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 The only sticker album you need this christmas...erm, I mean Summer. In the spirit of the old rodent and its possible re-emergence, we are proud to bring you the updated and not-very-similar-to-4-years-ago-honest, RODENT WORLD CUP sticker album.
be warned, it’s a challenging bugger, some of the stickers are right tricky to get. They *are* all available though, so don’t lose faith as you refresh your way past yet another Mario.
Start collecting here
 Henley-by-the-Thames, yesterday. While I’ve not resorted to going through the bins like some Rodent reprobates, my late adoption of the Xbox means I missed most of the classics the first time round and can now grab them up for mere pennies. I’d heard Saints Row was “bitchin’, yo” and four quid is too good to pass up, right? Fo’ shizzle, homie.
Yes, that-there street lingo was employed to indicate that Saints Row is based around the life of a gangsta. All your middle-class, suburban fantasies will be fulfilled. But first up, pimp your avatar: if you’re going for authenticity, I’d suggest rocking purple corn-rows, a green goatie and an oversized t-shirt. Then it’s time to enter Stillwater, a law-suit avoiding amalgamation of various west-coast cities. Before you can say “check my sweet threads, dawg”, you’ll find yourself initiated into the Third Street Saints. Although these Saints are a portrayed as a somewhat “ethical” gang, you’ll be a-whorin’, stealin’, scammin’ and murderin’ with the worst of them. Running round the open world and performing such tasks earns you both cash and respect; Money allows you to buy a little summin’, summin’ – guns, clothes, cars, etc. – while bolstering your nefarious CV unlocks the main storyline.
There’s surprising variety to be found in the main campaign. Obviously the core gameplay is based around wasting fools, but that can come in the form of either pedestrian- or vehicular-based slaughter, and there’s also racing, tagging and kidnapping elements to be enjoyed. Fun for all the family, I’m sure you’ll agree. My biggest complaint about Saints Row, however, is that most of the main missions begin with a lengthy drive across town to get to the action. Now, in principle, this gives you a real sense of scale for the city and the ‘hoods you’ve yet to bring under your control. But, if you’re less of a “playa” and more of a “spanner-fingered baboon”, there are a few missions you’ll be retrying a number of times. The lack of save points means that initial commute can become a real grind. But stick with it.
Book ending each of the main missions are a series of cut scenes. These are superbly entertaining, thanks to some great voice acting. Similarly, jump in a car and you’re treated to local radio: Interspersed between the hippin’ and the hoppin’ are some hilarious adverts. The auto parts dealer – Rim Jobs – is a personal favourite. It’s these little touches which breathe life in to the game world and elevate Saints Row above a run-of-the-mill GTA clones.
My advice? You see Saints Row pimpin’ its wares for less than a Hamilton and you’d be a fool not to check it out.
In the future, both bins and bargains are outlawed and I am forced to jump across rooftops in search of empty thrills. I am utterly miserable, and Resident Evil 8 is going to require that I take out a loan against the miniscule coffin I laughably call a home. The streets are nice and clean though.
Mirror’s Edge (XBox 360)
One of the most curious challenges in gaming must be providing the right kind of feedback to the player. For example, you know where your arms and legs are without looking, right? Unless you are missing any limbs, in which case I apologise for my presumption. But in that case, you still probably know where they went – inside an alligator or burned in a fire – it wasn’t like they got stolen in the night. Unless they did. Look, I’m really sorry if they got stolen in the night, that must have been an awful shock. My point is that generally, we have more senses working in our bodies than can be satisfied simply with a screen, some speakers and a rumbling pad. We have spatial positioning perception, balance, hunger, and a special sense devoted to letting us know when we need to go to the toilet. I think this is why most first person games are shooters or puzzle games, where visual clues about walls and enemies are generally far more important than where your feet are. There have been attempts to introduce other mechanics into first person games – Namco’s Breakdown, for example, used platforming and fighting to mixed results – but by and large first person action games all have the same controls and very little variety of ideas.
