Vanquish Review.

Everyone and their cat and dog has pre-ordered or bought Bethesda's Fallout: New Vegas. Except me. I went and bought Vanquish, a stylish new shooter from Platinum Games, who also made Bayonetta.

It wasn't such a hard decision. I have no doubt that Bethesda's game is more epic and varied than Vanquish but I haven't even scratched the surface on Fallout 3.

From the first time I saw the Transformers-like animations and gravity defying quick-time events in a preview of Vanquish, the game has remained firmly on my radar. Does it live up to my expectations?

The games story is your typical foreign baddies (in this case the Russians) taking over a satellite superweapon and you having to stop them before they wreak more havoc. At the time the game starts they have already microwaved San Francisco to within an inch of its life and are threatening to do the same to New York.

It's different from similarly premised games like Metal Gear Solid in that in this case you're part of a relatively huge United States Army task force. Guess what? In early levels, these NPCs they aren't completely useless which makes a bit of a change. Apart from actually being able to take out some of the masses of enemy combatants, giving stricken Marines first aid on the battle field (achieved by moving to them and pressing the action button), randomly gives you ammo or grenades as a reward.

You play Sam Gideon, a DARPA researcher who is ostensibly sent on this mission to get combat data for the hi-tech battle suit he dons throughout the game. He has a secret mission to retrieve Dr. Candide, the creator of the suit, who has been kidnapped by the Russians. Expect lots of twists, turns and betrayals.

I wasn't a fan of the voice acting for most of the characters. There are however multiple language soundtracks on the disc so maybe like most Anime, the original japanese soundtrack will sound better than the English.

The story is servicable but the scripting is a bit a lame. This would hurt most games but luckily Vanquish's gameplay is challenging enough to make the game a worthwhile experience, even if you get the feeling the plot is just there to link the various set pieces together.

Vanquish is hard. On Normal it's pretty tough for your slightly-above casual gamer like me. On Hard and God Hard (which is unlocked after you beat the game once on any difficulty), I don't even want to think about how hard it is. Vanquish is a cover shooter- think Uncharted- that strangely doesn't really want you to spend too much time hiding in one spot and patiently taking out your enemies. I tried to hide out the first time I played and one of the enemy bots sought me out and meleed me to critical health.

To play vanquish like Uncharted would be to do it a disservice. While going gung-ho is inadvisable seeing as only a few shots from the enemy will send you into critical mode (the game calls it AR mode)- a kind of bullet time mode that allows you to evade enemy bullets and attacks and run to cover- the game does expect you to dispatch your enemies with style. The trick is finding that midpoint.

Your suit is equipped with high speed thrusters that allow you to slide across the battlefield at insane speeds. You can also athletically evade and if you hit the evade and target buttons at the same time you will manually trigger AR mode.

It is hugely satisfying to finally get to grips with the control scheme. Imagine taking cover, vaulting over the cover, engaging AR mode so you float Matrix-style, taking out the enemy bots and getting back into cover without them knowing what hit them. In the hands of an expert Vanquish truly hits the heights.

In my hands however, there were many deaths. While the checkpoint systems are pretty kind, each time you restart from a checkpoint takes 1000 points from you score. It's a bit bittersweet to finally beat a massive robot boss only to look at the leaderboards and see that you're 20000 points behind the leaders at that stage of the game. Assuming you care about things like that.

Having a score, and having it means so much in this Web 2.0 world helps add some replay value to a game that is pretty short if you're a hardcore gamer and focus on games (unlike me who tends to nibble here and there at my games). Not happy with your score, you can play it again and try to better it and hoist yourself higher on the worldwide leaderboards. If your friends have Vanquish, it also automatically creates a leaderboard for you guys too for local bragging rights.

There is no multiplayer but there is a tough Challenge Mode which throws increasingly harder enemies at you (with no checkpoints as far as I've seen) that adds a bit of length.

Vanquish is definitely a game you should give a chance. It is stylish. In quieter moments I dare you not to just stop and switch weapons repeatedly. It is the coolest thing I have seen in games this year. The visuals are amazing. Despite being set on a giant satellite they've managed to make the scenery astounding.

