenaries mode, perhaps with a touch of God Hand's refined idiocy? Chris' uppercut has disaster impact! There's even something that looks like an ever present machete. That's a nifty knife one-up.



Resident Evil 5 is escalation, not reinvention. That's more than enough for me.

This Is How It Ends: Thunderbirds

After forty years, thirty two TV episodes, two spin-off Supermarionation movies, a Japanese animated series, and a Commander Riker big screen balls up: This is how Thunderbirds ends. This is how The Hood is undone. The triviality of the circumstances have a grim ring of truth about them. We come to mourn you Mighty Hood! May your bizarre Fu Manchu eyebrows blossom in hell.