 I recommend everyone play in building sites whenever possible. Remember that you can run along red things! Coming straight out of Sweden to challenge these concepts is Mirror’s Edge, a game of chase over rooftops, through brightly lit offices and dank sewers and set in a gleaming white future city where all sharing of information is controlled by the naughty state. The protagonist is Faith, a ‘runner’ who couriers information illicitly via the none-more-vogue means of parkour – the art of getting from point A to B in the most efficent manner possible. Simply and beautifully, that’s the game: a very fast paced platformer in which you string together jumps, slides, sprints and swings to keep your momentum going, whilst avoiding or beating occasional enemies who are trying to apprehend you. The controls are bafflingly and beautifully unconventional, with contextual “high action” and “low action” buttons sending Faith into leaps, tucks, wallruns and rolls with ease. The touchy issue of positioning feet – the bane of many foolish FPS platform sections – is not addressed directly, and this will prove frustrating for the first 15 minutes of play. But then the realization kicks in that developers DICE have removed the need for you to worry – there’s no pixel-perfection needed to cross gaps in Mirror’s Edge and consequently you learn that there is no need for fear. Miss a jump and you always seem to be able to launch yourself that split second later… Atop a skyscraper, run for the edge. See your target, perhaps a tarpaulin on the next building, helpfully coloured blazing red against the brilliant white of the environment. Hit that high action button to jump off, tuck her legs in with the low action, and see the screen blur and hear the music fade as Faith sails over the gap, hundreds of feet in the air. Just before she lands, a second hit of the low action button rolls her safely and the momentum carries her forward, over a wall with high action and under a pipe with low action and onward. When it works, and moments like this are plenty in the opening levels, it’s exhilirating.
 On the Mirror's Edge leaderboards, Anni-Frid and Agnetha are constantly competing for the top spot, then there's a big gap before Benny and Bjorn is literally last in the world. This exactly reflects another way I have ranked the members of ABBA. As platformers go, Mirror’s Edge does not have the most simple control scheme but it’s a very different animal to free roaming parkour-influenced games like Assassin’s Creed. In many ways it’s a more of a racing game, something that becomes clearer when you have unlocked the various time-trial modes or coughed up for the DLC. You cannot go where you want, there is a prescribed linear path to follow, but how you follow it, how obstacles are navigated along the way – that’s the real joy. Faith’s foes are armed (and later in the game are as agile and persitent as she is) but they too are merely bends in the road to powerslide around. A brief bullet-time mode and some hand-to-hand combat, helpfully inegrated into your sliding, jumping, wall-running moveset, are all you really need to get by everybody. It can even be played like an FPS if you steal weapons from your enemies and shoot them, but that’s entirely in opposition to the spirit of the game, which delightfully offers an achievement for not shooting anyone througout. You can’t even hang onto the weapons if you wanted to – there’s no way to traverse beams or climb walls whilst carrying a shotgun, and Faith moves considerably slower when lugging them around.
DICE have clearly put an awful lot of thought and effort into Mirror’s Edge and it shows. The simple, stylised environments are gorgeous and have very clearly sprung from the neccessities of the gameplay. The sound and music are lovely, and none of it feels bolted together. It’s a true original, beautiful and flawed, and it’s got to be worthy of your attention for that alone. Crazily, the game is regularly available for £5 and at the time of writing is being sold by Game for £2.99. What an incredible bargain bin they must have. Or a lot of copies returned by idiots. Grab it before it’s made illegal.
 Bin related features
- Bins are illegal
- Swearing is illegal
- Everything is clean
- “Swedish”
The maths of a bargain binner
 Muuuuuuuum! They've banned me the bastards! Why? I have no idea. Muuuuuuum.....oh. http://forums.xbox.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=32172972
 You can pop into that shop and buy some drinks and snacks after executing finishing moves like this. It's lovely. Kazuma Kiryu is the 4th Chairman of the Tojo Clan, ex-gangster, patron of the Sunshine Orphanage, possibly the hardest and noblest man in gaming, and I kind of love him. I wish he were my dad. My real dad’s pretty great, but if anything were to happen to him and I had to be sent to an orphanage even though I’m 34 years old I would want it to be Kazuma’s orphanage. I’ve never seen my dad pummel a horde of thugs into submission using a golf club and a bicycle, or wrestle a bull, or headbutt someone repeatedly before kicking them through a window – all activities that Kazuma indulges in during Sega’s amazing Yakuza 3 – but it would be nice to think of someone doing this sort of thing in your defence whilst maintaining a responsible moral code.
