Review of an incredibly addictive phone puzzler

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Mobile Phone
THQ Wireless

So addictive it should be made illegal

On the surface this award winning mobile game is infuriating. A stupendously tricky difficulty curve gently introduces the player to a surreal mix of MSN Messenger favourite Bejewelled and stripped down RPG elements, before throwing your face in a pile of shit and making your squeal like a pig.

But without you realising, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords sticks its grubby claws in you and draws you into the most addictive fun you can have in the palm of your hand.

It’s pretty ambitious for a mobile phone game too. After selecting a fantasy stereotype (I went for the druid owing to his prowess with herbs), you gallivant around a 2D map, conversing with weird old men and battling trolls. Runes, hit points and other such mandatory RPG jargon is muttered as you upgrade levels and the like. And what does our brave hero do upon encountering wolves in the woods? He battles them in the only way he knows how: by taking in turns to re-align jewels into lines of three or more.

Mild sarcasm aside, this is actually a pretty addictive game. The neat RPG facade simply forms a backbone to what is essentially a puzzle game that cleverly incorporates strategy and tactical nuance. Think Bejewelled, but rather than simply racking up multiples within a time-limit, your objective is to destroy your opponent by stringing rows of skulls together or casting spells fuelled by magic accumulated from combining coloured jewels.

If that lot doesn’t make any sense, chances are that you have a life.

But the lack of a time limit on your actions added to the pure frustration of helplessly watching yourself being mercilessly butt-fucked by the AI enemy, forces you to think tactically and pore over the possible consequences of falling jewels, and how to limit your opponents moves. This deep strategy however is offset by the occasional flurry of chain reactions where a fluky move can win a game almost instantly.

Yet despite the advent of 3D graphics, improved memory and larger screens on mobiles, most mobile phone games are still crippled by infuriating controls over-reliant on quick finger-work. The brilliance of Puzzle Quest is its thoughtful fusion of genres that actually work well on a mobile phone; RPG, puzzle, turn-based strategy, into one superbly addictive bundle.
www.infinite-interactive.com/puzzlequest
Dave Allen
4.5/5
For fans for: Final Fantasy Tactics, Jewel Quest, Metal Gear Acid, Tetris, Dungeons & Dragons

initially pub. on www.subba-cultcha.com

Proof that I don’t wear indie blinkers… kind of.

Duffy
Glee Club, Birmingham
 11^th March 2008

Number one in the charts, purveyor of unmistakably retro pop and somehow not yet hated by indie kids, Duffy brings Motown chic to Birmingham tonight.

“Do you fancy reviewing Duffy at the Glee Club?” a surprisingly proactive PR agent asked me during one absent minded afternoon at work. Upon considering this perfect opportunity to take the other half out to see her favourite, Welsh, retro-pop songstress for free (all dressed up as ‘my treat’ at no cost to myself), I quickly hammered “Sure!” into the half-hidden Gmail window.

Yet seeing a teacher isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the night before the gig with lesson plans aplenty, the girlfriend pulled out, leaving me with two tickets for a gig I wasn’t fussed about and no-one to go with. Thankfully, it’s always useful having a mate easily lured to any event on the promise of booze and drugs.

So stood in the hot, tight confines of the Glee Club, high as a kite, we awaited Duffy, currently standing at number one and collecting a string of plaudits along the way from both mainstream and alternative circles. The small comedy club-cum-gig venue was overrun with all sorts, middle-aged one-gig-a-year families, northern soulsters bedecked in Lambretta and the occasional brick shithouse with a shaved head who amazingly knows the words to every song.

 “Duffy? Isn’t she just an Amy Winehouse rip-off?” My friend asks. But before can I inform him of the strange irony of a white man’s Aretha Franklin being herself a source of imitation, the short blonde from the Llŷn Peninsula pops on stage to greet the crowd with a few nervy words about it being the last night of the tour.

She opens her intimate set with album title track Rockferry, and finally, we get to hear that astonishing voice. At a time when the general direction of music washes about aimlessly looking for a way forward but only hitting the past, Duffy unashamedly embraces the likes of Dusty Springfield, resurrecting Motown chic for post-modernity.

“That song’s about not putting up with any shit,” she tells us after her heart-wrenching vocals tear through album highlight, Stepping Stones, “much like a lot of my songs tonight.” Clearly overjoyed to be in front of a packed, appreciative crowd at the end of her tour, Duffy inevitably leaves the hit for last, closing on Mercy, she returns for a brief encore with anthemic number Distant Dreamer.

