Now i did a feature over at the movie end of Vagusnet but i decided to close down the movie blog and include movie stuff here.

The feature in question was on torture porn and i want more people to read it so i will be posting up both parts of it just to see what everybody else thinks about this subject.

Now to start things off i just want to say that there might be some stuff in this feature that will not be appropriate to children as there might be some swearing and graphic detail.

I’ve gotten the warning out of the way and now down to what the hell this post is about and it’s basically about the movie industry trying to put some movies in a topic that i think does not exists and it only gives a more bad look on the films that are forced into this category.

To most critics the torture pron genre came about when a small company called twisted pictures came up with the idea about a serial who puts his victims through a challenge that will in the end give them some kind of soul back and this film was Saw.
As you can probably think the critics hadn’t a clue what to think about this movie as there hadn’t been a movie of it’s kind with such straight forward nastiness that it made them a bit uncomfortable, well i say they were completely wrong as in my eyes Saw wasn’t the start of the supposed torture porn genre and that the critics only want the public to hate this genre even more by latching something as evil as porn on the end of it.

If you cast your mind back to the 1920’s there was a movie released called freaks that centred on a leader of a carnival that tortured people for being different, now if you read that sentence that I’ve just written there you will notice the word torture and as you can see this film came out in the 1920’s not 2004 when Saw showed it’s face.

Fast forward a little and you’ll come up to the video nasty era of the 70’s and 80’s when movies like last house on the left, Evil Dead, i spit on your grave and many more, these films really boiled the blood of the BBFC, the critics and even the public because these showed stuff that people didn’t even expect to see in a movie, countless people were tortured, mutilated and killed in many different ways.
These films really pushed the boundaries of what films should be because people just thought that movies were there for big explosions and stupid little talking cartoon animals but they were so wrong and that the movie industry had a darker side to it that needed to be shown.

Well that’s it for now in the next part of this feature that will be up the same time next week i will dig more deeper into the torture porn genre and tell you more of why i really think that the critics are so wrong about calling it that

Oh Rock Band how you tease us with all of those new tracks and cocky Americans laughing at us because they have had the game since late last year well it’s finally time for us to get a bit of this gorgeous cherry.

The date we have to look out for is as early as May 23rd (yes that early) however we don’t have a price yet but EA might announce that today at a press event they are holding.

Just to make things a little more sweeter we get a few tracks those Americans didn’t get plus all 70 downloadable songs that are available via the US marketplace will also be available from day one with EA also stating that from May 27th all songs will be available on both American and UK marketplace.

So i guess it is now time to go and preorder yourself a copy and take out a bank loan just in-case, plus i also think it’s best if you clear a lot of room as there is enough kit to take up a full spare room.

Update - the price has just been released and cop a hold of this

Instruments (Drums, Guitar and Microphone) = £129.99
Game = £49.99 (everywhere will sell it at £39.99)
Total = £179.98 (£169.98 hopfully)

Grand Total = A shit load of money

Thanks very much EA for bleeding us dry

Update 2 - If you head over to the nice people at Play.com you will be able to get the instruments at £99.99 (saving 23%) and the game at £39.99 (saving 20%).

you will also be able to buy the drums and the guitar on there own with the drums costing you £69.99 and the guitar £59.99.

So thanks to Play.com it is’nt going to be that bad in the end.

As soon as i get pricing information from Game.com and Gamestation i will let you know.

Just in case you don’t know about this site head on over to the lolocaust as it’s one of the best sites out there on the Internet and it has a fantastic forum.

the site can be found here and don’t forget to tell everybody about it.

So here is the first top 10 on vagusnet and i decided to choose one that was a bit straight forward and that would also be a bit different to what has been put on other video games websites.

Without further ado here is my top 10 of the biggest gaming cock-up’s of the last 5 years.

10 - Halo single player
Well this will probably piss a lot of people off however you do have to agree that Bungie had dropped the ball with the single player side of Halo 2 and 3 because this game is all about the multi-player not the single player but this does not give a reason for Bungie to make one of the lamest single player story lines in gaming.
If I’ve ever been pissed off with a single player storyline this has to be it.

9 - Lack of Wii games
Now i know that gaming consoles have a hard time when they launch as there will be a lack of triple a titles however i thought that the Wii had the biggest problem, here you have a fantastic console however at launch it was hard to choose more than 3 titles for the list they had and it took them a while before another big title came out.
Now though the Wii has come into itself and we have a fantastic console on our hands.

8 - No support for the Gamecube
Ahh the poor Gamecube had a really hard time of it because of a lack of support, there was very few developers that was making games for the Gamecube so this killed it off, yes Nintendo had some fantastic games but it would of helped the Gamecube more if there was other developers that released some games on the Cube.

7 - UMD
Need i say more about Sony’s stupid little disc’s that they thought would kick of movies on the go however the UMD movie has to be one of the stupidest ideas for a film format.
Why would you want to sit on the bus with a PSP in your watching a movie so everybody else could see and also why would you want to watch a movie on the move that would end after the first hour with the terrible battery life of the PSP thanks to the UMD eating at the battery.

6 - HD DVD
Another movie format that was tied to a console however only in an add on mode and this was the quick death of HD DVD.
This movie format was here for very long but it did piss off people who bought the £130 add on for the 360 to play HD DVD only to find out a few months later that the company behind it was going to stop making HD DVD players thus ending HD DVD.
I was one of those idiots who bought the add on for Christmas thinking that HD DVD had a chance however a few months later the add on’s only use came in the for as a door stop because now more new movies were going to come out of it.
I think Toshiba should of learned from the stupid UMD’s and not try a new movie format.

