The mysterious workings of Mr. Pencil

I know, I know, I haven’t posted in the longest while. Things have been a little hectic in Pencil World and I have had to use all the animal cunning at my disposal to set things right. Plus I’ve had four seasons of The Wire to plough through, and that shit takes time, son.

For real.

Anyhoo, later today at some point I’ll be shifting this outfit to its new home over at The Lost Levels. I even had that clever lady from Kinokofry pen me a super-sweet new banner, so mosey on over and check it out – she’s heaps talented. HEAPS. I’ll also be posting the photos of our young Loco Roco’s new home in sunny WA – that’s Washington, folks, not to be confused with Western Australia. (What kind of a massive noob would do that?? LOLOLOL)

With the winner announced we’ve finally started on Wave 2 of the Grand Piñata Project. What are we making? Stay tuned to The Lost Levels and Zero Light Seeds to find out!

Pencil out!

Everybody loved Mr. Burns' Halloween Costume

Take 2 has announced its partnership with Digital Extremes to develop the multiplayer modes for Bioshock 2. For those of you who don’t know – Digital Extremes are the gang behind Unreal and Unreal Tournament, so their multiplayer FPS credentials are about as solid as you can get.

The MP will be a prequel to the original story, putting us in the squelchy shoes of a Plasmid test subject for Sinclair solutions – the “premier provider of Plasmids and Tonics in the underwater city of Rapture.”

Smashing noobs earns XP, which can in turn be used to unlock new weapons, plasmids and tonics. According to Cristoph Hartmann, President of 2k, these can be cobbled together to create “hundreds of different combinations, allowing players to develop a unique character that caters to their playing style.” The multiplayer experience will also feature Rapture before it was “reclaimed” by the ocean, and will feature fully reworked versions of the Kashmir Restaurant and Mercury Suites in which to do battle.

Alongside their brief press release, 2k were also kind enough to send out a bunch of sweet assets, a whole bunch of which you will find after the jump.

Enjoy!

Kegadoru meets steam punk in this Big Sister concept art

After six schooners of filthy Toohey's Clarice was quite the catch.

Screw you, Benny!

Brangelina decided to add an element of chance to future child-gathering missions

Needlepoint takes on a whole new meaning for the residents of Rapture

Smells like pork, tastes like chicken.

That’s all for now – word on the street is there will be some sweet Multiplayer shots up for grabs in the near future, so I’ll be sure to post them for your viewing pleasure.

Oh noes - the cruel drunk is stealing Boutros Boutros-Ghali!

Remember how I dropped that CAPS-LOCKED cliffhanger at the end of my last post? You know, the one where I said “THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES?” Well, it did and, thanks to my natural immunity to pig fever, still does.

Brace yourselves for the ultimate prize giveaway of all time!

That’s right chiddlers – Messrs. Lien and Pencil are giving away one of the sweetest piñata known to humanity. We spent days crafting the little blighters and, in the end, felt that our friends simply did not deserve them. We like to think that you guys are more deserving. You have, after all, stood by us through thick and thin, offering unconditional acceptance and love right where we needed it most (round the back of the bike sheds).

I hope our new master is as nice to us as Mr. Pencil and Ms. Lien were.

For the record, I do not endorse the ludicrous names bestowed upon our young charges. Steve is clearly a Horace, and Colombo is much more of a Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Still, she won’t listen, and neither should you. Why?

Here’s why:

DO NOT NAME YOUR PINATA. Doing so forms an immediate emotional attachment that can only be severed by the crafting of The Verbal Bullying Box™. If you must call it something, call it “A Horrible Egg” or ” The Hateful Sow” as this will actually make it easier to dispatch it, when the time comes. Call it something nice and bad shit will go down.

It's funny because it's true! (It's not true.)

The piñata contains a whole bunch of tasty treats, along with a small handful of plastic mercenaries (parachutes supplied). There is also 1 (one) tiny packet of Ovalteenies, but I can’t remember which piñata was lucky enough to be the recipient. Either way – there’s a pound and a half or so of sugar inside including tiny bees, ladybugs and tree frogs (note: these are not real animals).

Who said gamers have bad diets? That paper provides all the fibre I need!

To go about winning this remarkable creature, simply post a comment at the end of this here doohickie and riddle me this:

Which gaming icon should be next in line to receive our piñata treatment?