And it manages to allay the style with a fair bit of substance.

A Woman Scorned...

First of all, a bit of background. University lecturer at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma decides to run a sex for grades racket. Sleeps with a female student, and still fails her, resulting in the student having to retake the class. Tries the same thing again and this time she's ready. She gets 2 boys to film their second encounter, and then it turns into a humiliation session for the lecturer where he is exposed- literally- on video, and blackmailed.

I'll admit when my sister told me that they got the teacher on video soliciting for sex from a student, I thought wow, what a good example of undercover reporting. I thought, these are the kind of youths with need to take Nigeria into the future. I was feeling all inspired, and then my sister crushed my idealistic fantasies by telling me the whole story.

It turns out that the only reason we saw the video, which has been making the rounds on the various video hosting websites, was pure revenge. In fact the idea that there was a video at all was based on revenge.

It was nice to see the randy old goat of a lecturer get his comeuppance, and be generally humiliated. The man had little remorse, even though he was looking at the end of professional life. He maintained a reptilian level of calm, like as if he couldn't quit and played his real-life viliain role quite well. The scene where he pulls on a pair of board shorts over his ruined trousers had me in tears of barely restrained glee.

However, I'm going to make a Controversial Statment. The villain of the piece was not the only guilty party in that video. Yes, he abused his powers and preys on the weak, but at the end of the day, it takes two to tango. His actions were unjust but this was not some retarded girl, she was aware of her actions. While I may be looking at it through the lens of bias, her face possessed a hardness that told me that this was a girl who knew how to play the game. She was fine with the practice when it looked like she would be passed, deservedly or undeservedly.

In doing so she lost all moral right in this situation. She was willing to walk away smiling, willing to wear the cap and gown and smile for pictures with her friends. She allowed an injustice to continue, for girls who may be more innocent and naive to be forever destroyed and for a man, nay reptile, to continue to to prey on the weak and desperate. That to me is the sad thing about this whole issue.

Wake me up after July 11.

Don't get me wrong; I will still watch this summer's World Cup, but you have to wonder what the point is, when your country's FA- in this case the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF)- has decided to reduce their own chances of performing well at the tournament.

No one expects Nigeria to win it, but given the people in our group, there is no reason why we can't qualify for the second round at least. However, it won't be incompetent referees or 'tactical naivete' that will be our undoing. It will be the corrupt and incompetent buffoons running our football that have always and will again put paid to the dreams of Nigerian football fans.

Where to begin. Is it the shady selection process of a new manager whereby the one who was selected was the one who would give the selectors the biggest kickback (alledgedly); or the fact that the manager was changed so close to the World Cup and changed to one who's knowledge of Nigeria and its players is probably limited to scouting reports from the 2002 world cup? Or maybe it's the fact that thus far, only one pre-world cup friendly has been organised for the team. Or maybe it's the latest event to make us do a collective facepalm- the lodging of a Senior national team at the SA equivalent of a Motel 6...located in a place (Durban) where the environmental conditions (altitude, climate, temperature) are totally unlike where we will be playing our matches.

The clowns who run our football meanwhile are telling Nigerians that we can make the semis. They better use some of the money they've snaffled to hire sharpshooters to shoot the likes of Messi in the kneecap, cos that is the only way that pipe dream will happen.

I've long since said that the NFF has to become a profit-oriented independent organisation only then will they be forced to operate with any common sense. If like England's FA, they were responsible for much of their own revenue streams rather than government handouts, they would not mess about with their main cash cow, the Super Eagles like this.

Welcome to Lagos...

Nigeria once again has a bee in its collective bonnet at its portrayal by foreign media. Towards the end of last year, Sony was forced into an apology to the Nigerian government and into changing one of their adverts after it managed to include a throwaway line about Nigeria and 419. To paraphrase "If I believed in everything I read on the Internet, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire."

Most Nigerians were furious, calling for a boycott of Sony products despite the fact online at least, Nigerians have a bad reputation. Sure not everyone in Nigeria is a Scammer or in the local parlance here Yahoo Yahoo boy, but at the same time, honest Nigerians have sat back and watched their reputation go down the toilet. These honest Nigerians are even complicit, albeit indirectly in the glorifying of 419. If you bought (stop laughing at the back there)Olu Maintain's Yahoozie can you not be said to be accepting of 419?

