This and That by Mikey Fitzgerald - Adrian Durham: Flying The Flag

Adrian Durham: Flying The Flag


On his Talk Sport “Drive Time” Show on the 12th December 2013, Adrian Durham once again brought his lack of knowledge and general arrogance to the fore. Durham's latest cause is getting Scottish sides barred from the Champions League.


On the show, with guest host Matt Holland looking on in almost stunned silence; Durham declared that current Scottish Champions Celtic should not be allowed in the Champions League because their league wasn’t competitive enough. He questioned what benefit it was to Celtic to have the highlight of their season being Barcelona coming for a Champions League contest. Durham essentially pulled down his trousers and took a massive dump over Celtic and Scottish football in general. Durham embarrassed the radio station he works for, the listeners who tune in and, most of all, his own country.


Sometimes we English like to question why the rest of the world looks at us with a mixture of contempt and derision. It’s for reasons like these. If it were up to people like Durham, the Champions League would be only for English, German and Spanish teams (With maybe the odd Belgian or Portuguese team chucked in). Durham has, on more than one occasion, taken a pop at Bundesliga and has constantly been on Celtic’s case for years. Durham is the living embodiment of the angry “Little Englander” who thinks that the Premier League is the only thing that matters and thinks people like the Scots, and the other “minnows” of Europe, should know their place and leave the sporting competitions to the “Big” countries.


This isn’t the first time that Durham as rallied against a smaller nation. Northern Ireland plays their home international matches at Windsor Park. Windsor Park is not a big stadium but it has been Northern Ireland’s home for a long time and the venue creates an excellent atmosphere on match nights. Durham spoke out a few years ago that he thought it was terrible and an insult that some of the world’s best players had to play in such an awful stadium. He went as far as to demand that Northern Ireland play all their home games in Dublin. The fact that Dublin wasn’t actually IN Northern Ireland didn’t seem to bother Durham of course. Who cares about a little thing like a country actually playing in their own country eh? Totti and Maldini might have to “lower” themselves to playing in a hostile environment and might be upset that the away locker room didn’t contain a vending machine and Foot Spa!


And, so what if Celtic’s highlight of the season is welcoming Barcelona to Celtic Park? Is Barcelona not the world’s best team? Do they not have some of the world’s best players on their books? Just because Celtic operate within a league they win with ease, it should not disqualify them from taking part in club footballs showpiece event. It’s not like they get straight in either. Celtic, and teams from other teams with poor coefficients, have to go through a grueling pre-qualifying campaign before they get into the last 32 of the Champions League. If Celtic truly don’t deserve to be in the group stages then the onus is on one of the other teams to remove them from the process. Celtic survived the qualification round and thus were in the group on merit. That’s really all there is to it.


Durham has been out for Celtic on more than one occasion, going as far to call them a “joke” club. You could argue that Durham is just trying to say controversial things so that people are offended and then call up to the show to complain, thus netting Talk Sport a tidy sum in the process. To be honest, I personally find either to be reprehensible.


Either Durham is an arrogant ignoramus or he’s a money grabbing carnie.


Neither one would cover him in too much glory. Talk Sport has done an excellent job the past few years cleansing itself of trouble makers like Durham and his elk. Maybe it’s time to take this horse out the back and put a bullet in it, before it limps on to tumble over more hurdles?


Rant over.

Team Fortress Review Update......and shizzle

Team Fortress is proving very hard to play at the moment, in that no one’s ever online when I am and it’s online only. I’ve managed to sink about an hour into it and I’ve found it to be reasonable fun. There are 9 different “classes” of character you can play as and I’ve spent most of it playing as The Sniper (Self explanator9 and the Grunt (A big gun wielding nutter)


I’ve not played it enough to actually review it and it’s likely that I won’t any time soon, so I’ll “hang fire” (hate that term) on it for now and will get back to it at a later date. In the meantime, I’ll think of another game to review or I’ll do another movie review (Iron Man 3 is sitting on the side of my TV giving me a disparaging look for the past month. Poor blighter still isn’t out of the plastic). I’ve also got The Hobbit and Blade Runner on Blu Ray and have yet to watch them.

