Nigel Slater visits Suffolk – and returns with a batch of smoked food recipes

Even before you turn into the narrow opening that is Baker's Lane, you spot the winding trail of grey smoke against Orford's white winter sky. Turn sharp right, and you see the rickety smokehouse, as black as tar, leaning drunkenly against the side of the open shop, with its noticeboard of local events and Gillian Eustace's romantic watercolour of the same scene on an altogether sunnier day.

Richardson's smokehouse is one of several in this part of Suffolk, originally started as a way of preserving the local mackerel catch, and now a source of all manner of smoked fish and meat to locals and visitors alike. Smoking food has been in the area's blood for centuries, just as it has in the Highlands of Scotland. Business is thriving too, (a local company, Pinney's, has just opened a smart new shop on Orford's small, busy quay that is also worth a look). But it is the "mom 'n' pop" simplicity of Steve Richardson and Veronica Buckley's diminutive smokery and shop that appeals to someone who also tends to potter along in his own particular way.

The scent of wood smoke has always intrigued me. The scented candles at home smell not of tuberose but of the fireplace. The ball of tarred string in the gardening cupboard has an addictive smoky quality that insists I pick it up and sniff it each time I open the door. And I value smoke for its nostalgia quotient too, that whiff of the garden on the day after bonfire night, visits to rambling country houses with fireplaces the size of my kitchen and of the Gypsy children who used to get on my school bus each morning filling the old coach with the essence of their bonfire. Any food that smells of it is certain to get this cook's attention.

An untidy pile of fat oak logs is heaped on the floor of the Richardson's yard. Steve reckons they might just last a week. Each pile has to be humped and chopped by hand. He insists on oak and will never have any truck with the modern commercial alternatives. Now is the quiet season for the bloaters, trout and salmon that hang in one of the two tar-black rooms, but come summer, there will be queues outside. Even on a stiff February day there is a steady stream of callers for Veronica Buckley's mackerel pâté and venison sausages, and desperate pleas for more fishcakes. "Sorry, not today." Regulars brave the ice and frost for the smoked chorizo and duck breasts, though how the proprietors cope with the cold in the open-fronted building in winter is anyone's guess (after a couple of hours I was so frozen I took off to next door's Crown and Castle for the comfort of a parsley-flecked fish pie and a roaring fire).

While my initial interest is with the products hanging up in the two intimately proportioned smoke rooms, it is impossible not to notice the long, ongoing love story among the kippers. "We are business partners now," says Roni firmly, even though it is quite clear they adore one another. She admits to a few ups and downs over their 30 years here, first as a couple and then as a company, which you get the feeling is something of an understatement. The rickety smokehouse could tell a tale or two.

Veronica is known to all except Steve as "Roni" or "Ron". "Steve hates it," she laughs, "he always uses my full name." The smokehouse at Orford has been in Steve's family for three generations. His grandfather preserved local fish here and their son is keen to take it on when Steve and Roni retire.

When you look at the rows of beautiful ochre game, plates of pork and apple sausages and links of chorizo, it seems odd to think this tall, slightly gruff Suffolk man started out as an engineer, earning good money on the oil rigs, rather than the artisan he is now. It took the shock of redundancy, followed by a swift kick up the backside from an exasperated Roni – "he drove me mad hanging round the house all day, so I sent him back to live at his grandparents' house" – to get Steve lighting up their disused smokerooms. It must have been like starting up a classic car after years on bricks in the garage.

At first he smoked his daily fish catch, the two of them meeting up to hawk it around the local pubs. "To be honest it was a bit of pub crawl," admits Roni, and you can see them reeling home, having swapped their kippers for more than a few pints of Adnams. But the reputation for the quality of their softly smoked kippers and mackerel grew and soon they decided to open the stall next to the smokehouse.

I suppose it was inevitable that the list grew from what Steve had on the end of his line and soon they were experimenting with everything from whole pheasants to heads of garlic. The smoker was up and running, so why not see what happens when you hang a row of partridge or slide a half stilton on the top shelf of the smokehouse and leave it for six days. (Answer: something that looks like a giant pork pie.)

