On the Subject of UK:Resistance

What else is there to say?

Sad news by way of the recent winding up of classic, vaguely Sega-obsessed sarcastic commentary site UK:Resistance. I can't remember how I stumbled upon it, I suspect I was turned on to it in the late 90s by console-monkey friends. Anyone aware of the site will also be aware that it's been on auto-pilot for the last few years so it's not an especially shocking announcement, but in its heyday it was a go-to for gaming-related comedy. Run by Mr Gary Cutlack, who has gone on to write for proper gaming mags and sites, not to mention making a bunch of slightly odd youtube videos, UK:R was like Charlie Brooker with a bit less swearing. Cutlack also runs Idiot Toys, which is worth a visit unless he plans on shutting that down too. But first be sure to visit the UK:R archives while you still can. It's amazing how much work he put in back in the early years. Note the Employee of the Week posts, which no doubt influenced my very own Thought for the Days.

A few years ago Cutlack sold out to Shiny Media who promptly slapped its trashy branding and a million ads over his sites. Being a poorly-conceived blog portal wank-fest which I suspect was supposed to be some sort of nerd Gawker, Shiny spontaneously combusted shortly after. Cutlack was given back control of UK:R in lieu of money owed, and managed to grab back the idiottoys domain when whatever was left of Shiny forgot to renew it.

UK:R was also notable for its user forum. Based at boards2go and featuring a high-speed/low-retention policy, it often offered some jaw-droppingly funny contributions from regulars, not to mention impromptu porn dumps from mad-as-a-brick resident porn scene freak murphy "The Reverand DMark" or whatever his handle was back then. The original forums were nuked following a spectacular public breakdown and revelations of intra-forum infidelity from Cutlack's bit of fluff. Can't remember what she called herself now. Absolutely top-drawer entertainment, while it lasted.

The "official" forum was followed by a succession of indie spin-offs, before settling on the (theoretically) still-operational, if virtually flat-lined UKPersistance. Originally a lot of the old crew were regulars, before the community was eventually eviscerated by further dramas, including more infidelity revelations (this time featuring oversized yank pinball fanatic and long-time UK:R regular "Dork") and the leak of ill-advised nudie pics of genuinely-female "Frap", who also happened to be real-life UK Frag Doll "Jam". Or did that happen on the original board? Whatever, they're preserved on ED if you're interested. White-nightery and schism followed, and UKP was never the same again. DMark/Mark seemed to tire of people criticising his taste in forgettable Eastern-European heroin-addict skanks and disappeared, taking his endlessly amusing old-school racism and tales of crazed stalking and cleaning up various bodily fluids (if not producing them) at the family B&B with him.

UK:R itself was almost entirely Cutlack, although there were one or two guest contributors over the years. Ignoring the recent ones who were promoted from serial commenter as Cutlack gradually lost interest in the site, the one who sticks in my mind is The Swill Man. God only knows where Cutlack found him, he seemed to be some yank teenager and he didn't last long. I seem to recall Cutlack eventually revoked The Swill Man's posting rights with a vague shrug.

More recently UK:R has been your one-stop destination for monthly "Here's a picture of a spiral. The Dreamcast logo was a spiral!" updates as the site continued its long slide into obscurity. Meanwhile Cutlack has become something of an underground celebrity in the gaming world, and the (relatively) large volume of comments which followed the closure are testament to the fondness literally dozens of people have for what he has achieved. Good luck with your future endeavours, Mr Cutlack, I salute you.

And I'm sure that wherever he is now, Dork is a cunt.

On the Subject of Reboots

Hey, you! Which game is this? No, it's not a Resident Evil sequel, or any of those interchangeable survival horror games. No, it's not Uncharted or one of those interchangeable adventure/thriller Tomb Raider clones, but you're getting warmer. I'll give you a hint, which iconic game character is it?
Of course it's from the Tomb Raider "reboot", and that's the new Lara Croft. Ah, yes, reboots, when a publisher doesn't have any new ideas and wants to lean on the security of an established and successful brand while pretending to be fresh and innovative.

Lara became iconic entirely because of her distinctive design. The big tits, the pony tail, the shorts, the dual pistols. You've seen her. The new design is so bland and homogenised and typical focus group toss that if you weren't told it was supposed to be Lara, you wouldn't have a fucking clue. Irrespective of whether you like the old design (or the new one), that doesn't seem to be a very clever use of a well-known and iconic gaming brand. In their clumsy attempt to leverage the Tomb Raider identity they've managed to throw away perhaps the most important aspect of it. What's left? The name? What have they actually achieved? What it's really saying is "we don't have a strong enough character or story or design to stand alone as a new property, so we'll slap the Tomb Raider name on it". Just like all of the recent movie reboots, it's sheer creative bankruptcy.

What I find tragic is when fuck-witted idiots start praising the redesign as some sort of right-on, politically correct feminist statement because they think it makes them look sensitive to women's issues and modern and mature and will get them laid. Dismissing the remarkably enduring appeal of the original Lara as childish wank fantasy just because they dared to give her a pair of tits and not make her look like a man. Why are you so afraid of the old design? More to the point, why do you prefer to play games which feature female characters who look like some sort of pre-pubescent David Beckham, you fucking paedophile?

The convergence of game design is sad and pathetic. Publishers are scared of creating anything which has a unique style or character lest some up-tight cunt finds it slightly at odds with their own preferences and doesn't buy the game. Slowly but surely the mainstream games are merging into one big indistinct mush, like that website where you can average pictures of people's faces and you end up with some sort of marketing wet-dream, a soul-less shop mannequin of indeterminate gender or race or age. The new Lara isn't Lara, she's "generic female protagonist". The only people she'll offend is those of us with a fucking clue, but we're an increasingly marginal marketing demographic.