Friday 27 August 2010

Friday LOL 07: The thing about playing RTS's is not to get all high and mighty!


Friday again gaming fans, and I found this little beauty on Bob's house of video games so enjoy. I've not played Star Craft 2, but I have heard of it. I'm more of a C&C fan myself.

Friday 20 August 2010

Friday LOL 06: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold . . . A lot like a Sammich!!!


See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

So I almost didn't have a LOL for you today, until I found this Video. Warning there is some bad language.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Review: Lego Harry Potter



Lego Harry Potter is everything we have come to love about the Lego games, its humorous, it's pretty to look at as well as conveying the story in the way the Lego games pull off so well. The game covers the Harry's first 4 years at Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. For those of you who have seen the movies or read the books then the story will be all too familiar.

The game play hasn't been tweaked much from the previous games, if it's not broken don't fix it, is a good way of looking at the Lego games. The controls are easy to get to grips with which makes this game great to be able to just pick up play by anyone. My girlfriend isn't a harry potter fan so this meant that I would be playing this one alone so I have no idea if the problems I talked about in my Lego Indiana Jones Review have been addressed. Also being a Lego Series game it more directed at Kids so while adults who are a fan of the series will enjoy the game they can be safe in the knowledge that their younger cousins/nephews/nieces etc will be able to play this a not come away scared like Mad Eye Moody, and yes that's a reference to a character.

The visuals of the game, just like the others in the Lego series, are easy on the eye, although if I had to make any criticisms on the visuals it would be that the blinking arrows showing where the various hidden items are can be a little misleading at times.

One element that has been added specifically to this game was the Hogwarts castle, a free roam area that acted as a go between for the different chapter parts. I felt that this added extra game play to the story, as it meant that you could make the story last longer while you were exploring the castle looking for students to help as well as finding secret areas and some of the hidden items I mentioned earlier.

Overall I found this game a lot of fun much like the rest of the Lego games, aside from Lego Indy. It's a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one when ever that will be. Probably not until after the last film has finished showing in cinemas I wouldn't have thought. So if you're a fan of the books, the movies or both or if you enjoyed the previous Lego games then you will enjoy this instalment.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

General Update 07: Visitation Rights

So it's been a while since I've given an update on what I'm playing. In my last update I was working towards the Liberty City Minute achievement in GTA IV. This I am pleased to say I have now done, however the game then became a real grind for me to work on the other achievements. Liberty City (5) is makes me feel like I'm playing the Sims as I have to keep up appearances with the other characters. So the weekend before last I decided that I would try another one of the many games that I have laying about waiting for me to get around to them.

In this instance it was Darksiders. It's a good little game which I picked up at the same time as I got Dante's Inferno and I must say I much prefer Darksiders to Dante's. I managed to finish it just before last weekend as I was going to lend it to a friend however before starting this game I did look to see if there were any missable achievements. There were 4 and I'll admit that I did look up how to get them because as I keep saying my list of games still to play consists of;
  • Dragon Age: Origins
  • Left 4 Dead 2
  • Red Faction: Guerrilla
  • Ghostbusters
These are just the games that I have to finish for the first time, I also have a list of games that I need to go back and play again including;
  • Alan Wake - Nightmare play through as well as the Signal DLC
  • Mass Effect 2 - Insanity play through and additional DLC
  • Monkey Island SE
Then there is my list of games that I still want to get;
  • Dead Rising
  • Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
  • Bayonetta
  • Brutal Legend
  • Gears of War 2
  • Wolfenstein
  • Metro 2033
  • Final Fantasy XIII
  • Neir
  • Prototype
  • Dark Void
  • Iron Man 2
  • Sacred 2
Don't even get me started on games I'm still waiting for. Maybe I should buy an old game with every new game I buy that should provide me with a decent spectrum of games. I've also borrowed Ninja Gaiden 2 from my friend in exchange for Darksiders, Singularity and Lego Harry Potter. Before I left for my mates at the weekend I was thinking about trying a couple of demo's from the games market place, but I was running late and didn't get around to it. But while I was at my mates he had a two of the games downloaded.