I say smokehouse but there are actually two side by side. The first is a cool smoker, for ingredients that are usually cooked later by the customer so require smoking but not cooking. The second room, the hot smoker, is for anything likely to be eaten without further cooking once you get it home. Kippers get a bit of both treatments – they are gutted, brined for a couple of hours, then cold-smoked overnight before being given a short final blast in the hot section. Steve has perfected a system where the fish retains as much of its oil as possible, leaving the flesh moist and sweet. Rather than hanging, they get their final treatment on flat racks that allow them to hold on to their precious oils.

The sight of the moist flat fish, their skin glistening silver and gold, leads to a discussion on the method of cooking. "I hope you don't jug them," says Roni, who quite clearly disapproves of the popular method of lowering kippers into just-boiled water to cook them. "They lose all their oil that way," and I mentally change how I plan to cook the day's purchases. I am assured that a brief ride in the microwave gives the best result. Not being a microwave kind of a cook, I will just have to take my chances under a hot grill.

The effect that oak smoke has on food is subtly different to that of other woods. In my house, smoked goodies often come out at lunchtime on a Saturday, laid out in their paper, a sort of smokehouse picnic. There will be soup of some sort, and maybe a bowl of crunchy slaw (wonderful with a clove of smoked garlic in the dressing) and then maybe a whole mackerel in its skin, a link or two of sausage or maybe slices of wood-infused chicken. For no particular reason I associate such flavours with the cold months. Perhaps it is the hint of the fire left at the heart of the food, or the singed edges on a fist-shaped lump of ham hock. Who knows? And no matter how good the trout or the duck that has been inside the smokers of Orford, I still want to cook with them, crumbling mackerel into a potato gratin; tucking smoked garlic inside a roasting chicken; tossing a few slices of sausage as Roni showed me into a weekday pasta supper. Yes, such delicacies are for eating in their naked simplicity, but good for the cook in us, too.

I had been here once before, almost a decade ago, and came home with a purchase of their shimmering pink and gold smoked trout. On that occasion, I wimped out of the smoked Long Clawson stilton, which I believed to have been smoked for six hours. "Six days, more like," laughs Roni, who finally gets me to try some. Up to this point I have been less than open-minded about smoked cheese. I have always found it smacked of too much smoke and not enough of cheese. One smoked cheese had often tasted pretty much like another. Until now.

The stilton here is a subtle revelation and I suspect it is this subtlety that is the clue to much of the couple's success. At home, I crumbled the mahogany-skinned cheese into a salad of red cabbage and some seriously sour pickled onions. A shot of pure gold on a grey winter's afternoon.

Steve and Roni are particularly proud of the ham hocks from local pigs, which arrive ready smoked and are then marinated in black treacle and cider. They are boiled, then flash-roasted till their edges turn the colour of molasses. It is true they resemble blackened elephant's feet, but only to look at. One of these has been the cornerstone of my cooking this week, my host's recipe for a very basic but gorgeous stew with potatoes and lentils. I have often used a ham-hock soup to keep the cold at bay, but the smoke adds another dimension, altogether deeper and more characterful.

Whether it is a brace of quail or local fish, the day's smokings are listed on a blackboard at the entrance to the shop. Despite the trays of oak-coloured whole mallard, hot smoked pigeons, chickens and duck breasts; haddock, whole trout and bloaters, Steve sorely misses the local eel that has been a mainstay of their business for years. Rarely does a day go by without someone asking about it. Only when the local reservoir is up and running again will it return to the menu.