But it was well before that, when the backing band left the stage and her vocals were accompanied only by a simple guitar on Syrup and Honey, that her voice was fully let loose, transforming – if only for three minutes, Brum’s, smoke-free, Glee Club into a liquor-soaked, seedy, Detroit jazz cafe circa 1961.

Is she the Arctic Monkey’s to Amy Winehouse’s Babyshambles? Well I don’t know, but her potential as a future queen of pop is massive.
www.iamduffy.com
DAVE ALLEN
4/5
For fans of: Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Billie Holiday

pub. originally on www.subba-cultcha.com

European dreams begin to fade as Villa’s small squad starts to stutter

Portsmouth 2-0 Aston Villa15^th March 2008

It’s shit being a Villa fan; not so much a strong of disappointments, as a string of false dawns followed by crushing disappointments, as the team is shoved into the dirt and buggered relentlessly.

For a season that promised so much, the result today signals a shift in momentum as Portsmouth move above Villa into 6^th place. Whispers of a Champions League place a few weeks ago are now beyond reach, and, with the Cup upsets meaning none of the big four will win the FA Cup – thus denying that elusive UEFA Cup place for the team finishing 6^th, even qualifying for the Special Needs Cup (Intertoto) is looking murky.

Results haven’t been that bad, but the team’s form has dropped significantly when compared to the free flowing football of the early season promise. Today’s result against Portsmouth was evident of that, but Wednesday’s fortunate draw at home to an underperforming  Middlesboro side even more so.

It’s clear to see the massive advances the team has made under O’Neill and Lerner, but the problems Randy Lerner’s chequebook must overcome this summer are all too obvious.

Beside the fact that Villa’s squad lacks any right-sided players and can barely fill a subs bench, the team is over-reliant on set-pieces and the aerial prowess of ‘Big’ John Carew. Villa have scored more goals by set-pieces than any other team in the top flight this year, but when we come up against a defence – such as Portsmouth today, that is comfortable in the air and can starve Ashley Young of the ball, it’s difficult to see where chances will come from.

What was all the more disheartening at Fratton Park was the fact that Jermaine Defoe – the player Villa should have signed during the January transfer window, was behind both Pompey goals. Clearly Spurs were willing to let him go at a price, but the seeming inability for Villa to close a deal means we’ll never know the outcome of Carew’s strength and height teamed up with Defoe’s pace and clinical finishing.

Again, the ludicrously small squad, over-reliance on a few key players such as Young and Carew, and familiar nature of Villa going forward, sadly results from the distinct lack of activity during the summer and winter transfer windows. Let’s just hope it doesn’t cost Villa our best chance of a European place in almost a decade.BrummieDave

Scouse folksters latest effort seems awkwardly over-polished

 

AmsterdamArm in ArmCIA Records/Universal

 

Best known for anthemic bit of beauty ‘Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?’, which happens to be the last song ever played on John Peel’s festive fifty (isn’t it weird to hear his name without it being prefixed by “the late, great”?), Ian Prowse’s Amsterdam have been gathering up famous fans aplenty. Even if Christy Moore and Elvis Costello aren’t exactly the coolest celebrity fans a band can have.

Coming from the anthemic folk angle, this band of Scousers, lead by have more in common with the polished Celtic folk The Frames or even Christy Moore than the rugged, urban, anti-folk of Jeffrey Lewis. In fact Moore’s cracked Irish brogue delivers a spoken word poem on stand-out song ‘Nothing’s Goin’ Right.’

But when they’re not going all Celtic, Amsterdam go the other extreme and adopt kitsch merseybeat to mixed effect (‘Lifestyle’). It’s odd to hear a band with such a blatant disregard for music fashion. And frankly it’s kind of refreshing.

 Yet despite some likeable tunes and the odd dark lyric (‘I took a real kicking/I don’t know why’ on ‘Hatred is Wasted’), it all just seems disappointingly middle-England. There just doesn’t seem to be a sizable set of testicles to give Amsterdam’s dreamy 60’s pop kitsch melodies any real edge or invention.

www.amsterdam-music.comDAVE ALLEN3/5

http://www.subba-cultcha.com/article_album.php?id=7034 

In answer to your questions Dan….