Why Nigerians were offended is beyond me. I will never forget about reading a magazine article about the 10 richest Nigerians and almost choked when I noticed the addition of the Abachas amongst others. Yes, in a list of businessmen and industrialists (some of whom might be a little shady themselves) the klepto Abacha family (Transparency international estimated that their looting ran into the billions of dollars) is included and then you want to come and act hurt and offended when Sony makes a fairly humourous comment?

I could spend all day getting sidetracked about idiotic stuff like this so lets move on to the actual topic of this blog. Last Thursday, the BBC (on BBC2) aired Welcome to Lagos. According to Will Anderson, the producer, the show is a 3 part series about the slums and ghettos in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city and in fact one of the largest cities in the world.

The first episode focused on the Olososun rubbish dump. Reviews and user comments have widely varied. While most of the Western people were impressed by the programme commenting on the work-ethic and can-do attitudes of the people who live on the dump and the stories of people like aspiring musician Vocal Slender. Many of them were shamed by it in fact. While the UK has dozens of people who would rather just live on benefits and do no work, this documentary showed people who didn't even have some of the opportunities your average London chav has and yet they carried themselves with self-respect and dignity.

Nigerians were however less impressed wondering why the BBC had to show the slum in the first instance.

Facebook statuses condemning Welcome to Lagos sprouted up like chacne on a steroid user. Anderson's producers blog on the BBC was swamped with angry messages from Nigerians in the UK most of whom managed to miss the point quite spectacularly. Pictures of 'upscale' areas like Victoria Island, Lekki and Ikoyi were frantically uploaded as if the existence of the good parts of Lagos somehow means Olososun or Ajegunle don't exist. Someone even posted a picture of Mega Plaza- Century 21 mall. Oh look, congratulations we have shopping. Are they still selling Super Nintendo games for almost full price still?

News programmes and documentaries are not about making things look good. One of the accusations thrown about was that in every documentary or news story about London there was a shot of London's shiny bits like Canary Wharf or the London Eye and nothing of Peckham and the like. Beyond the fact that it would be pointless showing Peckham in a piece that had nothing to do with it, do these people actually watch the news at all? UK TV is full of wonderful stories about how crappy the country is.

Baby P, Damilola Taylor, Knife Crime, Shannon Matthews, Honour killings ring any bells? Before I moved to London for my Masters in London, there was so much reporting about stabbings and knifings by hoodie-clad youths I began to think that London was overrun with feral children carrying knives looking to stab anything that moved.

Without having to reach into deep into my memory, there have been at least two pieces on 'weapon dogs' and gang culture on terrestial television- Sorious Samura of Cry Freetown fame even did one where young men in London talked candidly about linking chick in a documentary about gang rapes amongst youth (some as young as 14). So let it not be said that they have not looked at the log in their own eyes before looking at the specks in ours.

It is not the BBC's job to produce a tourism package showing The Palms or Lekki beach with some ambient music (or maybe some Fuji music, like how those tourism ads on CNN International have their traditional tunes in the background) in the background. That's the Lagos State government's job, and if they had any sense, they'd be producing something now to remind people that Lagos does have its good bits too.

I think this illustrates a few things including a difference in news and journalism culture. It is not uncommon in Nigeria for people and companies to buy airtime on television and basically air infomercials or public service announcement for 30 minutes. How many evenings in my youth were spent dozing off to Maritime today or an airing of some random person's 60th birthday party and thanksgiving service? Too many is the answer.

Some of the more measured responses online said they would wait to see if the programme was balanced before castigating it. They will probably be disappointed as the two remaining episodes show yet more slums (although it does seem like episode 3 will be set in to quote Anderson one of the "swankiest" places "close to the beach" so possibly Victoria Island or Lekki).

In truth, if they were to have brought the cameras to Victoria Garden City or the palms what would they have gotten. Would they have gotten rich made for tv characters like the aforementioned Vocal Slender? Or would they mostly find a quite pampered, chubby cheeked boy, usually called Junior, dressed head to toe in Nike or some other sports apparel designer swaggering around the place aimlessly with his friends. Actually, I'd quite like them go film at the Palms. Maybe they would get to the bottom as to why people feel the need to dress up to go get groceries from Shoprite.