 How my dad stacks up against Yakuza 3's Kazuma Kiryu Yakuza 3 is a curious mix of RPG, beat-em-up and adventure romp and it is inventively, addictively crazy in a way that only Japanese games seem to manage. The deeply convoluted plot (which concerns deeds and land rights issues that escalate into assassinations and inter-gang warfare) is merely a narrative framework to provide the player, controlling Kazuma, with direction and objectives. It would theoretically be possible to go through the basic plot of this game in perhaps six or seven hours, but that would miss the point entirely: the distractions here are the real joy, and it’s why after 50 hours of playing and a victory in the story mode, my completion stats screen tells me I have only done 39.65% of the total content.
Those distractions are many and varied and wholly unrepetitive – expect to be looking for lost cats, helping old men find bars they haven’t been to in years, disrupting water-cooler sales scams, running away from muscular drag queens, solving murders Phoenix Wright-style… I could go on, but to do so would spoil dozens of lovely surprises. This game is bursting at the seams with stuff to do, and there are very well implemented mini-games of darts, pool, bowling, golf, fishing, Japanese and western casinos, fighting tournaments and a Sega arcade with UFO Catcher (a claw grabber prize machine) and Boxcelios (a curious but beautiful shoot-em-up). There’s even karaoke, rendered through a rhythm game, and it’s possibly the most berserk thing I’ve ever played.
Even the main quest takes you down several weird alleys. Because Kazuma runs an orphanage, some of these involve helping your kids out of Grange Hill-esque mini-dramas about bullying, stealing and so on, and they rarely play out the way you think they will. Because Kazuma has largely left his yakuza life behind, the survival of his orphanage and the well-being of the kids (an appropriately loveable mix of cute, charming, admirable and bloody annoying) are placed as the cause you’re fighting for, and by criminy does Yakuza 3 make you feel it. The time you spend at the orphanage and the gorgeous, Sega-blue skied beach directly beside it are lovely, and you know noble Kaz and all those children really are better for being there. When it’s threatened, you want to smash people to bits with a baseball bat. Fortunately, that is precisely what’s expected of you.
The vast majority of quests end up in a massive rumble, and in Yakuza 3’s version of random battles (avoidable after getting an item about halfway through, though I never used it), Kaz gets accosted regularly by punks, thugs and yakuza looking for a fight. After a couple of lines of dialogue, mercifully varied and often pretty funny, the camera will pan around and some thumping music will kick in, signifying the switch between adventure mode and combat mode. If you’re on the street, onlookers will form barriers effectively creating an arena, but otherwise you’re fighting on the spot that the fight started with all the attendant street furniture at hand to help you. You can pick up anything that’s not nailed down to help you, and you’re able to arm yourself with weapons you buy, find or make in adventure mode or anything that the bad guys drop during the fight. You also have your fists and feet, and Kazuma really is a tough, unmerciful sod during a tussle, smashing faces into walls before stamping on necks, or slicing dudes up with swords. Usually alone but sometimes with an AI friend, you can be facing anything from a single opponent to a dozen armed men, but the challenge is very sensibly scaled as you progress. The fighting system is simple but probably one of my favourites in all of gaming, with the pad’s face buttons used as grab, dodge, attack and finish, and lock-on and block on the shoulders. There’s an absolute ton of variations introduced throughout the game in a number of imaginative ways, best of which is a hilarious blogging minigame that lets Kaz learn unusual techniques from everyday folks in the street.
In terms of looks, Yakuza 3 is a bit of a mixed bag. The streets of Kamurocho and Ryukyu are colourful, detailed and gorgeous by day or night, and really capture the bustle and atmosphere of urban Japan. The main character models are really good too – Kazuma is not an emotionally demonstrative man, but a lot gets conveyed effectively by close ups of narrowing eyes, clenching fists and gentle smiles. There are a lot of tiny touches, like Kaz’s ward Haruka reaching up to hold his hand if you walk at her pace whilst out together, that sell this world brilliantly. Secondary characters, like the ever present thugs who randomly attack, don’t fare so well and are sometimes a bit light on detail and character, but there does seem to be scores of variations. Anyone you talk to or interact with in any way other than a punch-up is distinct and extremely well done. The game has a great soundtrack, pounding and gentle where it ought to be, and all the voice acting remains in Japanese. It sounds moody and believable, and the English subtitles are reliable and seem thorough. Not that I’d know, I can’t speak Japanese, but it feels right.
