Apparently, Andrew Ainsworth – the original manufacturer of those penile skid-lids – was paid a whopping £35 per unit back in the day.  These days, to make a bit of lunch-money on the side, he sells replicas using the original moulds, which are prized items among the kind of idiots who worship Star Wars, and who like dressing up as space-Nazis.

Poor little George Lucas who is, as we all know, practically broke, decided that this was a violent affront to his bank balance, and decided to – guess what – sue Ainsworth, and proceeded to win a $20 million judgement in the US.

Because Lucas suffered $20 million in lost revenue.  Oh, no wait, that’ll be punitive damages – that phenomenon whereby the already rich get to split open the arse of the little guy using their big, shiny-suited lawyer’s dick.

But now – more the miracle, so maybe it’s fucking Christmas – those enfeebled wig-botherers in the UK have done us proud, and declared, quite officially, and in legal writing and everything, that Ainsworth is free to ply his trade because, in this happy-sceptred jurisdiction, at least, Star Wars is not “a work of art”.

Oh calloo-callay, I hear you chortle.  But Lucas’ charmless fuckwipe of a lawyer (haha, sore loser) is all of a bother about this ruling, which is not only, according to a LucasBling spokescum, a “huge blow” to Harry Potter and Dr Who…

Er. Yeah.

…but also “a huge step backwards” for “Britain being a creative hub”. Why, because Old Pelican-Chin didn’t steal all his ideas from more original and gifted auteurs?  Pot, therefore thieving kettle.  And now, neither of them are art.

Props, as it were, to the Daily Toryguff for making our fucking day.

Mass Effect 2

Where most enjoyed the first instalment, I sat so awkwardly on the fence throughout the entire thing, that I’ve got a rectum littered with fucking splinters. This sequel looks set to talcum powder any issues I had with the first game, if not just for the personal benefit of me being able to get back on the fence. Possibility of a prolapsed haemorrhoid: likely.

Just Cause 2

Did you play the first game? I can’t recall the last time I felt so fucking outraged at a £12 price-tag. Trust me, there’s no “just cause” for releasing a sequel.

Bioshock 2

Yet another second instalment. Where’s all the creativity gone, you ask? Hopefully it’s gone back into recreating the stunning Atlantis that is Bioshock’s submerged utopia – we’ll have to wait and see. But fear not! Gamesuck will remain pessimistic for the entire duration of hype.

M.A.G.

“Massive Arse-ache of a Game”. 256 players online? Bets are on for that figure dropping come release (Suckazoid’s got fifty on it dropping below 200). We’ll also be laying odds on it having the Modern Warfare fuck-a-newbie control scheme.

Dante’s Inferno

Based on an overrated poem (kid you not), yet the only thing this has in relation to The Divine Comedy, is the fact you’ll be guffawing throughout. Have you seen the Lust section? Fuck a priestess – that’s enough to put you off the female genitalia for the rest of your gaming life; not that you were getting any in the first place, you acne-ridden, bone-idle, carbon-footprinting sacks.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

Oh, fuck off Sam Fischer. Everyone knows you’re just a shit Bourne minus the charisma. Actually, I suppose that’s quite an achievement in itself, what with Bourne being played by that gormless, non-provocative wax-model Mark Wahlberg Matt Damon.

Final Fantasy XIII

Whey, it’s finally coming out! It’s gotta be good, right? Right? Answer: once you get over the purty gwafix and nostalgic feel, it’s probably just another lifeless traipse through a distinctly bland sci-fi world that’ll take up more time than it took Darwin to write The Origin of the Species. Side-note to the 360 owners: you might want to take up a course in juggling about now, what with all the discs you’re going to be using come March. Average metacritic score: 98.

Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker

Does anyone even use a PSP anymore? How fucking hard is it going to be to find three mates with PSPs and a copy of the game, just so you can play it properly? Honestly, what a load of industry-only wank. I can understand its release in Japan (what with the massively engrossing market that Monster Hunter has there), but Europe and America?