Homecoming

I had just finished hoisting one of my two bags unto my trolley when the carousel stopped. It just stopped. I wasn't bothered at first, the last time I came back to Lagos was in December, 2008 and it just stopped then too, but started working shortly after. Same flight, same heat, same carousel, same mysterious blue boxes from Julius Berger (a construction/engineering company over here). No worries then, everything will be just fine.

It wasn't. Time in the sauna that is baggage claim in Murtala Mohammed International Airport stood still as we waited. The PA system announced another flight arriving, or maybe it was departing, it's always been so muffled anyway.

One of the airport staff saunters out smiling walking on the dead carousel. He picks his way between the suitcases and opens up the panel that houses the carousel's machinery. He looks into it half-heartedly and shuts it. Either he doesn't really give a damn about us, or the machinery is obviously banjaxed. Either way, we're screwed.

"They say they are coming out on the other Carousel," Someone In the Know says. We all start moving like sheep towards the other carousel, even though it makes no sense. Even though the British Airways passengers are unloading their stuff at the same time, and its already fairly chaotic and it makes no sense to add Lufthansa to the mix, we try as much as possible to get close to the front of the carousel.

I stand there listening to a couple of stockbrokers talk shop. It's been close to an hour since we went through immigration and the hall is still mostly full. No Lufthansa baggage has come through on the BA carousel yet. Perhaps sensible minds prevailed. We still haven't heard an official word as to what is going on, relying on information, Chinese whispered to have any inkling.

"They say they need to unload this carousel first before they move to that one." We move back to our old carousel. Baggage handlers are hauling out boxes that never made it out from the depths of the carousel. I get close enough to hear what is going on. They are planning to call the owners of the bags when they come upon them. There are still a lot of bags and it occurs to me that I could be here all night.

The thought spurs me on and I force my way to the front and there it is among the pile. My trusty blue Samsonite with it's scratches and stickers. "Mr. Blackshirt, that's my bag...excuse me, that's my bag between your legs." The random man almost straddling my suitcase looks at me, then looks at the tag. "It says Phido, it's mine," I say confidently. He nods and pushes it out under the cordon to me.

I load my trolley with a sigh of relief and push of. It is around 7.30. An hour has passed since I got my passport back from the nice lady at immigration. As I sit in the car as we inch forward in Lagos traffic, I think to myself that if anyone had gone away to recharge their batteries and de-stress, it's been all for nought as they've already lost the holiday glow by the time they drive down airport road.

Frankie Boyle in being offensive shock horror.

So, it looks like Fitbablog's favourite dark-humoured Scottish comedian is in a bit of trouble again.

Just months after he was in the news for his comments over Gold-Medalist Rebecca Adlinton ("She looks someone looking at themselves at the back of a spoon") and comments about the Queen (which I won't mention here as the concept makes me a bit ill) as well as quitting the show that brought him to the public eye Mock the Week (due to censorship), he has managed to offend someone again, on the opening night of his stand up tour no less. Take a bow, son!

This time, he managed to offend the mother of a child suffering from Down's Syndrome. More info here

Quite what Sharon Smith was expecting when she and her husband bought front row tickets to see Frankie Boyle, a comic known for not pulling any punches I don't know, but it does seem a bit hypocritical to have no problems with his act until one of the things he skewers happens to resonate with her.

New Beginnings...

A new year, a new beginning. The Fitbablog has matured. No longer is it the spotty, football mad teenager it once was. It has, like the random boy or girl in your class who comes back from summer holidays suddenly hot, blossomed into an erudite and charming young man.

Tortured analogies and intros aside, I have decided to cast my eye beyond the realm of football. There's only so much you can write about the beautiful game. Given my previous shots against the hysteria that often pervades reporting of the sport, it feels kind of hypocritical to write umpteen paragraphs about my own measured opinion to the latest scandals of the day.

I will still write about football, but there will be other things.

It's gonna be a bumpy ride...I promise.