 Shopping arcade in Naha, Okinawa
 Fight outside that arcade as it is in the game's equivalent, Ryukyu Much was made in the run-up to the western release of the game of cuts from the Japanese game, and it seems these total about 20 side quests (there are 100 in the western version), some hostess clubs where Kaz can enjoy the company of ladies (there are still girls to date and bed in the cut version, don’t worry), and mahjongg and shogi mini-games. It’s sad to think that these were cut due to language or cultural reasons and the game could potentially be even more appealing, but playing the game I don’t think they are particularly missed. Yakuza 3 is ambitious and enormous even without them – it’s one of the most fun games I’ve played this year.
 Another reason to own a PS3... Zeus, God of Gods, and Kratos, Spartan warrior, agree to hold peace talks on neutral territory – Hell – in front of a special delegation comprising Satan, Barack Obama and Robin Cousins. They arrive at the River Styx and jump onto the ferry.
Ferryman: Alright gents, where too?
Zeus: Hades please, Mohammed Karzai’s residence.
Ferryman: No worries. Lovely day innit? It was a bit overcast this mornin’, what with all those bodies falling out the sky, but by all accounts it’s gonna be a nice evening.
Zeus: Yes, it is very charming. I like what St. Lucifer has done with the place.
Ferryman: Ere, I had that Prometheus fella in the back of me skiff the other week.
Zeus: Yes? How is he?
Ferryman: Well to tell you the truth, he wasn’t feeling all that. Said some bald dude with chains on the end of his hands had just fucking torched ‘im. He was sitting in his chair, minding his old beeswax when this geezer lit him up. I mean, people these days, no fucking respect I say.
Kratos shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
Ferryman: He’s had to cover himself in calamine lotion, and the doctor’s told to stay out the sun.
Zeus: Well at least he can be consoled with the fact that there is not much sun in the netherworld.
Ferryman: Ha, you got that right guv’nor. Still, could have been worse. He could have ended up like that Ares chap. I mean, that was bang out of order if you ask me.
Zeus: By my holy beard, what happened?
Ferryman: He was on his way to bingo, proper dressed up like, when some cunt shot him down with a fuck off great big arrow. Made a right mess of his motor. Well as you might imagine, Ares was well miffed, and squares up to the bloke – who was also a slap head come to think of it – and tells him that he’s gonna have to pay up for the damage.
Zeus: And did he?
Ferryman: Did he fuck. And to make matters worse, he’s only gone and skull fucked him! Shoved his thumbs in his eye sockets, pulled his meat and two veg out, and given him both barrels.
Zeus: Who could commit such an abhorrent sin? What mis-begotten wretch dares to walk this earth that would even consider such an act against the Gods?
Kratos looks at the floor
Ferryman: …then there’s Poseidon. I mean some might say he ‘ad it coming. Not me mind, but there are people who had issues with the bloke, what with all his yapping and bitching about the ice caps melting and the polar bears pissing in his bed. But that don’t give no one the right to do what they did to him.
Zeus: Oh be tranquil my beating heart, this is too much! What happened?
Ferryman: Skull-fucked! Apparently his library book was late and some fella’s leapt over the counter and gave him a proper seeing to. Fucking blood, seaweed and library cards all over the shop. Anyway, here’s me rabbiting on, we’re ere already. Karzai’s gaff is up on the left, next door to Tony Blair’s place.
Zeus: Thank you Ferryman. Now how much do we owe you?
 I love a good black cab, so I do. I've had a few celebrities inside as well. Ferryman: I’m afraid that’s gonna be five rubies and a golden fleece.
Kratos: What the fuck? You’re ‘aving a laugh ain’t ya?
Ferryman: Sorry mate – fucking diesel prices innit. Then you’ve got river tax, national insurance…
Kratos: (unzipping his Spartan briefs) I’m not having that, come ‘ere.
Zeus: Kratos! NO!
God of War 3 then. Astonishing graphics, epic soundtrack, tried and tested gameplay. And quite violent.
You can find me in da club! By which I mean you can find me by the bins.
