The Temple of the Mighty Bague

First stage of Campaign mode complet0rised! The Pirates are defeated and Bague’s Avengers are victorious! Now I’m up to my eyes in bi-plane flying World War 1 Germans! With the stupendous amount of coins I earned, I’ve unlocked the dreaded Concrete Donkey and the wonderful new Buffalo of Lies!

I’ve also discovered that by pressing select, I can toggle the top screen between play-area extension and world map - the latter definitely seems to be more useful, but we’ll see.

Despite being somewhat disappointed with the horrifically buggy and, frankly, unfinished Open Warfare a year or two ago, the lure of mass invertebrate extermination on a handheld console was reaching fever pitch when I spotted that Open Warfare 2 was getting better reviews. Imagine my discomfort, then, when discovering that it was sitting for a tempting 15 quid in my local GameStation.

So, first thoughts - the interface is excellent - much better than its predecessor. All the usual suspects are there - including the Holy Hand Grenade and Banana Bomb (both of which have, I understand, been inexplicably excluded from the recent Wii release). There’s a comprehensive team editor, including a fairly simple pixel program for editing your team flag. I was horrified to discover, though, that “Angry Scots” wasn’t available as a team language.

Until, that is, I completed the training mission and took the 1300 or so points I’d earned to the unlock shop - yes, Angry Scots is there for a measly 300 points, so JOCKS GET! My team has now been converted to a band of blue-painted rampaging celts. Oh - that they are, as ever, Bague’s Avengers. The teams are limited to four worms, though, so only Bague, Craig, Scabe and Plague are putting in an appearance - Babe, Tabe, Flabe, Mabe are currently languishing in the PC version.

So, I’ve only really done the tutorials so far and the resolution was worrying me a little - going from 1280×800 down to DS size was a bit of a concern. As it happens, it’s not too bad - the double height screen helps a lot so it’s only really a bit more panning that’s required.

Oh, and it has pirates.

This game is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. And it’s still miles better than many other titles available for the PC. It’s just stupid, funny, ultra-violent and, well, daft.

So I’ve created a team called Bague’s Avengers and am working my way up through the ranks in deathmatch mode, cos it’s just got to be done. They are, naturally, voiced by the Angry Scots voicebank.

For all those wierdos out there who have the closing song from Portal stuck in their head, prepare to have it replaced.

So, you know how it is. You have a CD collection going back god knows how many years, you buy some tracks from amazon or itunes, you have the whole lot ripped on your PC to stick on your portable device.

And then you realise you have over sixty gigabytes of music, most of which you haven’t heard in years and a fair proportion of which you haven’t listened to since it was ripped.

Here’s the downfall. I’d like to make use of the “copy highest rated songs” smart playlists in media players like Amarok and iTunes, but the simple fact is, 99% of my tracks are unrated, and a fair proportion of them haven’t been played.

So here’s what I’ve done. I’ve created a smart playlist called “unrated”, containing the following rule:

• Rating is <nothing at all - no stars>
• Limit to 25 items selected by random
• Live updating on.

Then I’ve made sure that this playlist is copied over on each sync (I have a 1Gb nano so obviously can’t sync the whole collection). This means that every day I have 25 tracks that are unrated and probably haven’t been listened to in years. As the tracks play, I give em a rating on the iPod and it syncs that back to iTunes/Amarok. Hooray for rediscovering old faves!