Top 5 Top Things

Retroactive continuity alert!: This was supposed to be posted at the end of last year...

With end of the year Top 5 fever raging over all the blogs, magazine and virtually every medium I've been perusing recently I thought I'd have a go.
I was considering doing my Top Five Top Fives, but then reconsidered and decided to have a go at my Top 5 Things of 2006. Unfortunately, my memory is a tad on the shite side so here it is :

Simon H. Smith's Top Five Things of the Last Few Months!!

5/Canis Canem Edit - Probably my most specific 'thing', but it's the only game I've been playing recently and like all the best games it was pretty much all consuming for the majority of the time it took to complete it. The game formerly known as Bully is a text book perfect way to take the Grand Theft Auto free-roaming template and subvert it into something, if not unique then refreshingly different.

The act of placing limitations on your actions make the free roaming elements all the sweeter - a real case of giving the player what they need rather than what they want. Being set at school you should attend class and stick to the school rules if you want to avoid falling foul of prefects, teachers and the coppers. And the world of Bullworth town is only free roaming from the hours of 3.30pm till 2am, when your teenage body keels over from exhaustion (probably the least realistic part of the game).

The only real problem with the game (aside from a slightly apocalyptic flaw that I'll come to later) is that I was such a goodie-goodie at school that it took me ages while playing the game to discover the joys of skipping class, the fun of detention and the ability to give swirlies and wedgies.

And now the major, key flaw I was referring to earlier, the one that makes me hesitate to recommend it - this game will be responsible for the degradation and final destruction of society!!! It's TRUE! The tabloids have proclaimed, decreed and prophesied it as so. This game WILL turn your child into a psychotic happy slapping, depraved pervert - make no mistake.

Never mind the fact that there are slight moral messages (more for the sake of game balance than for social education I imagine) skip class, become violent, commit a crime, skateboard in the halls or wear Hawaiian shirts and you will likely earn the wrath of the authorities. You can choose whether you wish to do any of these things (assuming you aren't confused by the controls:) ) and if you get caught and punished then you only have yourself to blame. Or you could blame the game, or telly, or porn, or Dungeons and Dragons - or you could just blame the Tabloids for turning your brain to sociopathic immigrant-hating criminal mush with their idiotic whitterings - your choice.

On the other hand, this game is probably better enjoyed by adults, where the bitter-sweet tang of nostalgia makes the experience all the sweeter.

4/Youtube Enhanced Splishy Splashy

No more the hours of waiting for an obscure mp3 to download after an odd request. Now we can get dodgy 80's music videos on tap! Yay!

3/US Telly

As William Booth once said, why does the Devil Bush have all the best Telly. Been hooked on Sh*ttlestar Galactaw*nk (copyright Jennifer H. Determann - credit where credit's due) for ages and Heroes has turned out to be fantastic. Deadwood's good too, but the DVD box sets are too expensive for me to have seen more than the first series (my odd moral code only lets me bittorrent telly that hasn't made it to DVD yet).

2/UK Telly

Ah fooled you. British telly is good too, though I'm bound to get ridiculed for liking Torchwood...

Now I need to confound everyone's expectations (and from thence the humour might arise) by putting Japanese Telly at number 1, but I shan't (tho Keizoku is a bit good, but that was broadcast years ago).

1/The Butties - 12 Greatest Carols

The only thing to keep me sane through the Christmas shopping period.

Oh, Oh! I'm also the subject of a top 5 blog! Go here to see: alphiano.blogspot.com/2006/12/top-5-simons-of-year.html