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (Xbox 360)
Nothing is more important to 50 Cent than money. Making money, either through his popularity in the “rap game” or by hustling, whatever that entails, is his prime goal in life. He’s even named himself after some money, albeit an oddly small amount. Unlike Chamillionaire, although I’m not exactly sure how much a chamillion is – you may insert your own pet shop joke here if you wish. An honest 50 Cent simulator would probably be more of a Tycoon type game where you manage money, release records, invest in bling and invent beefs with other rappers that are about as convincing as the feud between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. For better or worse, because now I think about it that sounds pretty good, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is dedicated to the other side of the rapper’s persona – the side that reckons he is a hard bastard.
 50 Cent using cover, because he is afraid of the shooty men. As Blood on the Sand opens, 50 Cent and G-Unit are playing a gig in some stereotypically dusty, bombed-out and dangerous middle-eastern country. They’re going to net a frankly ridiculous ten million dollars for the show, but 50 is clearly expecting trouble as he appears onstage in full combat gear complete with grenades. Well, either that or developers Sandbox couldn’t be bothered to make a different character model for him. Backstage the promoter claims to have been robbed of the cash, and rather than opting for litigation (they surely must have signed a contract, right? It’s $10m!) 50 freaks out, pulls a gun and demands alternative remuneration. The promoter hands over a diamond encrusted skull, and apparently lucks onto the one thing 50 Cent loves more than money – a skeleton/jewellery combination. But as soon as 50 walks out of the office and into a training level the skull is nicked by bad guys, and the rest of the game has you in running battles with local gangs, terrorists and shady CIA men in an attempt to get it back. This involves 50 Cent striding into a lot of cut-scenes shouting “WHERE’S MY SKULL?”, calling people bitches and shooting them. I like to imagine that the whole thing is in 50′s head, as if he’s had some psychotic paranoid break with reality and thinks that it’s his actual skull that’s been stolen. Either way it’s a plot as original as it is barking mad, and just one of the many reasons that I have come to love this game.
As a Gears of War clone, Blood on the Stand stacks up pretty well. The co-op play works great whether you’re partnered with AI or a friend over Live as one of G-Unit (Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and DJ Whoo Kid are all selectable), and the basics of cover, blindfire and movement are implemented solidly. The levels are really nicely done too, guiding the player linearly between open areas that allow a fair amount of variety in approach. Players are free to break for high ground and search out sniping opportunities, use the sticky cover to pick bad guys off one by one, or charge in with a shotgun and some upgradeable melee takedowns. A wide variety of weapons and moves can be bought and swapped in, and the action is enlivened by a combo multiplier scheme swiped almost wholesale from The Club. Multipliers can be extended through liberal use of what the game calls a taunt button, but what is actually a swear button: yes, one press of the left stick and 50, Tony, Lloyd or, erm, Whoo will unleash a foul-mouthed torrent of abuse at your enemies. And in a move which encapsulates the game’s silly but undeniable sense of humour, you can use the in-game shops (located at frequently placed payphones) to buy and swap in more swear packs. Upgradable effing and jeffing – we truly live in an age of wonder. There’s a couple of quite poor driving sections and one pretty good on-rails turret gun mission in there, but the majority of the six or seven hour campaign is a steadily more difficult gun battle with dudes, some other dudes, some more dudes and helicopters for bosses.
 "Hi, I'm Lance Reddick, television's pre-eminent stern baldy, and I'm in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand! I love the game so much that I've got all the achievements. I did the co-op with Detective McNulty - he likes playing as Tony Yayo, whereas I am a DJ Whoo Kid man." Graphically, Blood on the Sand does okay but poses no challenge to third person pack leader Uncharted 2. 50 and his friends are beefy, the blood is red and the sand is sandy – it’s an orange and brown game and it won’t win any awards. Sound is another matter: though the acting of G-Unit is generally awful, the rest of the cast is quite a bit better with some quality work from Lance Reddick (of The Wire, Lost and Fringe, and who suffers one of the funniest deaths in all of gaming in this), Dwight Schultz and go-to comedy Arab Omid Djalili. Presuming you like 50 Cent’s records, there’s a ton of them here to be going on with. Starting with a dozen or so and unlocking more as you progress, the player has a massive list of 50 Cent tracks to listen to when playing, and the game sensibly lets you create playlists of your favourites. So P.I.M.P. and In Da Club over and over again for most people. Finishing the game unlocks a music video gallery, but this is a pretty abysmal reward – not only are the videos horribly encoded, they’re also censored for language. In a game which seems to place cussing front and centre, this is either a curious cop-out or a really unfortunate mistake and you won’t even watch them once.
