Posterous theme by Cory Watilo
David Whitelaw

Sonic's Ring

Scottish geeks talk mince about movies, games, TV and comics

Dave Whitelaw, Phil Doyle and Euan Taylor wax lyrical - read; force their opinions - on every geeky topic on under the sun from movies and games to comic books and TV.

You can follow Dave, Phil and Euan on Twitter -
@midi2304, @evilninjaphil and @wanderingeuan respectively.

TwitterTwitterTwitterBlogger

First Audio Podcast

This is our first weekly audio podcast. A lot longer than expected but actually quite interesting I think. We discuss the following;

Walking Dead 8
Metal Gear Solid LBP downloadable content
Left 4 Dead
NERV mug
Motorstorm 2
The Wrestler trailer
Wolverine trailer
Heroes Volume 3 ending

Subscribe to us on iTunes here.

(download)

Feels like Home?

Welcome back peeps. As you seen in episode one, when it comes to online gaming, Kev is all about XBox Live while the Playstation Network is my digital playground of choice. Needless to say, I was delighted to open my inbox a few weeks back amd find an invite to the Playstation Home closed beta. The 'New XBox Experience' had been garnering a lot of attention and I was looking forward to seeing how Sony took them head on. The accepted wisdom was that XBox Live, even with the flaws it had, trampled all over the way Sony had decided to handle online gaming. Home would be the turning point, right. Right?

On my first spin through, I actually quite liked it. I was in a superb mood as it downloaded because I had managed to sneak into the closed beta - I was approaching it with a very positive frame of mind. Without any problem, I was able to quickly generate a pretty accurate avatar of myself and started moving throughout the glorious looking environments.

Of course, after a wee while 'playing' - thirty minutes or so - I started to get down to the root of what Home is all about. Fuck all. When you strip it all away, Home is a 3D chat room / game lobby. Load times are horrific from zone to zone, you have to wait forever for anything to load in the cinemas, there is limited room at the bowling alley / arcades / pool tables, the majority of people seem to be absolute fucking morons...

I could go on but I won't. Home is a waste of your time and Sony's time. It amazes me just how wrong they have got this. I honestly believe they could do with just scrapping Home and starting from scratch again. Streamline the experience, make it faster, make it somewhere people want to go in between multiplayer games. I just do not understand how this could have got so far in development without someone piping up and telling their fellow employees that this is absolute wank. Are there no actual gamers working in Home development? All too busy sucking Diesel and Red Bull cock trying to get them (and their cash) involved at the start?

Get it fucking sorted.

I hope Kev gives us a wee NXE rundown. Be interesting to hear how he is getting on from the other side of the fence. Until next time.

Dave

Holiday

So my brother Alan calls me up last night and asks if I want to go on a short holiday with himself and my other brother Iain for his birthday next month.

"Alright," I said.  "Where did you have in mind?"

"Poland," he replies.

I said, "What's in Poland?"

Auschwitz, apparently.  It's either Alan's sense of humour or Iain's sense of adventure.  I'm honestly not sure which.

K

Kev's Intro

Gee, how to follow Dave's introduction?

I was so tempted just to write 'Ditto' but then I figured someone reading that might think about Ghost with me and Dave involved in some erotic pottery scene which is just not a happy place for me.  For the record, in such a scenario, I'd be Patrick Swayze and Dave would be Demi Moore.  Nice.

Anyways, about myself.  I'm 29, Scottish and could generously be described as a young Patrick Stewart, hairline to match.  I love movies, TV, games and comics.  That's all I really want to say about myself - hopefully, anything else relevant about me will be apparent every time I post something on this page, whether it be a movie review, a story about a recent gaming experience or just a rant about the latest inexplicable twist in Heroes.