Super Mario Galaxy 2

As if Wii owners don’t suffer enough, Rollerball’s Energy Corporation Nintendo decide once again to release a single decent game that prevents me from selling that rotting white corpse of withered technology for another year. Let’s just fucking pray it’s waggle-free and hasn’t incorporated the losesomeweightyoufatfuck board.

This article was brought to you by Sir Charles Tanqueray.

What our offices look like. In our dreams

Ergo a visionary, creative group of individuals, all dedicated to ensuring that you, the sweaty-palmed punter, are given your fortnightly dose of high-octane, riveting, HD FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN. (Unless you like JRPGs, in which case please replace every instance of “FUN” with, alternately, “GRIND”  and “TEENAGE BOY WITH SILLY HAIR IN IDIOTIC CLOTHING”).

The reality is, naturally, somewhat different.

The alleged creative/technical geniuses are in fact a herd of sad, flaccid individuals. Without wishing to get too anthropofuckinglogical on you (primarily because many of these twats are barely human, and coprology isn’t really my fucking forte), we’re looking at distinct groups, each of which interact in specific ways with the other, each of which has adapted to its specialized role within the shit-heap that is the gaming industry, and each of which has massive fucking delusions as to its importance in the overall scheme of things.

At the top of the heap, you have the über-communicators. The opinion-makers. The fearless scribes who, with one swoosh of their mighty pen, can make or break your common-or-garden mulit-platform online enabled, PDLC-peddling megagame. The Fourth Estate. The journalists.

Or, if you’re not completely batshit insane and have, at the very least, the observational capacity of the average fruitfly, at the bottom of the heap you have fucking game journalists. These sad fucktards with their deliciously unironic pre-pubescently sticker-festooned flaptops manage the rare and unusual feat of being at the bottom of two piles, being the lowest of the low when it comes to cuntsack scribble-hackery as well. Lower even than dance-music journalists. They do not deserve your pity however.

Fuck, no.

We’re talking ponytailed, Shitnies-wearing clittards with major halitosis and attitude problems, brandishing their press passes and demanding to have first dibs on “evaluating” whatever new, glossy game we have to show, before furiously tap-tap-tapping drivel into their Delltops while crouching in corners of GeekFest’whateverthefuckthisyearis, trying to look important. Thrusting their tattered E3 2004 (“man, the last real E3, man”) courier bags into the crowd and demanding to be let through as if they fucking own the fucking joint.

(Clue: they don’t. They’re pondscum.)

Namedropping like plod-loving cuntfuck Michael fucking Winner – going on and on and fucking on about how they’re really tight with fucking Miyazaki, boys with Kojima, down with the Housers and regularly hang out with Yamauchi.

Babelfish translates: they do their fucking jobs by interviewing a bunch of video game “creators” – parasites who haven’t had an original idea in over a fucking decade and who are desperately trying to flog the limp umpteenth instalment of whatever half-arsed idea made them extraordinarily rich men in the first place (with the exception of Saint Miyazaki of Cool Japanese Stuff, natch) – and once saw the dude who did Gran Turismo at a press junket after-party. Shortly before being sick all over the harassed PR guy who was desperately trying to keep the alleged talent well away from the Asahi-downing jizzsacks in bad streetwear. And that was just the guys from Consoles Plus who are, in the grand scheme of things, almost human. Well most of them. Some of them.

OK, one of them, once, and that’s only because he had the common fucking courtesy not to go through my pockets when I asked him to keep an eye on my stuff when I had to go outside for a coffin nail at a legendarily tedious industry bash last year. Goddamn idiotic health-nazi smoking laws.

But I digress.

The only person lower than them on the Mario food-chain is balding “visionary” (babelfish translates: “has-been”)  Peter fucking Molyneux. Cos he’s a right cunt.

Polite notice: anyone who works in a check-out capacity in video-games retail does not work for the fucking videogames industry. Bene?