5 - Ports on the PSP
when Sony talked about all of the things that the PSP could do they forgot to mention that the little handheld would get more PS2 ports on the consoles than new games and this is probably why the PSP hasn’t done as well as the DS.
Yes it’s nice to have one or two games from the PS2 on the PSP but when over 50% of the games are ports then you have to think what the hell was Sony thinking about by letting a shit load of games on there handheld being ports.

4 - The Gizmondo
Now you are thinking what the hell was the Gizmondo well it was supposed to be a handheld that would challenge the DS and PSP but from the get go this handheld had no chance.
Problems ranging from no promotion of the handheld to the stupid president of Gizmondo that because the handheld was doing so badly he decided to crash his $1 million car and blame it on somebody who wasn’t really only to get the insurance from the car (the idiot ended off in prison for what he did).
So here is a note to anybody who wants to release a handheld to go up against the PSP and DS don’t do it.

3 - E3 getting smaller
Why did the creators of E3 think it was a good idea to make the biggest gaming convention of the year smaller, now there is no harm making it smaller however the size they made it with last years E3 was just stupid the whole idea of E3 was for a shit load of people to be crammed in a convention centre to play some of the biggest games to come out of the next year.
I think that some people might think that the smaller E3 is better and that you have other events through the year however E3 was always the big event and now with it being as small as it is now gaming companies aren’t going think that it’s that important to announce there big titles at E3 only to have either there own event or go to another one like the Tokyo game show etc.

2 - PS3 Launch Price
When the 360 came out at the end of 2005 it was launched at £279.99 (premium) and this was seen as a really good price, then the Wii came out at only £179.99 and this was a big bargain so what did Sony do well they made one of the biggest fuck ups and release there console at a huge £424.99.
Now yes there is a Blu-ray player built into the console itself but this should not of been the reason why Sony should of released there new console at such a high price.
the price was the reason why the PS3 hasn’t done as well as the other 2 however Sony have dropped the price of the PS3 to a better price of £299.99 and this has kick started the PS3 into life however people might think that it was to late for them to do this.

1 - Red Ring of Death
There was only going to be one cock up that would be number one and that’s the red ring of death on the 360.
the problem happened not far from the launch where people were having problems with there 360 with it over heating so badly that it would end the life of there new console however things got even worse when more and more 360 were dying until it came to a point where Microsoft had to hold there hands up and admit there was a problem.
At the time the 360 wasn’t making a profit on the console so it was even worse when microsoft had to pull out another $1 billion to extend peoples warranty so that if the red ring had happened then they would be covered for 3 years and not 1 year.
Microsoft should have learned there lesson now so we expect that there next console should not have as many problems as the 360.

Well that’s it for my first top 10 don’t forget to tell me what you think and also give me some ideas what other top 10’s i should do.

Now the game has been out a little while so it’s time to tell you what i thought of the game and it isn’t all good news.

To start off with when you play the game for the first time you are in for a little treat as it can be fun to go around with a mate and shot the shit out of the bad guy’s however the cracks begin to show the more you play it.
The games major flaw comes down to the fact that it’s really really short (on the easy difficult setting it can be finished in less that a few hours) and it’s just the same thing over and over again.
The co-op elements just become repetitive and boring as there isn’t any variety to them and this was a very missed opportunity on EA’s part as they could of done so much more to make the game stand out a bit better

I’m not kicking the single player that much as the first play through of this game i enjoyed but i don’t see myself going through it again and again.

Now you might think that the huge saving grace of army of two will come down to the multi player side however this just makes the game worse as there is so much lag most of the time it’s unplayable, the enemy AI is so annoying that they constantly get in the way of you finishing your tasks, your main objectives are the same no matter how many times you play the maps and they stay in the same place and finally the biggest kicker is down to how many multi player maps there are and that’s a huge 4, yes you have read right there are only 4.

So over all the game is a big let down, I’m getting sick of magazines/Internet hyping up a game only for it to be a big let down plus the £40 price tag of it makes it even more hard more me to recommend this game.

Save up your money for either Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 or Condemned 2 Bloodshot.

Overall Score = 6/10

I thought i would add another feature to VN that every other gaming site does and thats top 10’s.

So to kick off this weekend will be the first one and thats about the top 10 biggest gaming cock-up’s of the last 5 years (catchy title is’nt it).

I want to try and not follow other gaming sites by also doing top 10’s on other subjects apart from the usual 10 best games ever etc (but i will include those in them as well).

If you have any suggestions as to what top 10’s you would like to see let me know and i’ll give them a thought.

I had to post up this trailer as i was a huge fan of the original Starship Troopers but the sequel was a bit pants so i have high hopes for the third one as the character Johnny Rico is back to kick some alien butt (horray).

It’s time for another Army of Two trailer for you to get your teeth around.
So enjoy.

A quick piece of news here but it seem’s that the big videogames magazine in japan Famitsu has said that Resident Evil 0 will be heading to the Wii sometime this year.

Now this is just a rumor and it’s unknown if this will just be a port of the Gamecube or if this will be a remake like they did with the original Resident Evil.

As soon as more info is released we will let you know.