As you might have guessed, keep the entries confined to the big wide world of videogames and pay attention to the small print nestled below.

Competition closes at midnight on Tuesday 19th May. Ms. Lien and I will announce the winner at some point the following day.

May the best mang/womang win!

Tees&Cees

1. Only one entry is permitted per person. If you are a conjoined twin, you only count as one person because, really now, there’s only one body that’s gonna be whacking the piñata, regardless of how many pairs of arms you have. 2. Due to comments being checked particularly frequently on this here blog, you will be able to see what entries have come before yours. As such, if we like an entry, we will make the person who suggested it first win. So if someone has suggested your idea, let that be a lesson to be faster next time, or just come up with something better. 3. You are not eligible to enter if you have ever had dinner with either Tracey or myself.  4. If the piñata is damaged or destroyed while in transit, Tracey and I will take no responsibility and you will just have to suck it down and deal with it. 5. Judge’s decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into. If you’re unhappy with our decision, QQ. 6. Don’t tell Tracey, but hot girls can send private mail to Mr. Pencil featuring pictures of their features in order to improve (but not guarantee) their chances of success in this exciting and entirely worthwhile competition. 7. The winner promises to try their absolute hardest to take photos of the piñata-smashing and general merriment so we can celebrate its demise/rebirth on Terminal Atrocity and Zero Light Seeds. OKTHXBAI. worried about swine fever? this skilfully hidden text won’t help you AT ALL.

So. I’ve been pretty quiet for a while. Reports of my early demise were grossly exaggerated, however, despite a pretty horrible dose of the man flu, which had me laid out for a week or so. Post-recovery I’ve been engaged in a TOP SECRET PROJECT, which finally reached fruition last weekend. Unlike my last such project (bees + tiny cameras + dressing rooms), this one actually worked and had the added bonus of being entirely legal.

Don't cry for me, I'm already dead. (No, I am only sleeping!)

The creative juices got rolling when my girlfriend and I jointly decided told me our housewarming was going to be Mexican themed. “OK gringa,” I said, and that was that. With the girlfriend out of town for the weekend, I was issued strict orders to tidy the house, put up more outside lighting, unpack the last boxes from our move and tidy the study. Somehow this got lost in translation. What I really did was this:

1. Turned the study into a war-zone.

2. Devised a scheme to make home-made piñata.

The war-zone was pretty boring, so I’m going to write about the crazy trip that was making a piñata.

For the full list of things you’ll need to make the piñata, refer to Zero Light Seeds. Although, being an incompetent list-writer, Tracey failed to mention that aside from the glue, balloons and newspaper, you will also need a wire coat-hanger.

Once you have your bits and pieces this is what you will need to do:

1. Identify a target
2. Make the infrastructure for your papier mache marvel
3. Combine spooj and paper to make an impenetrable barrier
4. Fill your creation with life (and lollies)
5. Get some drunk bastard to smash the heck out of all your hard work and kick the lollies over the balcony 

Once you have done these several things you will end up with something that looks a lot like this:

El Burro wanted to remind the loco rocos that whispering was very inconsiderate.

Identify a Target

Identifying a target was a no-brainer. It was a Mexican themed party and everyone knows those crazy pseudo-Spaniards are totally loco. What better piñata to make, then, than Loco Roco piñatas! Even though that bit was easy, Tracey and I argued about which Loco Roco to make. She wanted to make a pimped out one with an afro, but she seemed to think an afro was made out of scrumpled up pieces of copier paper (she has led a very sheltered life). In the end we kinda ran out of time, so the bruises were for nothing.

Wendy, I can fly!

Make the infrastructure for your papier mache marvel

With our target identified, I just made Tracey blow up some huge balloons and we used them to create a “mid-bounce” body shape.

The project almost failed when we realised that not all musicians have massive lungs (Tracey plays the accordion in a gypsy choir)

You could use chicken wire, skin or other stuff. You probably don’t want to use chicken wire, though, because it’s a pig to break through, even with an aluminium baseball bat. Also, skin doesn’t really hold it’s shape so well and I can’t think of anything else.

Combine spooj glue and paper to make an impenetrable barrier

Tracey was adamant that it wasn’t spooj, but I’m still not convinced. The glue she brought along was STILL WARM, and had separated slightly. It had a most unusual taste, not at all like the glue I used at primary school (although it’s possible our “art” suppliers had different diets – I know Mr. Lock used to eat a lot of ham, which would account for the fleshy after-taste of English Clag). Regardless of its background, the “glue” only lasted about half a balloon.