Passing round toast thickly spread with the most heavenly smoked cod's roe I have ever eaten, he looks off into the distance towards the pile of logs that give heart and soul to his products and to his working life, no doubt working out whether it will last him till the end of the week

Click here for Nigel Slater's smokehouse recipes

• Food & drink

Nigel Slaterguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The singer-songwriter Kate Nash tells how she beat exhaustion, self-doubt and music industry sexism to return to the fray with her second album

Asking Kate Nash a question is like winding up a motorised toy car and then letting it career around the room until it runs out of power. Her words come out in an unstoppable, breathless stream, punctuated by the occasional swear word and delivered in the soft cockney accent that is her trademark.

When we meet in a pub in Hackney, east London, around the corner from her flat, she is gloriously opinionated and unselfconscious. Midway through a rant about how pornography has become increasingly mainstream, she tells me how she once picked up the Daily Sport in a newsagent's, just to see what it was like. "It was fucking porn!" she screeches, oblivious to the fact that everyone can hear her. "It was so gross I couldn't believe it was a paper and that kids could pick it up. It, like, had this totally naked woman with the tiniest stars over her fanny and nipples." The man on the next table, here for a quiet lunchtime pint, looks alarmed. Nash carries on regardless. "I would rather someone went out and bought hardcore porn rather than something that pretends not to be porn and it is."

So she won't be posing semi-naked for a lads' mag any time soon? "Oh no," she says, looking down at her oversized Mickey Mouse T-shirt and black leggings. "Absolutely 100 per cent not."

Yet we will shortly be seeing a lot more of Kate Nash. Next month the 22-year-old singer-songwriter releases her second album, the follow-up to Made of Bricks, which sold over 600,000 copies and featured her No2 hit "Foundations". Lines such as "You said I must eat so many lemons/ 'cause I am so bitter/ I said 'I'd rather be with your friends, mate 'cause they are much fitter'", earned her comparisons with Lily Allen, who blogged about the invidiousness of the situation. "Kate is a very talented songwriter and her music sounds nothing like mine," Allen insisted. "She exists in her own right!"

Where Lily Allen failed, at the Brit Awards in 2007, when she was nominated in three categories but picked up none, Nash triumped. The following year she won best female artist, pipping Bat For Lashes, KT Tunstall, Leona Lewis and PJ Harvey.

Soon Nash was touring the UK, America and Europe and appearing at festivals and on Later with Jools Holland where she introduced her mother to Paul McCartney. "It was so intense," Nash says now of that period. "It hit me like a smack in the face. I wasn't prepared for any of it."

Nash had wanted to be an actress. The middle one of three sisters, she was born and raised in Harrow by her mother, a hospice nurse from Dublin, and her father, who works in computers. She won a place at the Brit School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon, south London (past students include Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, the Kooks and Adele), and studied there for two years before auditioning unsuccessfully for several drama colleges. Then she broke her foot falling down a flight of stairs at home. Frustrated by her enforced convalescence and rejected by drama school, Nash turned her attention to the songs she had been writing "as a hobby" since she was 15.

She approached a pub in Harrow for a gig. "I got paid £30 and it was like, 'Hang on a minute. You can get paid doing this!'"Nash had been earning money as a waitress at Nandos and a shop assistant at River Island. "I rang up River Island and said 'There have been steps in the right direction with my career.'" She laughs, but it turned out to be accurate: Nash uploaded her tracks on to MySpace and within a few months had a record deal.

Success came quickly, and Nash, still only 19, was ill-equipped to deal with it. The work schedule was relentless. At points, Nash says, "you feel you're kind of having a nervous breakdown". On a six-week tour of America in 2008 she remembers singing the same songs, night after night and finding it "hard to get nervous or excited about it. Then you'd feel guilty about that, you'd start hating yourself because you were worried you were a bad performer, and then there's all that self-doubt, and without realising it you become very insecure and very defensive.

"I started drinking a lot, not in a serious way, but it doesn't keep you as healthy as you should be. I was so tired. I remember being on stage and seeing the first song on the set list and looking down, thinking 'I can't believe I've got to play all of those songs'.

"I have this rule now that the only person who really cares about me is my mum," she continues, "because she has no stake in me whatsoever. You have to be cynical because this is a business. Everyone is making money out of you."