As Dave pointed out in his intro, we're pretty much going to be priding ourselves on directing you elsewhere if you're after the latest news, reviews & previews.  While I'd love to be getting advance review copies of all the cool new movies n' games sent to us every week, I think having that bit of distance between a release date and our discussion of whatever movie/game/TV show (delete if not applicable) might work out quite well.  Perhaps we'll avoid that whirlwind of hyperbole which often accompanies the year's big releases.  Perhaps not.  Either way, what you'll read here will be our honest opinions on the subject matter in no way motivated by money or the like.  And sometimes, if it feels like you've stumbled onto a streaming MSN chat between myself and Dave, I'll know we're doing something right ;)

Dave's Introduction

 

We knew we had to do something. The constant exchange of opinion and bickering and sharing of those 'you had to be there moments'... Surely this would be interesting to a wider audience? Kevin and I have thought so for a long time and with that, the seed of sonicsring.com was planted in our heads and hearts. My name is Dave Whitelaw, I'm Scottish, 27 and a self-confessed geek and gamer. Always have been and always will.

General geekery has been the foundation of a friendship which goes back a fair few years. Kevin and I worked together when I was up north in Thurso, our hometown, and to be honest there wasn't much there. Kevin is a wee bit more withdrawn and quiet than I am, least that's how I would put it. Kevin (and pretty much anyone I've ever worked with) would say I'm a loudmouth, opinionated arsehole. They are all probably right. We worked at BT which included a hellish 12 hour nightshift.

You learn a lot about someone in those nightmare semi-days, whether you want to or not. We found we had an unnatural number of similar interests. Both keen gamers with an eye on whatever was on TV or the cinema (or whichever Torrent site was de rigueur for the time) as well as arguing the various merits of the latest comics to hit the shelf (see previous Torrent site comment). It was a crappy job made easier by having someone to spark geek discussion and argument with.

Of course, as fate would have it I also met my fiance in that job at BT. Once we had been together a while, she was keen to get out of Thurso and into a job further south so off we toddled to Aberdeen. So far, so dull. Ironically however, Kevin and I got closer through the wonderful world of email and IM.

Since I have been down here we have spoken a lot. We are working on a comic script which is going nowhere fast but the other project that kept nibbling away at us was a website where we could share our thoughts and opinions with anyone who gave a shit. The limiting factor was always going to be that neither of us have one bollock-hair's worth of internet or tech savvy. Thankfully, we now live in an age where technology has caught up with any deficiencies we may have in know-how. A glorious world where any moron can now jump online and vent opinions as if they are fact.

And so we have sonicsring.com. We are going to cover reviews and editorial on anything we fancy but mainly games, movies, TV and comics. Because Kevin is up in Thurso and I am down in Aberdeen, opportunities to record together will be limited. We are each going to do video, audio and written articles for the site, sometimes completely standalone opinon, sometimes reaction pieces based on something the other person has said or a reader has commented on. It's going to be kept pretty freeform but regular.

If we want to review a game, we need to pay for it, if we want to talk about a movie we either need to walk down to the cinema or 'obtain' it elsewhere. Sonic's Ring isn't going to be your come-to place for cutting edge reviews. Most of the time, between us, we are likely to buy, play, see or read most of the big releases and talk about them here but they won't be a sole focus. You can expect stuff on older releases in whichever form they may be - for example, I want to do my Preacher magnum opus before too long.

My influences are many and varied from Gamesmaster as a kid (Moore and Diamond, not the magazine), my friends like Kevin, and recent frames of reference such as Consolevania, GamesTM and Totally Rad Show. What's most important to me is that sonicsring is for Kevin and I. Hopefully, you guys will like it, will tell other people and we'll pick up a wee readership but we don't have advertising and we aren't being shipped the latest releases. Anything you see, hear or read from us will be as honest and true as we can make it. You might not agree with our opinions all of the time but at least you know it's what we think, not what some marketing exec or advertiser wants said about their product.

We have an RSS and Twitter feed which you can add to the right there. Over time we're also going to have a wee podcast feed which you can add to iTunes. Come in, have a read, watch and listen to us make twats of ourselves, and let us know what you think so we can tell you you're wrong.

Welcome to sonicsring.com.

 

Take your friends with you with Mobile Messenger. Click Here!

Win John Lewis vouchers with BigSnapSearch.com Search now

​