Rest assured, there will be something soon. I could complain about the day I had yesterday for endless pages, but I’ve done too much maudlin stuff on here in the past and now I want to do funny stuff or righteously angry stuff, as they give me the most enjoyment. A good rant energises every section of my body, but it has to be entertaining for the reader, otherwise I might as well go and see a shrink, who is at least paid to hear me complain.

You come on here for escapism. If reading me on a suicidal tangent is your idea of escapism, then you probably live in Luxembourg. However, if reading me on an angry, yet hopefully humorous tangent, is more your bag then I’ll hopefully be able to provide that in spades.

So yeah, this officially is a “fluff” piece. I’ve written purely to confirm to everyone that I’m still here. It’s a place holder, an interim champion, a short snappy bit of nothing disguised as something. I’ve just wasted your time really. Not much to see here. Go and have a nice cake or something. Hva eit on me (Metaphorically of course, I ain’t buying you no cake)

Ta

Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 3: Portal

Portal is an absolutely cracking game. I know another internet goon like me espousing the brilliance of this game must be getting redundant for some, but it really has to be said. Portal is up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mr Muscle Window Cleaner in the “everyone universally bangs on about how bloody brilliant it is” category. But it is bloody brilliant. It really, really, REALLY is!

Portal is a game that challenges and enthrals in equal measure. Once I started playing it, I really couldn’t stop myself. I’d finish a puzzle and say “Well, that was fun, time for me to go feed/clothe/wash myself now before I become even more a shuffling wreck than I already am”. But then I’d walk into the next room “just to have a quick look at the next puzzle” and I’d ultimately then complete another three in a row. I just couldn’t help myself. It was like when I had a box of 12 Krispy Kreme donuts and ended up eating half the box because I still had coffee remaining and I just couldn’t stop dipping them.

To try and explain Portal won’t be entirely easy but I’ll give it a go. Basically, it’s a first person puzzler. You play an unnamed female character that wakes up in a strange testing centre. You quickly acquire a gun that can create Portals in the walls of the complex. You then have to use said Portal gun to try and escape the complex itself. Sometimes you won’t be able to access certain areas before you have pressed a button or moved a block onto a switch to ensure the escape door remains open. In situations like these, you will need more than just the Portal Gun itself to make it to safety.

I’ve personally never been hugely fond of games that included puzzles. The original Tomb Raider games on the Playstation would sometimes drive me to despair with some of their fiendish and downright annoying conundrums. However, Portal never frustrated me in that way. I mean, it did frustrate me, but in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle. It didn’t contain the agonising frustration that made me want to use Tomb Raider 2 as a £40 coaster.

The difficulty curve of the game was set up just right for me. It eased me in gradually and by the time the puzzles started getting harder, I felt prepared to tackle them. Considering that I’m hardly what you’d call “good” at video games, I can only conclude that Portal has been weighted perfectly in regards to difficulty. The game doesn’t outstay its welcome either. It clocks in at around 3 hours and is paced to complement the run time exceptionally well.

As far as negatives go, I don’t really have any. The game is perfect for what it needs to be. If it was released on it’s own for £40, it would not be worth the money as there just isn’t enough game to justify that price. As part of The Orange Box though, it’s a veritable steal. I almost feel guilty playing it, as if I’ve unfairly got one over on the people at Valve.

If you don’t like puzzlers, I’m still quite certain you will enjoy this. I really can’t find a complaint with it. It exceeds everything it should have been and happily embraces everything it can be.

Portal is just amazing and if you don’t like it, you can go fist a Yak

Rating – 10

Play it, love it, praise it and have a pint of sunshine while you’re at it.