Pre-Christmas depression aside, I’ve been feeling a little down as of late – mostly due to the fact I’ve been on a compulsory level-grind in the testosterthon that is Borderlands. When I first heard of the game, it sounded like virtual polyfiller for the cortical dent I had been left with after completing Fallout 3; an FPS with role-playing elements, set in an American wasteland with deep character interaction and an excessive amount of looting (lawsuit?). What it actually turned out to be is something far, far worse…

…a JRPG.

Now, I’ve played through an unfair amount of JRPGs in my time; some of them great (Persona 4), others I’d rather jump out of a fucking window than catch even a glimpse of the box-art (Disgaea 3). But the one thing I’ve never encountered is a game that tries so hard to cater for a western audience that it desperately cloaks the JRPG elements that so clearly influence it. All the main offenders are here: level grinding; no justification for preposterous enemy levels; seemingly open-world gameplay masking a disgustingly linear experience; and SCDC syndrome (same character-model – different colour). Frankly, it reminded me so much of my teenage years of Shin Megami Tensei that it made me want to self-harm. Thanks to a severe case of unemployment (and some help from my friend Charles Tanqueray), I managed to persevere in the hope of one day returning the game to the shop with the receipt for a full refund.

Bord now...

However, what Gearbox failed to notice was that JRPGs usually contain a compelling plot. With Border

lands, the player is given nothing – think Forbidden Planet, but where the crew show up only to find Robby screaming “Look at me, I’m dancing! I’m DANCING!” in a desolate wasteland. I’m frankly astounded that I put any more than 5 hours into this game. My main gripe is that it’s so grotesquely littered with frame-rate issues and appalling enemy A.I., that it’s practically unplayable at the best of times. So why on Attenborough’s earth did I keep going?

There’s an air about Borderlands that makes it intoxicating; maybe it’s the graphics, or the fact it refreshed me after the binge-gaming that was Modont Carefare 2 – I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t say anything more about Borderlands, not because I don’t want to ruin anything for you, but mainly because there’s just nothing more to say…

The Legend of Fallout 3: The Wind Waker

…although I did forget to mention it has “BAZILLIONS OF GUNS” in it.

1 (one): the number of soi-disant “reality porn stars” hired by Kotaku as “celebrity” columnists, in a completely not-sleazy and entirely successful attempt to boink their hit-count through the roof.

88,000: the number of Kotaku readers who think they’d have a chance with the above.

0 (zero, in hell): the actual chance of the above.

Kotaku’s new hiring policy, apparently.

8 million.  The number of mostly Anglo-American fucktards who’d rather pay Microsoft for an online service that Sony provides for free, and with no discernible difference in quality.

37: the number of reasons, in dollars, to laugh at Sony for failing to break even on every console they sell.

68%: the average price drop, in Euros, of BluRay players over the last six months, and coincidentally the exact drop in the attractiveness of the PS3 as the “but it doubles as a BluRay player, honey” console.

12: out of 1,001 people polled, who actually gave a shit about BluRay.

100: the percentage of those twelve people who work for Sony.

0 (zero): the number of “motherfuckers” or “cunts” uttered by the characters – who are soldiers – in Modern Warfare 2.

430: the average number of people shot dead in a single play-through of Modern Warfare 2‘s campaign.

1% to 2%: the number of people that Convictstani Attorney General Michael Atkinson believes, “could go on to be motivated by these games to commit horrible acts of violence.”

70,000: the number of people who joined the U.S. Army last year.

6,000,000: the number of lazy cuntfarts who’d rather kill virtual terrorists than real ones, using Modern Borefare 2.

Twice: the number of times Michael Atkinson can fuck off.

3.2: percentage of Wii consoles used to play an actual videogame last month.

500,000: number of copies of Wii Fit Plus sold in the UK to date.

5: average number of minutes that Wii Fit Plus is played used before it gets mothballed by its fat-arsed owner.

39: out of forty, the score that Famitsu gave Final Fantasy XIII.

100: the percentage chance that the above was absolutely not rigged in any way.

3.9: out of forty, the score we’ll probably give it, but only because we’d like to kill it, fuck it and eat it.

∞: the volume, in litres, of Reggie Fils-Aime’s bloated fucking ego.

Not yet, anyway.