Does she feel thatHas the music industry made her colder and tougher? "You just have to keep your guard [up], you have to know who to trust. You become very protective of yourself. I'm the only person who gives a fuck if I go mental."

Was she worried she would go down the Amy Winehouse route of self-destruction? "I think everybody is," she replies, looking out wearily from beneath a thick fringe of red-brown hair.

Nash was saved by "my friends, family and boyfriend. They kept me sane. Without them, I'd be someone else." Her mother has been a guiding influence. "She's a strong, practical, amazing woman and has brought me up with strong morals. As a nurse in a hospice, she has seen so many people die, and she helps them die with dignity. There's no time for bullshit in that situation."

Tired of the bullshit in the music industry, Nash decided to take a year off. She learned to drive and play the drums. She left home and moved into her first flat with her boyfriend, Ryan Jarman from indie band the Cribs. She volunteered at a woman's shelter in Harrow called the Wish Centre and began a foundation to provide funding for struggling artists. She cooked, and bought a pet rabbit called Fluffy. Gradually, Nash rediscovered what she loved about music, listening to girl bands like Bikini Kill and the Shirelles – with the influence of both audible on her new single, "Do Wah Doo".

She says a lot of the new album, My Best Friend Is You, produced by the former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, deals with female empowerment – one of her bugbears is the inappropriate sexualisation of young girls in modern society. "Young kids should be taught about sex but they shouldn't be taught to be sexy. It's really distasteful." What does she make of bands like the Pussycat Dolls, with their pre-teen fanbase and overtly sexual image? Nash rolls her eyes. "They're called Pussy. Cat. Dolls," she says with incredulous emphasis. "You don't need to say anything else really. It's encouraging sexualisation and sexuality in young kids, and I think that's a bit weird. When I was young I was listening to the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child. I was singing 'Independent Woman' and 'Survivor', and it was all about Girl Power and being with your friends. I don't think I was singing, 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'"

An avowed feminist, Nash makes it a point of principle to work with female sound engineers and roadies wherever possible. "It's really important to be a strong role model. It's one of my main things because I feel I've been exposed in such an extreme way to a lot of sexism. I've become aware of being in a very male-dominated industry where a door opens and it's like, 'Oh hello, it's 12 men and me. Again.'"

Nash finds it especially galling when people assume that, because she is a young woman, she does not write her own songs. "Or if I did write my own songs, [there's an assumption that] I definitely wouldn't have chosen what kind of amp to use," she says, her voice rising in tempo and volume as she gets more irritated. It makes me very defensive."

The man on the next table looks suitably cowed. At least he now knows that Nash is capable of choosing her own amps, that she does not like the Pussycat Dolls and that if her new album has even a portion of the verve and strong-mindedness that she displays in person, it will be anything but boring.

The new album My Best Friend Is You (Polydor) is out on 19 April

• Pop and rock

Elizabeth Dayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

I'm delighted to report that the UK Liberal Democrats' Spring Convention have accepted the emergency motion on internet freedom, and will be debating it tomorrow morning. The LibDems were plunged into controversy last week when two of the LibDem Lords introduced a pro-web-censorship amendment to the Digital Economy Bill (this amendment was later shown to have been written by record industry lobby group BPI). Outraged party members (including dozens of prospective parliamentary candidates) rallied to fight this shift in party direction toward curtailment of freedom on behalf of corporate lobbyists. The outcome of that outrage is the emergency motion on internet freedom, called the "Save the Net" memo. It calls for net neutrality, proportionality and due process in copyright enforcement, an absolute rejection of web-blocking and disconnection to solve copyright problems, and other good, principled stands that I'm proud to see my party get behind. Organisers worked around the clock all week to get the emergency motion accepted for debate. Tomorrow morning, party delegates at the Spring Convention will debate the Save the Net motion from 0915 to 0945. If you are attending the Birmingham convention (or know someone who is!), please help support this motion and get it passed -- let's send a signal to corporate schemers that British law isn't for sale. If you're not attending the convention, you can still help by joining the Facebook fan page for the motion. If thousands -- tens of thousands! -- of people from around the country and the world show their support for this motion, it will help conference delegates understand how important and far-reaching Internet freedom is. Laws about copyright and the Internet don't just affect how we get and use cultural works: they affect everything we do with the Internet, whether it's earning a living or staying in touch with family or reporting the news or organising your neighbours around important political issues. UK Lib Dems: Save the Net! Previously:LibDem rank-and-file make emergency motion for net freedom - Boing ... Brits: tell the LibDem Peers not to bring web-censorship to ... Guardian column on LibDem proposal to block web-lockers Brits: tell the LibDem Peers not to bring web-censorship to ... Speaking on privacy at Hackney LibDems event, London, Oct 19 ... LibDem Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UK ......