Up next, we finish The Orange Box by reviewing "Team Fortress"

Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 2: Half Life 2

It’s easy to see why someone would be scared of the dark. You don’t know what’s in it for one. A lot of movies and video games are set in dark and dreary places, with the goal to give you the willies. However, it takes something special to make you scared in broad daylight and Half Life 2 is a game that does this with relish.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I’d only briefly played the first Half Life and I’d found it too difficult and a little bit too unsettling, so I didn’t get very far in it. However, recently I’d purchased the curiously titled “Orange Box”, which is a disc with 3 games on it. Half Life 2 is one of those games. I started playing it not sure what to expect and within 15 minutes I found myself running across a roof in broad daylight being fired at by a helicopter without so much as a sandwich to defend myself with.

Half Life 2 wastes no time in scaring the fudge out of you, that’s for sure. The game starts up with a haunting and frankly disturbing video where a man encourages you to “wake up and smell the ashes”. You then find yourself walking through a dystopian train station while armoured guards smack you with a baton just to pass the time. After negotiating the train station and the adjourning square outside, I found myself in an apartment block, which was in the midst of a raid from the Gestapo. I then had to hot foot it to the roof while being chased by enough members of the law to inadequately police a 1980’s football match and promptly fell to the pavement below to be met with a sickening symphony of cracking bone and splitting sinews.

“How come every Half Life game seemingly involves me falling to my death in the first 5 minutes” I wondered aloud. After a couple more head first dives to the inviting concrete below, I managed to blunder my way into another building to be rescued by the resistance.

And that’s how Half Life 2 starts. I’ll repeat, that’s how the bloody thing STARTS!!!

Half Life 2 is a first person shooter set in a world where everything has gone to crap. Weird monsters constantly attack you and when the monsters relent for a few moments, super powered super cops attack you instead. In fact, one of my bigger criticisms of the game would be how most of the enemies you fight are so ruddy strong. At first you’re armed with just a crowbar but eventually you can pick up a pistol and a machine gun to help you with your villain killing ways. However, the guns are so ineffectual sometimes you could be confused with mistaking the bullets they contain for being made out of cotton wool.

At one point I was ambushed by an angry cop at a train station. Being no more than 3 foot away from him, and armed with my pistol, I not unwisely pointed the gun right at his head and promptly unleashed some lead on him. 3 bullets later and he was starting to show signs of fatigue, 5 bullets later and he looked a bit peaky, 17 bullets later and he finally fell to floor dead. I exaggerate of course, but seriously, this cop seemed to have a skull made out of Plexiglas.

Another complaint I’d have is that on more than one occasion I found my character stuck on the scenery. At one point I actually had to restart the game as my character got hopelessly stuck on a corner, like a fly would get caught in a spiders web. I tried crouching, jumping and even tried shooting at the wall in futile hope that it would release me from its iron grip, but alas, it would not.

So that’s where you would deduct points from Half Life 2. That being said, those gripes would be minor on my part. The game is an atmospheric masterpiece. I found myself getting wrapped up in the action on more than one occasion. Sometimes a helicopter will come by looking for you. I leapt behind a crate and felt my heart start pounding as I snuck a glance round the side to see if the copter had left.

The game has a really nifty physics engine as well. Sometimes you will be called upon to stack crates on top of a see-saw so that you can access other areas of the game. It works quite well and I had a lot of fun trying to work out what I was supposed to do, without getting too frustrated.

Overall, the moody atmosphere and interesting puzzles make Half Life 2 a great game. Even with the slew of First Person Shooters that have found their way onto consoles, I would still say that Half Life 2 is one of the best you can get.

I’d like to discuss the story a bit but I honestly had no bloody idea what was going on and the game doesn’t really sit down and explain to you. That being said, the gameplay is good enough that I didn’t really care, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

I’ll give it 8 out of 10

Buy it

Coming next, Part 3 of the Orange Box Review, Portal!

Dominik Diamonds are Forever - The Orange Box, Part 1: Introduction

The Orange Box – Part One: Introduction

I’ve never been much of a PC Gamer. I still have tragic flashbacks to my youth when I used to attempt to play Actua Soccer 2 on my Windows 95 Packard Bell, which had a whole 16 MB (Count em!) of memory and a graphics card that would have barely challenged a ZX Spectrum.