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is an astonishing piece of work – crude, stupid, derivative and possibly offensive – and one that should not on paper hang together anything like as well as it does. As a follow up to the incredibly shit 50 Cent: Bulletproof, Blood on the Sand is nothing short of a revelation, even if technically it’s merely above average. What it does have going for it is some good design, some intentional laughs and a fair selection of jaw-dropping clangers that entertain massively without interrupting the flow of play. Coming in under that magic £10 price point, it won’t even break the Lloyd Banks. Sorry.
 Bin related features
The maths of a bargain binner
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Hours of game per £1 spent – 1 (average, but I foresee a lot of replayability in it – maybe another 10 hours which would double this number.)
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Achievements per hour – 36 (average)
It started with a text message:
“Fancy having a go at the Endless Setlist on Easter Monday? We’ll go for the Bladder of Steel achievement. 8am start so we can be finished nice and early.”
Thus spake Mat Harding, drummer with Penzance thrash punk pink latex combo Bugga, and Xbox 360 achievements hunter extraordinaire. Well why not came the harmonious response from the assorted members of the Way of the Rodent/Old Boys Gaming Network South West chapter. After all, what better way of spending Easter Monday could there be than to attempt to play six-and-a-half hours back-to-back through Rock Band 2’s 84-set song list? I mean, fucking beat that Jesus! The fact that most of us had never listened to, let alone played through some of the more difficult mosh fest songs that would crop up at the end, when our concentration levels were likely to be shot to pieces, seemed a mere trifle of piffling inconvenience.
And so we said yes. Fast forward to another text message, this time from Mr Nocky T:
“I am terrified and part of me says don’t do it!”
And you know what, he was right was our boy Nick. The closer the gig came, the more nervous we grew. I utter no word of a lie when I say that I spent the entire Sunday/Monday night dreaming of the Endless Setlist, and more particularly, fucking it up. When the alarm went off at 8.30am, I felt frazzled and tetchy. Who among us, after all, could face being the one who committed the fatal error after five hours in the saddle? How would we be able to look our fellow Rodent in the eye?
But we were going to make a go of it nevertheless. The time was commuted to a more reasonable 12pm start and the initial line up – Kentish, Mat, Nocky T and The Incredible Tromain Keith – set about making the instruments ‘interruption-proof’. To earn the ‘Bladder of Steel’ achievement, there could be no pauses or interludes whatsoever – all of the songs had to be played straight through. So we taped pennies over the top of the casing that housed the Start and Select buttons to ensure they were insulated from stray fingers. We used wired drums and a microphone to mitigate connection faults and put in fresh, high performance batteries into the guitars. Mat also issued a strict decree that the oven could not be used in case it tripped his electrics.
A note was made of potential toilet breaks for drummer Mat, as we accepted early on that even on medium level, he was the one truly irreplaceable component at the heart of our barely-oiled machine. We fuelled ourselves with bananas, coke and Duracell-tasting energy drinks, and trained our eyes not to blink for the rest of the day. And then we hoped for the best.
But upon firing up the 360, Mat revealed one minor detail…the Endless Setlist wasn’t quite ready to play. “We just need to get to 600 stars,” he said. “It should only take a couple of tracks – we could practise the six hardest songs while we’re at it.”
It was sound logic, and so without further question we stumbled our way through a ‘warm up’ set, including Painkiller and Shoulder to the Plow, even failing at 92% on one of them – cue a few raised eyebrows and nervous mutterings of ‘we’ll get it right when it matters’. That done, we discovered we were still 29 stars short! So on we went, cocooned in a rock bubble with our headphones on, all the while blissfully unaware that poor old Matt had arrived from St Ives and had been knocking on the door for 40 minutes. It was not until news of his plight reached the forum that we became aware, and were able to let the poor roadie in. And the lad had certainly come laden with all manner of technical gizmondos that would prove vital in capturing the spirit of the day.
Several songs later we hit the 600-mark. Hello Cleveland?
Nope. Still no Endless Setlist.
