Wise Words for You

Snake is in for another richly cinematic, occasionally convoluted, and ultimately satisfying adventure in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the latest installment in Konami designer Hideo Kojima's long-running stealth action series. Much like its predecessors, Metal Gear Solid 3 begs to be talked about, if nothing else. After all, during the course of the game, you'll experience a story dense with detail and intrigue, one that's often presented using some of the most dramatically staged video game cut scenes to date. You'll also spend about half your time with the game just watching (or listening to) the story unfold, and for every sequence that's extremely exciting and thought-provoking, there's a part that seems needlessly drawn out. Meanwhile, the game play itself--despite an all-new setting in a Soviet jungle during the 1960s--really hasn't changed much since the last installment, and it's aged noticeably during these past few years. Consequent...

Surreal, disturbing, crossing the boundary of good taste,  Little Britain  features some of the most grotesque characters ever seen on television.  Combining a series of wickedly funny sketches observing life in modern Britain as seen through the eyes of Matt Lucas and David Walliams and linked together by Tom Baker's insightful and eloquent dialogue ("today's show is finishing early because I have to do a pooh now!"), the series was a triumph for BBC3, where it debuted on the digital station's opening night. And the characters that populated 'Little Britain' quickly reached cult status. The wheelchair-bound Andy, who can secretly walk without any problem but enjoys being pushed around and waited on by his caring and oblivious friend Lou; Sebastian Love, the effete personal secretary to the Prime Minister (Anthony Head), who has a huge crush on his boss; Vicky Pollard, Britain's most illiterate teenager who had a baby but "swapped it ...

Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty sub par, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Additionally, much as was the case with Liberty City Stories' transition to the PS2, Vice City Stories loses a lot of its appeal when played on a console versus the PSP. Still, it's cheap to buy, and if you don't own a PSP or just never got around to playing it upon its original release, this isn't a bad way to go if you absolutely, positively must get your GTA fix. Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980's and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a  Scarface -inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the af...

Keeping Up Appearances  became one of the best loved British television sitcoms ever, with great casting and acting and the writing talents of Roy Clarke who has written some of the best and funniest sitcoms that have ever graced our TV screens, like  Last of the Summer Wine  and  Open All Hours .  Keeping up Appearances  ran for five series from 1990 to 1995, with 44 episodes including four Christmas specials. Not only was the show a huge success in the UK, it was also very popular in the United States and Australia.  Patricia Routledge starred as the Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet), who spends her entire time trying to climb the local social ladder, much to the dismay of her long suffering husband Richard, played by Clive Swift. It is Richard that has to put up with the worst of Hyacinth's behaviour and the man must truly have what can only be described as having the patients of a saint. Hyacinth is not a bad person, just one that has high ...

Spanning eighteen years and forty-two episodes,  A Touch of Frost  became one of Britain's best loved Television Detective shows, and starred actor David Jason in the title role.  Although Jason was better known for his much-loved comedic roles in  Only Fools and Horses  and  Open All Hours , the British Public continued their on-screen love-affair with him, despite his change in genre.  The television series took place in the fictional town of Denton, and was based on R.D. Wingfield's series of 'Frost novels'. The content of the first four books made up a total of eight of the forty-two episodes, whilst the last two were never used as their content was thought to be too graphic for the tone of the show.  In the opening episode, Detective Inspector Jack Frost finds out his wife has terminal cancer prompting him to go out and get drunk before breaking police protocol by approaching an armed man, who promptly shoots him. Despite his...

You could barely move in the 1970s and 80s without seeing or hearing Noel Edmonds. He'd been hugely successful on Radio 1 and that involved regular appearances on  Top of the Pops .' All that led to  Multi Coloured Swap Shop  on Saturday's mornings and onwards to the Saturday night spot. Initially he presented  The Late Late Breakfast Show  and  The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow  and in 1991 it morphed into  Noel's House Party  running until 1999. At one stage, a senior corporation executive at the BBC said he considered the show to be the most important one on the channel. In many ways he was right as the shows high ratings grabbed the viewers and they stayed there for the rest of the evening. Noel's House Party  was set in a fictional house in the wonderfully named village of Crinkley Bottom, cue dirty joke. The strength of the show wasn't in the quality of the jokes that is for sure but every week viewers would see sever...

The Grand Theft Auto series and the PlayStation 2 have gone hand in hand, which each game debuting on the PS2 before it travels to other consoles. That all changed with the release of last year's side story, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This game, designed to take advantage of the PSP's hardware, was an impressive technical feat, managing to pack in a lot of what made the "big" GTA games so memorable. But it fell short in a few key spots, most notably the story, the characters, and the series' biting sense of style and satire. That stuff was easy to overlook when you could carry Liberty City around in your back pocket. But on the PS2, where you can compare it directly to the three Grand Theft Auto games that have appeared there, the whole package is significantly less interesting, even considering the PS2 port's budget price. Not much has changed, so if you've already played this on the PSP, there's not much reason to take on the ...

How do you follow up a runaway success like 2001's Grand Theft Auto III? Rockstar North responded a year later with GTA: Vice City, a game that took the game play of its predecessor and expanded it considerably. At the same time, Vice City gave the series an extensive and amazing stylistic makeover, drenching the experience in the sights, sounds, and attitude of Miami, Florida from the mid '80s. So where do you go from there? You take it statewide. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas expands the series' concept to encompass three entire cities, as well as the countryside between them. The game play similarly expands, packing in some explosive set pieces and amazing action-movie-like thrills while maintaining that same remarkably fun, freeform GTA feel. In short, Rockstar has done it again. San Andreas definitely lives up to the Grand Theft Auto name. In fact, it's arguably the best game in the series. This latest installment takes place in 1992 in the West Coast-them...