When reviewing bands, I don’t request to review anything I don’t think i’ll like. Although I’m often supplied CD’s I didn’t request, mind, so have reviewed albums by dark metal bands like Dew Scented in the past. It’s easier to write about genres you know than those you’re not, and you can only review things by comparing them to the benchmark of their genre.

I don’t think it’s fair to review things you know you’ll hate just to wallow in the fun of slagging them off (The Business excepted).

Yes, sometimes I am consciously aware of how to start a review before i hear it (if it’s someone i know a lot about them already), although more in a stylistic sense than any form of pre-judgement.

I try not to read other people’s reviews before I review someone’s CD’s, just because you’re opinion (and that’s all a review is) inevitably gets influenced by someone elses. That said, I don’t obsess about it, and once you’ve formed the base of the review, it’s useful to read around the band to inject more life into your own stuff.

Pre-conception is inevitably going to influence your  review, whether something has been hyped to death or made by an unsigned band. It’s fairer to be harsh on a hyped act that has spent millions on PR than an unsigned band with low production quality, selling CD’s from a suitcase.

Is that all Withy?

i think he now writes for playlouder…

Guest single reviews this week by Ruddiger McKunty, long-standing contributor of Art-Fucker Magazine, Swallow.tv and creator of the blog currently spunking wildly across the face of all scenes that matter: VaJ.

THE RAVEONETTES – YOU WANT THE CANDY – FIERCE PANDA
Ruddiger McKunty: So as I was fucking saying to Pete (of the Doherty variety), whilst chasing Charles within the porcelain confines of a Koko cubicle, “the band of the year has to fucking be Scrotum Grinder: just for the way they re-inject the junk of the Velvet Underground into the afterbirth of Leftfield to form a primordial Gang of Four soup.” Just as I was saying to my mate Simon Klaxons, Nu-Rave is almost Nietchian in its colossal projection of intellstellar bodily functions. Like a crack-smoking Stephen Dedalus but fucking mental. The Raveonettes new seven inches of fun really encapsulates this.

AMY MACDONALD – RUN- MELDRAMATIC
Ruddiger McKunty: Smaltzy cack created with the sole purpose of forming the soundtrack to infinite shit Romcom’s where the ditsy fat bird – except she’s not fat, she’s Katie Holmes – spends two hours fingering herself after a ‘jock’, only to discover that he’s a cock smoker, before finally falling for the sensitive geek who’s been sniffing poppers at the back of the bike sheds all along. It’s the total epitome of consumerism, or something.

SIMPLE PLAN – WHEN I’M GONE – ATLANTIC
Ruddiger McKunty: They seriously expect me to review Simple Plan? This radio-friendly, pop-rock jizz is already polluting the ears of the proles. Now they want me to listen and review it in my cocaine stupor? Never shall I lower my perpendicular prose to pick apart a song already be-known to the semen-stained, lager swilling masses. Simple Plan? Simple Cack.

DAVID JORDAN – SUN GOES DOWN – MERCURY

Ruddiger McKunty: See above. Pissing in your eardrums like a vastly overproduced cover of Rosie & Jim. Big Dave has all the hallmarks of an annoying twat who’ll hang around the charts like a venereal disease, then fester in a corner somewhere until he’s exhumed for Celebrity Big Brother or some such cack. Shit.
MY TOYS LIKE ME – ALL OVER MY FACE – DUMB ANGEL

Ruddiger McKunty: A fat slice of filth for all you cunts. According to my source (sitting across the coke dusted desk in front of me) ‘All Over My Face’ echoes the political activist poetry iconic neo-post-punk preacher poet John Twatter, hidden amongst a puddle of ejaculation innuendo. Fuck yes. So good it doesn’t so much blur pigeon holes as rip them apart and butt rape them repeatedly, in the face. There is a new fucking scene in town; the My Toys Like Me musical experience shall hence forth be known as Posttwat-Soulcore. Catch the tragic magic bus early you cunts.
BLACK FRANCIS – THE SEUS – COOKING VINYL

Ruddiger McKunty: “The theme revolves around a lot of NASTY sex, NASTIER death, and beautifully strange birth,” says Frank Black, the cunting legend. Even if in a mid-life crisis reclamation of youth he’s re-appropriated his old Pixies stage name Black Francis. Sounding like The Pixies sharing a crack pipe with the Happy Mondays this is fucked up in so many right ways incomprehensible to the psyche unless you’ve downed ethanol with Hunter S. Thompson.
MIA – PAPER PLANES – X L RECORDINGS

