Ode to a Magnum 6D....

...as opposed of course to the disposable lighter-esque Magnum 6G Personal Defense Weapon System, or god forbid the plasma pistol, the 5 for a pound neon plastic purple disposable lighter of the Halo world.

To help escape the horrible winter that has only recently seemed to let go its grasp, I finally got an Xbox 360 after much hmming haaaing and played Halo 3 on legendary. During Halo: Combat Evolved on legendary there is much walking about looking for ammo and I developed a Sledge Hammer! like fondness for the M6D and it was one of the surprises that this lowly weapon became the weapon of choice and was a nice friend to talk to and say things like 'yeah you better run' and 'you better wait right there I'll be back in like an hour with some sniper ammo'. Which reminded me that first post I ever wrote on here was about Halo, 'Needler Dreams'

During Halo 3 when waves of feckers were coming at me, was to say in a very quiet voice..'well, that was quite the inconvenience'. It's strange the way 'realism' gets bandied about as a term. I would deem Halo 3 as realistic in that things feel real within the universe they have created, holding two weapons at a time and four grenades and health reviving etc. It's when you have to score points to buy abilities and such it gets to be a bit of a nightmare.

Like the other day, I started Fallout 3, where you have to choose important things like your sex, race and bad haircut etc about six seconds after your born. Now, I was balancing up options whether a heavy set black man would be able to survive the harsh post-apocalyptic more than a hot Asian lady, who might either bamboozle the mutants with sexual wiles or get killed easily. Then I thought I was over-thinking the game and chose a generic Caucasian goon. Plus, my name in the game is ‘Cuntybollix’, only because I wanted Liam Neeson playing my da to say it. He did say it was a lovely name though and I look forward to the day when the dread king Cuntybollix rules the postapocalyptic wasteland with and iron mutoid claw. I gave up and am still wandering around the vault looking for fucking bobby pins to open a door and getting pummelled because you have to pull up a computerized system and click loads of options to get a gun to fire and then you end up in your pants for no reason (mmm achieving nothing and ending up in my pants for no reason, maybe Fallout 3 is like real life.)

Where to start with Bayonetta! As per usual Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Puncuation gets it right:

See I really was more first person shooter kind guy, it had that lovely fluid quality and movement compared to watching the arse of some thick soilders are they give each other high fives and blow up terrorists (I'm looking at you Army of Two, idiots). But Bayonetta is like 8 foot tall and has guns attached to her high heels! If I am to play a third person game, at least make it something interesting to watch.

I had not really experienced quick time events before, it's like you're watching a cut scene that you can get killed in repeatedly for no reason. Again there are certain 'realism' rules, you fight flying upsidedown angel things, some shaped like ships! some just a big weel on fire or a gigantic pixalated planet with a red fiery ball inside it but when you get a pair of haunted ice skates you can only wear them on your feet, I mean I can already fly a bit and turn into a panther and my body hair comes off and turns into a parrot the size of a double decker bus to eat some angel gobshite why can't I wear haunted ice skates on my hand if I want to? Check out the madness:

Some special puddings...the artwork of Gentlemen Broncos

For those of a geeky sensibility Jared Hess's Gentlemen Broncos is a cult treat with a similar timeless setting and awkwardness to Napoleon Dynamite. For some odd reason, it has taken a critical fecking and been accused of 'bully porn', but I feel it is full of sympathy for the outsider geeks that inhabit it. Similarly to Art School Confidential, though I felt it could have reveled in and spoofed its milieu even more. As Darkplace shows in comedy, and Shaun Hutson shows in reality there is endless comedy to be had in the character of a totally unself-aware writer who feels that his mind-bending visions are almost to much for the human mind to comprehend.

A highlight is the great sci-fi book covers 'In the Year 2525' title sequence. One of my favorite books growing up was David Kyle's A Pictorial History of Science Fiction and I noticed some of the covers straight away but presumed some were mocked specifically for the film.

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to reproduce them here just as covers with the originals I could find, which were a lot less than anticipated.

Frank Kelly Freas

This one was a surprise, an uncanny likeness of Sam Rockwell, not created specifically for the film but by David Lee Anderson :

"This was the first science fiction painting that I used myself as a model, painted in 1989. The background is taken from a shopping mall in Dallas called The Galleria. It had a nice perspective, which had become one of my specialties, and I developed the shuttle-like craft as if they were in a large hangar."