Scotland 15-15 England

Andy Robinson's only Calcutta Cup match as a player ended in a draw and his first as Scotland's coach also finished in a stalemate. It was the third consecutive time that this fixture north of the border had failed to produce a try and, while England were never behind again after equalising a minute into the second half, the Scots exerted the greater pressure.

A common denominator between the sides was a chronic lack of self-belief when in possession, coupled with a desire to slow down the other's ball at the breakdown. It made for a soggy mess in which the referee allowed serial offenders too much licence.

England had the chance to win the game with a drop goal after the countdown clock had reached zero, 45 minutes after the second half had started, but Jonny Wilkinson had by then left the field injured and Toby Flood's effort was charged down by John Barclay.

The England manager, Martin Johnson had spoken all week about how Scotland generated ferocity from the passion of the crowd but it was the words of the wing Thom Evans, who suffered a serious spinal injury during the defeat against Wales last month, that galvanised the home crowd more than the pipers and dancers who provided the pre-match entertainment. Evans presented Dan Parks with his 50th cap and made a rousing speech.

The start, though, was anything but frenzied. It may have been six years since the Calcutta Cup match here produced a try, with neither side in 2006 and 2008 giving the notion of expansive rugby a passing thought, but the game was only 11 minutes old when Parks ran from his own 22 and attempted an intricate manoeuvre with Max Evans that came to grief.

England also looked to keep the ball in hand, with not much more success. Wilkinson's early inside pass to Ugo Monye was dropped, the fly-half then threw the ball over Dylan Hartley's head and into touch and he put the ball too far in front of Louis Deacon, who promptly knocked on in contact. When Wilkinson, Mathew Tait and Monye did combine effectively, Sean Lamont thwarted the move.

Scotland had scored a try in only one of their five previous matches, but the will was there. They had no problem in finding their way into England's 22, but they struggled to secure quick ball and, despite at times taking play through eight or nine phases, they were invariably forced to resort to the boot of Parks, whether through cross-kicks, drops at goal or penalty attempts.

Parks landed two penalties in the opening 20 minutes after England had been blown for slowing the ball down at the breakdown, first through Dan Cole and then Joe Worsley. After the visitors had been penalised seven times in the opening quarter, Marius Jonker, the referee, warned Steve Borthwick that the next offender would earn 10 minutes in the sin bin.

Parks was badly askew with two attempted drop goals, but his cross-kicking was more precise. Nick de Luca's break took Scotland deep into England territory and Parks's measured chip to Evans in the left-hand corner was taken by the wing who was immediately wrapped up by Riki Flutey. England conceded another penalty, which was kicked to touch, but it was not a day to spurn opportunities for three points.

England had to defend for most of the first half but trailed only 9-6 at the interval. Wilkinson twice equalised Parks's penalties, the first after Johnnie Beattie had flopped over the wrong side of a ruck and the second followed a confrontation between the front rows when yet another scrum ended in a collapse.