Ruddiger McKunty: Sri Lankan indefinable hip-hop songstress MIA unleashes another bastard of a track from her phenomenal ‘’ long-player. Paper Planes is projected into the stratosphere by a sample ripped torn out of the tattered GI corpse of The Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’, MIA staggers effortlessly around trip-hop lyrical wordsmithery and shit. This is hip-hop as it should be; packaged up and re-sold to the white people who understand music.
MY AMERICAN HEART – BOY’S! GRAB YOUR GUNS – BODOG MUSIC

Ruddiger McKunty: A misleading Hot Chip intro soon morphs into rugged guitars before piss-poor generic emo vocals tries to finger bang you, in the eye. It’s just like I was saying to Kele Bloc Party; “Where are all these shitty bands from California coming from? I mean, do they breed ‘em on farms out there, or is it God’s way of punishing us for The Corrs!?” I spat, “It’s fucking epidermal shit, and I’m not gonna cunting stand for it anymore!” Kele Bloc Party was simply lost for words as he crossed the street.
DAVE GAHAN – SAW SOMETHING/DEPER + DEEPER – EMI

Ruddiger McKunty: This AA side is why heroin is such a good thing; it’s the eighties in a syringe. Laptop forged tunes, guitar solos aplenty and heavily echoed vocals torn straight from the bumhole of a retro-goth’s rape victim. It’s enough to draw comparisons with Yeats. This is fucking good, at least that’s what fellow celestial being and sometimes writer Steve Buckingham-Smith tells me (I am yet to bathe my ears beneath its salty surface).
VASHTI BUNYAN – SOME THINGS JUST STICK IN YOUR MIND – FAT CAT

Ruddiger McKunty: Locked in obscurity since the 60’s, this peculiar piece of Stones-pop was written by Messer’s Jagger and Richards before being passed onto the enigmatic Vashti. Her faltering falsetto vocals give an ethereal existence to Jagger and Richards dreamy, playful lyrics amidst melodic 60’s pop kitsch.
…As told to Dave Allen

www.subba-cultcha.com

Adam Green: Sixes & Sevens (Album review)

Fifth studio album from the Moldy Peaches frontman is another mixed affair

Adam Green’s a funny old one. After the The Moldy Peaches went on hiatus in 2004, a successful solo career for the quirky, New York songsmith seemed inevitable. Yet after four albums of erratic ‘love it or hate it’ material, Green’s solo work has only briefly captured the anti-folk spark which illuminated the New York scene back in 2001.

At times, when Green whips out bar stool and acoustic guitar, his wry, ironic lyrics create that magical mix of dark cynicality and knowing irony (most notably Friends of Mine’s ‘Jessica Simpson’). But at other times, when Green decides to veer into Phil Spector, big strings, pop territory, his atrocious lounge-jazz vocals come to resemble Vic Reeves’ pub singer (take Sixes & Sevens ‘Morning After Midnight’).
It’s an unusual balance of styles that sits uneasy with the current indie scene, although that perhaps, is the point. With the startling amount of po-faced, image-conscious art-rock flooding the scene at the moment, it’s somewhat refreshing to hear an indie artist taking influences from Al Green and Sly & the Family Stone, rather than the same stale, old post-punk references. That said, it’s still strangely unnerving to hear panpipes on the downright peculiar ‘You Get So Lucky’.

Unconventional seems to be the word, as Sixes & Sevens becomes a name the impression game: Take ‘Tropical Island’, a dreamy bit of melodic pop reminiscent of Elvis’ Hawaii moments. ‘That Sounds Like a Pony’ meanwhile, with it’s short duration and syncopated jazz drums is lifted straight from Minutemen. Yet with that stupid singing voice and dark, but tongue-in-cheek lyrics littering the album, it’s a mental battle to stop yourself thinking that Adam Green isn’t… well, taking the piss a bit.
But that’s not to write off the album, when he forgets his lounge-singer pretentions and narrows the focus there are some genuinely charming moments here, with tender ditty’s like ‘It’s a Fine’ or the gloriously delicate melodics of ‘When a Pretty Face’.

For all those moments though, the biggest sticking point remains: Adam Green really can’t sing. Hardly a revelation, and something that injects an earnest bitter edge into his anti-folk material, but the moment he starts to think he’s Al Green; he might as well be on a cruise ship.
By: Dave Allen

www.subba-cultcha.com