Preparations for the crazy euro bukake party began in earnest

In a panic, we settled on a mix of flour and water. The recipe we used was from a dear lady in Michigan who was building a papier mache shrine to Shirley Bassey. 

Tracey became furious when I applied the man-glue to the balloon using a fork. She is a very controlling person with a pebble for a heart.

Remember kids – go to Zero Light Seeds for more details and pictures and things like that. It really is a very good blog! Go look!

Fill your creation with life (and lollies)

I spent a small fortune on lollies. For three piñatas I filled a whole Coles shopping basket. That’s quite a lot. So much, in fact, that I was convinced I would be singled out as a deranged meth addict trying to feed my sugar cravings, and bought some pita breads to cover my shame. Once back at the penthouse, we crammed the eggs to the brim with their new lolly yolks.

We must all suffer for our art.

Layering and sugar-cravings met, we painted our piñatas. Tracey, who is a serious artiste, went for a complex blend of cadmium and burnt ochre (possibly sienna) to achieve a pleasant mottled effect on her piñata-to-be. I went straight for the mid-cadmium and applied a solid block of colour. I think Tracey secretly preferred my approach, as she got quite grumpy at this point. I could have told her it was beginners luck, but that would have been a lie. It’s a gift. SUCK. IT. DOWN.

The master at work.

We left the eggs to dry for another couple of days before the big day, leaving the facial features until the morning of the party. I left this to Tracey, as she has a much steadier hand than I do (plus the latest copy of Who had just arrived, and I was busting to find out how fat Tyra Banks had become over the last seven days).

She did a sterling job, and invested these previously lifeless, but beautifully crafted, eggs with a joie de vivre that was heartbreaking. Never has a condemned man looked so bouyant.

It is...alive!

CAUTION!! With your fully badical pinata now finished it’s likely that you will have formed quite an attachment. THIS IS A MISTAKE. Put it in a box and on that box write cruel things to yourself, like: “I never loved you anyway” “U R ADOPTED” and so on. This will cause years of bitterness and hatred to well up within you, severing the attachment and saving the piñata from a life of quiet misery. This is a good thing.

Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind. I'm doing it because I love you.

Get some drunk bastard to smash the heck out of all your hard work and kick the lollies over the balcony

After all this hard work, we had grown very attached to our young Loco Roco. It seemed a shame to have worked so hard on something only to see it smashed to pieces by selfish and ungrateful drunk people. Luckily, the reserve piñata was our scapegoat/prototype. We figured we would see how people behaved with the crappy one from the $2 shop (which cost me $25!) and if we deemed them worthy, they could crack the skulls of our beloved Loco Roco.

No way was I letting this douche bag loose on my beautifully crafted piñata.

Sadly, our friends are savage animals and the sacrificial piñata lasted about 15 seconds. It didn’t even get close to being put on its special bamboo pole before it was kidnapped by the “alternative” section of the party. They toyed with it for a while before lashing out with their hands and faces until the poor burro’s entrails were gracing the balcony floor.

The brave loco roco lived to fight another day. The same cannot be said for my gardener, Pablo, who later died of illegal immigration.

Clearly, these criminal maniacs were not deserving of the Loco Roco, and so they sit, gracing either side of my TV until a more deserving recipient can be found. That’s right; we didn’t break either of our Loco Roco piñatas.

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES…

Note to peasants: Manna from heaven doesn't usually have peanuts in it.

Anyway, catheter firmly in place (lest I miss the good bits), I found myself watching Miss Naked Beauty. Having determined that most of them were not very nice to look at (and that there was minimal chance of actual nudity) I was about to change the channel. Unfortunately, someone had placed a tin-foil hat DVD case betwixt the remote and the Foxtel box, causing an interruption to the signal. While I hauled my man flu-ridden carcass into an upright position the ad break kicked in – and who should grace the screen but Brine McFadden and his pretty wife Deltron3000. “But Jeremy!” I hear you cry. “What the dickens were those two buffoons doing upon your television receiver-box?”

Why, ADVERTISING NINTENDO PRODUCTS of course!

Regular readers (Hi mum), will know that I predicted/feared this just a few days ago when I was gearing up for the DSi press launch. (My sub-conscious suspected the two-bit cretins ladies from 4 Ingredients – further proof that Freud’s theories were all beard over substance.)