Thankfully our answer to Jeanine St Huggins and Ian Faith (Mat’s sister Kim and her boyfriend Andrew – the brother of Silent Mountain to boot) came to the rescue, and thanks to the wisdom of the Internet, the road to Amarillo was mapped out – we had to unlock Moscow by playing more gigs in Boston.
One setlist later and Moscow did verily appear… but no sign of the Endless one.
With the clock now audibly ticking and the reserves of energy junk food visibly diminished, we finally found it in Shanghai, and one final eight-song challenge later, we were ready. Or were we? No, we were now informed that we needed a total of 900 stars! Hooray! This was now descending into complete and utter farce. After all the talk, we were going down like a lead zeppellin.
Suddenly Bill (Lateph on the website) appeared like a magic rock genie and produced his memory card upon which he had an unlocked save file. He had saved the day.
It was now 4.30pm.
Doubts were aired as to whether we should push on - I’d been making a mental note of other potential weekends and bank holidays when we could try again. But Mat, who had been drumming for three hours by now, was adamant that we’d give it a go. And so we did.
The energy levels that surged through the room during those first ten songs were incredible. With Bill now ensconced on lead guitar, Keith and I swapping bass duties, and singing split between myself, Matt, Nick and Kim, there was a giddy sense that we were finally under way on our epic journey, albeit one that could end with us broken and weeping at any moment on the side of the road.
As the initial surge gently subsided, iconoclast Nick walked off-stage to take care of the kids’ dinner, and the rest of us knuckled down to record a searing set of tracks, coming close on several occasions to achieving straight 100% rankings across the board. There were a couple of wobbles, even a vocal fail at one point, but everything was ticking along nicely. “I like it – this line up is a tight unit,” said Mat as we ground our way through the 3os. Time slowed as we neared the half-way point, possibly even going backwards at one point, as if in the grip of fuming young megalomaniac Budgie, hundreds of miles away.
8.00pm
Jax appeared. Nick and the boys reappeared. Suddenly we were into the serious 60s, and then the seriously shitting ourselves 70s. Jax and Matt’s vocals were sensational, demonstrating an ability to hit and hold a note perfect even if the words they were singing sometimes bore little resemblance to, well, words at all. Glances were exchanged, little shakes of the head and weary smiles. How was Mat doing it? This was ten hours plus for him now! How was Bill maintaining his stamina as the speed and pressure ramped up? Could a visibly nervous Nocky hold it together in the home-stretch? Was the scene set for little Murray to crawl under the drum kit and switch the console off?
10.30pm
The last six songs were bliss and agony and gentle hysteria. Mat got off to a terrible start on the penultimate track and had to crawl back up the cliff face. Then Nocky veered dangerously towards oblivion on the last track, Painkiller, before heroically steadying the ship. The scenes of celebration as Mat nailed the closing beats were as thrilling and spontaneous as they come, and the hugs and high fives were a genuine outpouring of relief, emotion and friendship. I’d like to claim that the achievements were unimportant at that moment, and to some extent they really were irrelevant. But as we stood transfixed, waiting for that ping to signify the job was done, we all knew we’d enjoy basking in the afterglow even more if we had the badges to prove it.
That red-nosed old twat Fergie once said, “Football, bloody hell.” And you know what? At that very moment I felt it was never truer of our Rodent clan and the antics that they inspire and aspire to. Not for the first time had I been a part of something that transcended the communal act of playing a videogame with friends. You only had to look around the room to realise something special was taking place – which was somewhat ironic given that Rock Band itself demands myopic focus on the screen. Bill playing guitar behind his head, not because he wanted to show off but because he had become part of our little fiction. Kim dutifully attending to her brother’s needs – fetching him sustenance and drink, and giving it the ‘go, go, go’ when his one and only opportunity for a toilet break came up. There was the enthusiasm of those people taking a turn off the instruments in keeping the forum updated, wanting to share with them some of the magic that was building in the room. And then there was Nocky and Murray, father and son, belting out Spirit in the Sky, a vision to bring a revitalising tear of joy to even the most tired of eyes. What had started out as a slightly half-baked idea had become a karmic adventure that I don’t think any of us there that day will forget in a hurry. In those six-and-a-half, no, ten hours, we played our hearts out.
We played our hearts out.
 Hello Cleveland
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