I’ve just never really taken the time to properly invest in the sort of PC you actually need to play games with any reasonable joy. I did have “The Movies” on my old Windows XP PC as well as FIFA 07 and they ran reasonably well but they were also hardly games that required a lot of graphical power and processing speed.

As a result of my PC woes, I’ve been pretty much exclusively a console gamer through the years and thus I wasn’t a member of the cherished “PC First Person Shooter Appreciation Club” of the late 90’s and early 00’s. I did play Deus EX but that was on the PS2. My review of that is wildly simple, It's bloody good but I could never be bothered to finish it.

I briefly played the original Half Life on the PS2 and found it to be a strange and unnerving experience. From what I recall, it involved walking around some sort of super-secret science lab and the game wouldn’t let me do anything until I pushed a tray, possibly containing deserts and assorted liqueurs, into some energy thing, which promptly caused everything to hit the bloody fan and the entire world went to crap.

I then spent the better part of 15 minutes walking around with a crowbar, not knowing what the hell to do, before falling down an elevator shaft to my death. This being the days before you could hop on You Tube and watch a video walkthrough, I instead opted to switch the PS2 off and slink away with my tail firmly betwixt my legs.

When Half Life 2 came out on the PC I never played it and I didn’t care to play it when it was released on the X-Box 360 either as a part of the curiously titled “Orange Box”. For those who aren’t aware of said Clementine Holding Device, “The Orange Box” contains 3 games on one disc, these games being “Portal”, “Team Fortress” and “Half Life 2”. TOB was originally released way back in 2007 but I never bothered to check it out.

However, I recently watched the Zero Punctuation review of The Orange Box and it made me want to finally take the plunge and play it. So thus I purchased it and over the next 3 reviews I’ll be reviewing each game on the disc, starting with Half Life 2.

 

I've not got a specific timeline as to when all this will be done and I may do other blog posts in between. All I will say is that you can expect me to finish this review before North New Hampshire Wanderers win the World Soccer Super Bowl Series Challenge Cup (I'm hoping this will manage everyone's expectations to a satisfactory level)

So brace yourselves people, cos Mike’s going to be playing some games, and he’s probably going to do a really bad job at it! Huzzah!

Dominik Diamonds are Forever - FIFA 13

FIFA 13 Review

Before we start here, yes I am aware that this game came out a whole year ago and yes, I know the new FIFA will soon be out making this review pretty much redundant, but may I counter those fine points by saying “NYAH NAH NAH NAH NAAHHHHH!”

For those of you who don’t know, I’m an Everton Fan. Supporting Everton can sometimes be the equivalent of dipping your nether regions in jam and then wandering past a school of wasps at lunchtime. However, in FIFA world, managing Everton can be quite nice, even life affirming. I don’t know why but there’s something viscerally pleasing about buying David Luiz and seeing him run around in Everton’s immediately recognisable Royal Blue.

In fact, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about FIFA is making esoteric transfers from one club to another. Want to see Gianfranco Zola playing for Stevenage Borough? FIFA will do it. Want to see Eric Cantona play for Ipswich? FIFA will do it. Want to see Neil Shipperly calmly put out of his misery with a long range sniper rifle by Martin O’Neil on a grassy knoll? I’m sure FIFA will think of a way of adding it at some point, probably as DLC.

Ultimately, FIFA hasn’t really changed that much over the years. It’s essentially like having a high res Subutteo set that you can edit and play with to your heart’s content. Granted, there are games that let you edit in more detail than FIFA, but it’s always one of the aspects I’ve most enjoyed. It certainly adds life to the game experience. Most of my FIFA games start off grounded in reality as I try and use the real stats and teams, but by the end pretty much all of the teams are beyond warped. I usually load up Everton at some point in the edit mode. I also loaded up Arsenal with a front 3 of Suarez, Rooney and Walcott, only to crash to a 5-4 defeat to Spurs. It was fun though.

FIFA is quite easy for a non-football fan to pick up. Well, any non-football fan who has played a video game before. The defending system is overly difficult but you can switch to “Legacy Defending” which is a lot easier. You essentially just have to press “A” or “X” (Depending on the console you’re using) and the players will run right at the opposing player with the ball. If you’re rubbish at games, like I am, it becomes pretty easy to get to grip with after a game or two.