First up was the demo of a Kingdom for Keflings, a nice little base building game that from the demo seemed quite addictive. I downloaded the full game when I go home and I'm glad I did it's a fun game with it's heart in the right place, it's also a good choice as a game for young kids. The second was a game that he had downloaded the full game for when it was on offer and that is Shadow Complex. I only tried out the challenge rooms which were enough to make me want to get it but not enough for me to shell out the 1200 MSP for it.

The other thing I should mention that I tried at the weekend for the first time was the Zune Video Marketplace. I was very impressed with the service. I chose to download the movies rather than stream as I wasn't sure what my speed was going to be like and it took about an hour to an hour and half for half of the movie to download and then I was able to start watching it. The pricing was good as well at £3.28; converted from 380 MSP for an HD film it's slightly cheaper than some other rental places, so if you're stuck on a Friday night for a film then give it a go, i highly recommend it.

Friday 13 August 2010

Friday LOL 05: Based on Japanese History

funny pictures
moar funny pictures

It's Friday again so here is another gaming funny for you. If you don't get it then you'll need to watch the video below which is from Sony's 2006 E3 presentation and if you don't want to watch all of this train wreck then skip ahead to 1:03.

Friday 6 August 2010

Friday LOL 03: Damn!


Waaait a minute...

see more Bob's House of Video Games


I couldn't post what I wanted as there wasn't the code to embed it readily available, so here is something else, as the first DLC episode for Alan Wake was released a couple of weeks ago and I've still yet to play it, I also still need to go back and complete the game on nightmare difficulty which I want to do before I try The Signal.

Gaming Gripe 01: Losing Control

You know how some things you take for granted until something comes along that really makes you notice how much you've taken it for granted? I had this happen to me just recently with game controls, at first I noticed it on Red Dead Redemption which I've still got to write my review for. In Red Dead, I found that when you try enter a door but you hit the frame if you then try and turn to go in the middle your turning circle just happened to be door size so you found yourself nose to nose with the door frame on the other side, but I brushed this off, it wasn't often that it happened and the way around this was to back off and come at the door at a bit of a run.

So I moved on and played some other games like Crackdown 2, but I finished the story ahead of my friends so they weren't looking for orbs just yet so as sort of stop gap between games I thought I would go back and get a few more Gamerscore on one of the games I've thought of as having a black mark on my gamertag, GTA IVI first saw GTA IV when a friend of mine brought it over and started showing me what it was like, and for whatever reason I never touched it again. I recently borrowed a copy off a friend so that I could try and bump up the gamerscore, and while I've now completed the story I'm not sure if I'll get most of the side missions mostly due the fact that . . . well I can't stand the game.

Some people may think I'm completely wrong, but aside from the fact that I'm finding the game dull a repetitive I'm finding the controls really awkward. You have to keep tapping the run button to sprint and hold it to run which isn't really worth it as it's not really any faster than walking. When you’re driving a boat you can press forward and back make the nose of the boat raise or lower, but this has no effect on the overall speed of the boat but the controls that leave me totally mystified are for the helicopter.

The flight controls are a lot like those knobs in a shower were you have to be a safe cracker to get the water at just the right temperature. You have to push forward on the left thumb stick just the right amount while applying just enough acceleration on the right trigger, while doing all this you have to use left and right bumpers to turn. That's 3 digits working together, but then on the final mission you find yourself in a helicopter and have to use X to fire the guns. Is it just me or is this really complicated? Especially when you compare this to say Crackdown 2 where left and right bumpers control altitude while right stick is the camera, and left stick is main controls. You then use left and right triggers to fire weapons, Oh yeah and you can press the left stick to get a boost.

You may think that I may just be me hating on GTA IV, I think that's what all the cool kids are saying now a days, but really I'm not. Red Dead is a better game by far, I'm not sure if the story is longer or shorter than GTA but it defiantly held my interest a lot more than GTA did, and I think the control issues are probably something that I’m more than likely going to have to live with especially if I want to get some more of the achievements.