The image that inexplicably appeared when I googled "Sigmund Freud Beard"

If you’re reading this, Nintendo PR people, I think it would be a totally awesome idea to get Michael Atkinson to advertise Mad World. The chances of you dragging him away from his top secret cache of animal porn securing the services of such a busy and well respected man are slim though – he’s too busy trolling Kotaku.

Could this be a case for CIA Operative #1?

Apocalypse Meow: (Rabbit) Redux

Discovery of the day today yesterday was the trailer for the (proposed) anime version of Motofumi Kobayashi’s super sweet “Cat Shit One” (which some of you may remember as “Apocalypse Meow”). The original manga series was a three volume masterpiece, following the members of American recon unit Cat Shit One.

I’ve always liked it because the style reminds me of the natural history books I grew up with. They were printed in the seventies, I think, and no expense was spared spent. Instead of sending photographers out to get shots of such elusive beasts as the rabbit, owl or badger, they would simply commission an “action shot” illustration from a jaded old zoologist-slash-artist, showing the creature in its native habitat.

Look closely, dear readers, this is NOT a photograph! (or is it?)

Anyway, some people get all deep and say that the use of animals in combat situations brings mans inhumanity to man into sharp relief. Me? I’m looking forward to a future where shampoo is tested on humans and rodents man the front lines. Think about it – we’d save a fortune mass producing weapons like the AK4.7 for our tiny combatants. Better still, it would only take 28-31 days to replenish fallen soldiers, meaning we’d no longer need to worry about silly things like tactics and friendly fire. Seriously, who needs super expensive robots when you can have a million armed-to-the-teeth rabbits cracking skulls on your behalf? 

Still not convinced, comrade? Then check this baddy out. I’m going to sit quietly and wait for my invite to the Pentagon to discuss breeding programmes. Ciao!

The new Nintendo DSi - you've never seen anything quite like it!

So, I just got back from the DSi event. I’d been forewarned that Nintendo PR tend to put on…unusual events, but I don’t think I was adequately prepared. The mystery celebrity wasn’t Brian/Delta OR those two women from 4 ingredients (and no new cooking mama /sadface). Instead it was James Kerley Curly. Now, I’m not from around these parts, so I don’t really know who anyone is anyway, but this time, I had even less of an idea. I snuck my iPhone out and googled him while he gibbered on about how we didn’t look as nerdy as he imagined (way to win an audience over!). Now, the only likely candidate I could find was this one on IMDB. Would Nintendo hire a “celebrity” whose only achievement thus far is CIA Operative #1 in a film only 8% of Canadians have heard of? I certainly like to think so. star of Channel 10′s hit dating show “Taken Out.” I swear to God, I thought he was their PR boy. Maybe he’s moonlighting for some extra beans? I just hope they didn’t have to pay him much as the presentation only lasted a few (strangely patronising) minutes. 

James "Not CIA Operative #1" Kerley

Why so short? Well, the DSi has virtually no new features. The screen is 17% larger (or 1/4″ bigger), has better speakers (but plays your sweet toons via the horrors of AAC) and has two cameras (offering a mighty 300px resolution). It also has a shortened lifespan, dubious backwards compatibility with current DS titles, and ships with no games! 

I could probably forgive the terrible picture resolution and the slightly bigger, power-gobbling screen, but to ship a new piece of hardware with no native games seems an act of madness. The word on the street is it won’t even ship with an SD card, so you’ll need to add one of those to the bill too. We asked the PR team how much onboard memory it has, but were told to see them after class (as a general rule, this means it’s got hardly any, but they are trying to keep that fact under their bonnets). The good news is that we’ll be able to download games from their DS store using the newly renamed Nintendo Points (neé Wii Points). Even better – all new DSi units will ship with 1000 FREE Nintendo points until March 2010™! So we could fully appreciate the quality of these downloadable games we were offered a demo of one of the “release titles.” I have included my artist’s impression of it, below.

Note: The image seen here is of a slightly higher quality than that seen on the DSi

 This might sound a little negative, and I suppose my first impression wasn’t overly favourable. The more cynical amongst you might think it’s because I didn’t “win” a DSi for myself, for RSVPing early enough (kinda hard seeing as I, along with my fellow game journos, only received the invite yesterday – Aussie Mens Health got theirs weeks ago!). I was actually happy enough with my DSi notepad (as seen above), DSi memory stick and DSi branded mint container. Yah, RLY.