Euan Murray was penalised but Hartley was sufficiently incensed to take issue with his opposite number, Ross Ford, and aim a punch that struck only a glancing blow. The strike was noticed by Jonker, who warned Hartley rather than reversing the penalty, but England were only level for nine minutes before Parks finally succeeded with a drop goal after another multi-phase movement had yielded little in terms of yardage.

Scotland surrendered their lead within a minute after the restart. Jim Hamilton kicked the ball out of Danny Care's hands and Wilkinson made him pay, but the outside-half was soon being helped off the pitch after his head hit the ground with a thump following a collision with Evans.

Flood replaced Wilkinson and England started to look more dangerous. One looping move saw Mark Cueto put into space and when the forwards combined with a spate of off-loading, John Barclay was caught in an off-side position and Flood took the opportunity to give his side the lead for the first time.

England were getting into the swing of it, making an early attacking substitution for the first time this Six Nations when Ben Foden came on for Delon Armitage, whose only second-half contribution had been to overcook a kick to the Scottish line after a turnover. Foden's initial task was to defend as Scotland looked to regain the initiative. The visitors kept slowing the ball down at the breakdown and Jonker kept blowing his whistle. James Haskell presented Parks with three points for not rolling away but when Tim Payne committed the same offence two minutes later, earning Borthwick a second warning, Parks's kick hit the post.

Care's hurried clearance gained little ground and Scotland came close to the line after Chris Cusiter found space at a ruck, but when they moved the ball to the right Kelly Brown and Monye clashed heads and play was held up for eight minutes while they were both treated, the England wing leaving the field on a stretcher.

Johnson was left to rue his early call on Foden because he had to replace Monye with a scrum-half, Ben Youngs, who was winning his first cap. Ambition faded, but not before Flood, who had earlier missed a long-range penalty, put England back in front after Murray had offended at a ruck near his line.

Lewis Moody had only been on the field for Haskell a few seconds when he piled over the top. Parks hit the post from near halfway, but 12 minutes from time he was presented with an opportunity from in front of the posts and the sides were locked at 15-15. Jonker warned Borthwick a third time but his failure to act decisively at the breakdown contributed to the mess. With neither side looking menacing with ball in hand, the indiscipline was mindless. Scott Lawson presented Flood with a late, long-range chance after stupidly scragging Care but the kick hit the bottom of the post.

• Six Nations rugby
• England rugby union team
• Scotland rugby union team

Paul Reesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The creator of Chatroulette has revealed that he is working on a way to preserve user’s privacy, following the launch of Chat Roulette Map, a Google Maps mashups that pinpoints the location of users of the service.

Andrey Ternovskiy, speaking in an interview with the New York Times Bits blog, stated, “There is a certain level of anonymity on the Chatroulette that Chatroulette Map takes away, but I plan to add something to my site to allow them to still hide their whereabouts.”

Chatroulette Map highlights a Chatroulette user’s location by looking at his or her IP addresses, which is revealed via the peer-to-peer nature of the webcam connection. As well as placing a marker on a map, users are screengrabbed, offering anyone in the world a brief sneak peak through a stranger’s webcam.

This has drawn criticism from privacy advocates, although those behind Chatroulette Map say they will remove an image and marker on request if emailed a matching photo to ensure the authenticity of the request.

17-year-old Ternovskiy, a Russian student currently visiting the U.S., says of ChatRoulette Map, “I enjoy it”, but obviously realizes his users — some of which appear to have a penchant for public nudity and masturbation — might be less likely to use the service without the anonymity it previously offered.

However, this does not mean Ternoviskiy is green-lighting the use of the service for such NSFW activities. He has introduced a “report” button, which will see someone “reported” three times banned from the service.

Other points of interest from the interview are the fact that Ternovskiy has yet to collect his Google AdWords earnings as he’s is still under 18, that he’s been offered a $1 million buy-out, and that last month 30 million unique visitors hit Chatroulette, which is averaging one million new users a each day.

Tags: chatroulette, chatroulette map

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week -- but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews.

While it's certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu's latest saga fare under more common rubrics?