The in game difficulty mode is something that really winds me up though. There are 5 levels of difficulty on FIFA. The problem is that levels 2 and 3 are so far apart from each other, they might as well be in different solar systems trying to contact each other with two plastic cups and a piece of string. I went from killing teams 10-0 on level 2 to getting beaten handily 2-0 by the computer on level 3. Now I’m all for a challenge when it comes to gaming but, as Lisa Simpson once so eloquently put, I want a challenge I can actually do!

Smashing teams 7-1 every time is ultimately unsatisfying but after having 3 or 4 games on level 3 I would have rather of gone 7 rounds with Mad Max in the Thunder Dome. And I’m a football fan! I can only imagine what non-fans were thinking at that point. They’d probably already switched the console off and were balls deep into a game of Mario Party or Call of Dead Space Splinter Halo: The Bloodening.

That being said, there’s enough challenge here that gamers of most skill sets will be able to find a difficulty level which isn’t the gaming equivalent of shooting paraplegic fish in a very small barrel, which has to be a positive thing. Challenge does add length to a game. Despite my previous paragraph of whining, I do regularly play at level 3 now and it’s gotten to the point where the matches are quite close. The game can still be infuriatingly cheap at times, but so long as I restrict myself to only a few games per session, I can still enjoy a decent challenge without tearing my curtains off the wall and hiding underneath them softly sobbing to myself.

There’s also online play on FIFA, and I hear it’s quite good. Online play has never really been my thing outside of Crackdown and COD 4, but if it’s your thing then FIFA does it well, apparently. I have no idea what on Earth “Ultimate Team” is but I’ve spoken to people who love it so much they want to cook it dinner, mow its lawn and tickle is nipples, so there’s that to think about as well

At the end of the day, it’s FIFA. Graphically some of the players look like mince but that’s to be expected when a game has such a huge database of players. FIFA 13 is a game that has enough about it that it can appeal to both casual football fans and hardcore footy lovers. It does it with a generally slick presentation and it’s possible for pretty much every gamer to find his or her level while playing it.

You can get it now on the cheap, and the edit mode will let you make the transfers that need to be made so it may be worth a pop. I certainly enjoyed it, despite some of the misery it dropped on me at times. At the end of the day, that’s football.

9 out of 10

Youth Shut Up, No! YOUTH Shut up!

Do we, as football fans, sometimes expect too much from players in the youth system? After being a football supporter for nearly 20 years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that most football supporters fall into three categories.



The first category don’t really don’t care about the youth team. At the end of the day, the youth team is just there to provide the odd decent player. These supporters don’t have an emotional connection with the youth squad or the youth players. If one comes through and he’s amazing, fair enough, but he’d better be amazing, otherwise they’ll be cat calling the manager and demanding he bring on that 30 year old journeyman the club sparked 5 Million on in the January transfer window.



The second category care a lot about the youth team. They honestly believe that the youth team is the breading ground for future club legends. These supporters keep their ear to the ground to hear about the recent prospects who are delivering in the youth system and under 21’s. They will keep up to date with the youth team results and may even attend youth games when given the chance. They are fine with a 30 year old journeyman playing in the squad and delivering, but he better be delivering, otherwise they’ll be cat calling the manager and demanding that he bring on the most recent youth team graduate as he as “Proper boss against Blackburn in the youth cup”



The third category are those supporters who balance in the middle, bouncing between the extremes of categories one and two. For a while I used to think that I nestled in the third category, leaning slightly toward category two, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I may no longer be leaning that way and I may actually be firmly in camp number two.



On countless occasions now I seem to find myself always leaping in to defend any young prospect that has shown even an ounce of potential in the Everton Youth Team. I’ve even gone to watch youth games at Goodison Park this season (something I have never done in previous seasons). I actually know quite a few of the youth team by name and have a reasonable idea of their abilities and not just from playing FIFA either. I’m going to the Pre-Season Friendly against Accrington Stanley on the 17th July, mainly because I’m interested in seeing whether any of the younger players will get a run out. I will actually more excited if Matthew Kennedy plays on the right rather than Kevin Mirallas. I will be happier to see Francisco Junior playing in the Centre of Midfield rather than Leon Osman or Darren Gibson.