I can see the DSi being a huge success in Japan, with it’s cutesy sticker photo features and hysterical ability to pitch-shift voices for instant chipmunk fun (seriously, it is always funny). I’m just not sure how big a market it will have here, especially as it will presumably have the current DS to compete against. 

Let’s wait and see, shall we?

At only four kilos, the DSi takes portable gaming to level 3-1 and beyond

Tomorrow morning Later today I’m off to spend some quality time with the Nintendo DS, ahead of it’s Australian release on 2nd April. With a 10:30am start there is no guarantee of alcohol, that traditional motivator of the jaded gaming press – so why am I going?

I’ll admit it – the lure of a potentially awesome celebrity is too good to pass up. Unfortunately, Nintendo has a habit of picking obscure pseudo-celebrities people such as Symantha Perkins (wife of something something Perkins, the swimmer) to promote their goodies. Tomorrow we are promised another “mystery celebrity” to talk us through all the excellent new features of the DSi. I’m hoping it’s Delta Goodrem and Brian “Fatty” McFadden doing a musical version of the standard PR nonsense. While the reduced battery life is unlikely to get much of a mention, I’m also hoping special attention will be devoted to the LACK of support for that hand-crippling monstrosity, the GH: Decades attachment – surely the system’s biggest draw card?

Not even Brian's blonde bob can save him from a shoe that is 98% sole (and 2% tan patent leather)

Hang on – did I just say “hoping?” Forgive me, I meant “terrified.” Which is why I’ll be wearing my orthopaedic shoes for some Iraqi style rough justice, just in case.

I’m also hoping to get my hands on some of that sweet hardware to keep me company on the train. My current DS isn’t actually mine, and I only have one game (a debug version of Dragon Quest: Hand of Heavenly Bride) so it would be pretty handy to score my own personal unit. I still won’t have any games, but at least I’ll shed the constant, nagging guilt associated with “my” current one. 

Fingers crossed!

Last-minute pre-event update: I had a crazy, pyschedelic dream about the event in the few hours between writing that up there ^^ and this down here. Remember the bowling scene in “The Big Lebowski?” Imagine that without any burlesque/erotic over or undertones. I guess I’m more excited, or more frightened than I thought. Turns out my sub-conscious doesn’t think it’s going to be Delta and Fat Brien. Instead, it suspects the two hosts from “hit” TV-show “Four 4 Ingredients” to be the mystery celebrities (to clarify: that’s hosts in the biological sense. These so-called women are here from outer space to drown our babies).

Perhaps they will be demoing the latest version of Cooking Mama? Here’s hoping!

The earliest models of the Stepford Wives were perhaps most notable for their shared CPU.

True love can manifest itself in many different ways

At university there was this girl who all the boys fawned over. She was hot. She was smart. She was almost unbearably pleasant. A happy quirk of genetics had blessed her with what my friend assured me were “mammaries from heaven.” No wonder, then, that she was so popular on campus. 

She could have had her pick of the bunch. Most of my friends would have tied stones around their sleeping girlfriend’s ankles, wrapped them up in a carpet and thrown them in the river for a chance to spend just one night with her. In a move that continues to defy rational explanation, she started dating a foul-mouthed cretin who looked unnervingly like the evil twin of Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards. Even at 20 he looked about 36. His glasses were so thick you could do chin-ups from them. His face lacked the muscles needed to express anything other than mild surprise or furious vengeance. He was not hot. Not by a stretch of even the most fervent imagination. His intelligence rested somewhere between a toaster and a stick. He was terminally unpleasant. A cartoon villain writ small.

Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards: An hero. SRSLY.

You’d think the albino man-child in the binoculars would be singing his good fortunes from the rooftops wouldn’t you? I know I would, if I was him. Luckily, I’m not him, because he treated his darling girlfriend with the level of unthinking, reflexive disgust most people reserve for the unexpected ingestion of faecal matter. 

So it was, then, that this unlikely pairing happened to be at a house party thrown by a mutual friend. A small group of us, including his better half were upstairs talking nonsense when Mr. Romantic popped his head round the door. She smiled sweetly at him and said, “I love you.” His reply? 

“Shove it up your arse, you bitch.”

Last I heard, they were still together. _

_