• IGN (8.5/10): "You're getting this intense story about Japan's seedy underbelly that's set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you're earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I'm going with this -- one minute you're slamming a crowbar into a guy's face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you're taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish."
• GameSpot (8/10): "While the pace and events of the story are enough to propel you towards its conclusion, the non-story peripheral content gives Yakuza 3 a welcome sense of diversity. There are more than a hundred side and hitman quests that allow you to do everything from carrying ice cream for a father who has overpurchased, to playing UFO Catcher claw machines in the arcade, to chasing down a bag snatcher, to offering financial advice to a man deep in debt and precariously perched on the edge of a bridge."
• Eurogamer (8/10): "From the publisher that brought us Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yakuza is essentially a mashup of all three, which is hardly surprising but does mean it's the stuff of Segaphile fantasies. Liberally sprinkled with their genius, it's the grateful beneficiary of some of their most satisfying elements, in a context which delivers a uniquely Japanese -- and uniquely Sega -- flavour."

Gallery: Yakuza 3 (PS3)

Metareview: Yakuza 3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week -- but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews.

While it's certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu's latest saga fare under more common rubrics?

• IGN (8.5/10): "You're getting this intense story about Japan's seedy underbelly that's set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you're earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I'm going with this -- one minute you're slamming a crowbar into a guy's face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you're taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish."
• GameSpot (8/10): "While the pace and events of the story are enough to propel you towards its conclusion, the non-story peripheral content gives Yakuza 3 a welcome sense of diversity. There are more than a hundred side and hitman quests that allow you to do everything from carrying ice cream for a father who has overpurchased, to playing UFO Catcher claw machines in the arcade, to chasing down a bag snatcher, to offering financial advice to a man deep in debt and precariously perched on the edge of a bridge."
• Eurogamer (8/10): "From the publisher that brought us Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yakuza is essentially a mashup of all three, which is hardly surprising but does mean it's the stuff of Segaphile fantasies. Liberally sprinkled with their genius, it's the grateful beneficiary of some of their most satisfying elements, in a context which delivers a uniquely Japanese -- and uniquely Sega -- flavour."

Gallery: Yakuza 3 (PS3)

Metareview: Yakuza 3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: GM, Nissan, Earnings/Financials, Renault, Rumormill

Rumors that Renault-Nissan may be interested in taking on a third head have popped once again, with the would-be merger candidate this time being General Motors. Huh, sounds familiar, doesn't it? In actuality, The Wall Street Journal is really just speculating on the possible effects of such a deal, and it's done so with all kinds of number crunching and colorful pie charts.

The lone quote from Renault-Nissan head Carlos Ghosn that seems to have sparked the article: "The name of the game is scale and co-investments and sharing technologies." That's a common thread from Ghosn and most recently stated at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month.

After reading through the article, it seems possible that such a merger could make sound business sense for the Franco-Japanese automaker for a couple of reasons. First is Ghosn's seemingly insatiable appetite for large-scale synergies. Second, the two automaker's sales footprints appear to be rather complimentary. Finally, Renault-Nissan has enough cash reserves and holdings on hand that it could afford to purchase a 10-percent stake in the American automaker when it hopefully goes public again in early 2011.

So, does any of this have an actual chance of happening? We have absolutely no idea, but that hardly seems to matter - we're always up for a little speculation when it comes to our favorite topic of conversation. As always, questions, comments and snide remarks can be left in "Comments." What say you? Does Renault-Nissan-General Motors have a nice ring to it?

[Source: The Wall Street Journal | Image: Raveendran/AFP/Getty]

WSJ speculates about Renault-Nissan taking stake in GM originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Serverwatch: "Stating it believes server sales are being underestimated by Wall Street, Broadpoint AmTech's latest report predicts both Intel and AMD will post better-than-expected earnings in the first quarter."

Another 15 per cent off

Virgin Media contractors earning more than £300 a day have been told to accept a 15 per cent cut in rates or leave the company....