It’s got to the point now where I’ll actually be disappointed if some of the younger players don’t get a game than whether I’ll get to see Fellaini, Baines, Howard and co. I’m actually hoping Mason Springthorpe gets a game because I think he’s got real potential and I’d like to see him get a game under his belt.



I’ve also got to the point now where I will shout down at the dug out during games demanding that the manager get Barkley on or get Oviedo on (Not a member of the youth team per say, but still a younger player who’s been hungering for his chance)



Ross Barkley getting in the team has become a personal cause of mine in recent months. If he ever does become a regular first teamer, I think I’ll be more excited about it than he will. Watching Barkley has become nothing short of weird recently. I don’t know the man, have never met him and I haven’t got a clue about what he’s like off the pitch, but when I watch him play I want him to do so well that it’s almost like I’m watching a family member play. It’s beyond weird really.



Recently, Everton sold Jake Bidwell and most of the category one folk were coming out saying that he was never going to make it anyway. There were a few supporters, myself included, who lamented that this was a real shame and noted, correctly I feel, that Bidwell had never really been given a full chance to make it at the club. Out of all the players to move on, it was a potential LB, a position that Everton may be experiencing a massive hole if Man United gets their way in the coming months.



Sometimes I honestly think that Everton’s transfer policy is handled by a Magic 8-Ball. It’s bad enough to let a player go before he’s had a chance to reach his full potential, but it’s even worse when you do it when you know that you’re going to potentially be another player light in that position.



I recall visiting the Everton Forum www.grandoldteam.com and lamenting the loss of Bidwell. Most of the posters didn’t agree. One poster even suggested that some supporters were “wearing masks” over the incident and were only pretending to express displeasure in order to have a sly pop at Roberto Martinez.



I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will say that my comments in that thread and my comments in this post are truthful. I do think Bidwell could have done more at the club and I do think he deserved more of a chance. You can argue that he was 3rd or even 4th in line at the moment at the LB position. Fine then, send him on loan. I doubt getting him off the wage bill will finally allow the club to sign Messi or Ronaldo. I don’t think we could even get Phil Babb using that money.



I actually see Martinez coming in as somewhat of a positive. David Moyes, despite some success stories, wasn’t exactly great at blooding youngsters. Moyes usual policy was to give a younger player some games and then stick him on the bench, never use him, and then get rid of him claiming he had dreaded “attitude problems”. Rumours abound that this is the reason why Barkley had such a stop-start season last year.



I surely wasn’t the only one scratching my head to see Barkley not start the game against Sunderland after he had done so well against Arsenal. That game may have been one of the most frustrating away trips I had last season. Barkley wasn’t even named in the squad to face Liverpool in the run-in. Rumours again were that he was ill, but I’ve never had that confirmed. If he was healthy, then it was a disgrace that he didn’t at least find himself on the bench for that fixture.



Now I’m sure that some of the younger players in the squad have had, at times, attitude problems. But it seemed a bit of a regular occurrence to me. Even if all the players who were sent on their way due to having bad attitudes did in fact have bad attitudes, after a certain point shouldn’t the club themselves perhaps be held accountable and not just the individual players. If I run a club and countless players start acting up in the youth team, my first thought would be “bloody hell, what is up with the youth team?”. It wouldn’t be “Let’s just sack off the bad apples and carry on business as usual”



I’m hopeful that Martinez will give some of the younger players a chance but the fact he would rather spend money on bring in Alcaraz rather than promoting Shane Duffy leads me to believe that it might just be a case of “more of the same” at Everton football club.



A personal plea to all of those in category three, step on over to category two. If there’s enough of us, maybe one day players like Francisco Junior, Duffy, Barkley, Bidwell and Garbutt make get a fair shake.



One can only dream.