General Update 18: Where does the time go?

Um Yeah so I said last time that the hiatus was over. and then I didn’t write for a month despite not being at work for the last 11 days! So what have a I been up to? Well I've been on a bit of a game splurge. I bought Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, Bayonetta and Star Ocean: The Last Hope in a bundle deal. The reason i got POTC was because I had it on the Wii and thought that it would be better on the Xbox, but its a completely different game! It wasn’t a let down though and did lead me to watching all 3 films back to back.

I’ve not gotten to Bayonetta or Star Ocean yet as I went back to finish Dragon Age 2, as i hadn’t done it yet. Oh Yeah, before I did get back to DA2 I picked up Portal 2 and completed the Solo campaign. I took me a few hours and it was really good. They’ve really nailed the humour in that game. So yeah after logging in at least 45 hours in my first playthrough I then went back and played it again to get the rest of the achievements, and today i completed it to 100%.

So I’ve got to decide what to play next, as LA Noire is coming up on the horizon so that would sway me towards Bayonetta as Star Ocean would be a long slog, and I’ve also got a load of Arcade games to work through as well as I picked up Shadow Complex in the sale, and I’ve still got Kingdom for Keflings to finish and some poker to get back into.

Right I’m back to work tomorrow so I think I'm going to have to head to bed. I will inevitably try and get a review up this week, seeing as I have a few to catch up and try and write. I think the running total is near the 20 mark!

Previous GamerScore:   55470
Current GamerScore:    57730
Increase:                    +2260

General Update 17: The Hiatus is over.

Some would say that it’s been far too long since my last blog post and you know what? Those people would be right. The last post was at the beginning of February. Although I did try and write one around the time of my birthday as I received the T-Shirt in the picture below but I never actually got around to posting it.

Free Publicity! 

Praggers Wins!

As you can imagine my list of games to review has gotten longer and longer as is my list of games to play. I have been slightly slacking on the playing of games but I do have a bloody good excuse for that, and that’s because I've uprooted from the the North of England and moved back down south. I’m all setup now and hopefully I should be able to get back into the swing of doing more posts. I may try and write a post a night for the next week. They may not all get published as I write them but then I can keep you guys tided over with my Xbox news.

For those that are interested, I mentioned in my last post that I was invited to a Nintendo 3DS pre-launch event but I wasn’t sure if i was going to make it. Well I did and it blew my mind. It was incredible, and while i decided that I did want one I wasn’t sure if I was going to actually get one. Well I am really weak willed and as launch day came around I decided that I would get one, however I made the wrong choice of starting game. I went for Sims 3, but then remembered, shortly after starting to play, why I don’t like playing Sims games. But to make up for that I have now bought Monkey Ball 3D which was what the girl in the shop said I should have got.

My Shiny New 3DS 

So what have I been playing lately? Well, Dragon Age 2, Torchlight, Full House Poker, Bulletstorm, Homefront, Fable 3. All of which are great games.

Previous GamerScore:  53370

Current GamerScore:    55470

Increase:                       +2100

Review: Eurogamer Expo (Part 1)

While this was my first Expo I'm not going to be talking about the expo itself, the only reason we went was to check out the games so below is my take on what I got to see.

Fable 3
The game as a whole looked really good, and after playing the game for about 15 minutes I had already built up an idea of what I thought about the game. The idea of having an easily accessibly hub area for weapons outfits etc is a good one, and while what I got to play was only in the early stages of the game which meant that I didn’t have much in the way of choice i could see that it should work as a concept. My problem with this game was the fact it was mentioned that the combat has been updated to make it flow more smoothly, I don’t believe that this has been ultimately achieved. The changing from melee to Magic is seamless as it should be however the melee-melee-gun shot combo leaves a lot to be desired. You have to wait 2 seconds while you wait to put away you’re sword in order to whip your gun out and shoot a fool which in the midst of a battle with 4 or more enemies isn’t going to work, as while your changing your weapons said fool will be all up in your grill giving you a slap around the chops. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t going to put me off the game, just using a gun.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood
This was another good looking in fact i don’t think there was a bad looking game at the expo. This was also one of the games that was showing off the Multi-player mode. Where there was some multi-player in Assassin’s Creed 2 I didn’t play it the thing about Assassins Creed is the story, and you can’t really have a story in Multi-player. However much like Bioshock 2 and its take on multi-player it’s different which means that it sets itself apart from everything else out there. I only got one match which didn’t really give me enough time to get to know what was going on but it was enjoyable.

F1 2010
I was purely interested in this game for its aesthetics as i had seen a screen shot in Official Xbox Magazine and it looked amazing. I can now confirm that it does indeed live up to expectations the visuals are stunning but I still won’t be getting this game. It’s a proper Racing game, and I am rubbish at those games. So if you are into those types of games then you won’t be disappointed.

Enslaved Odyssey to the West
I was interested in this game because I know that it’s based on a story, which means there is more to the story that what your playing. Which is something I really like in games, it’s also the reason why I've got all the Mass Effect novels. However I have now had a chance to play the game and I can see that the side character is going to be annoying as hell. I also get the feeling that the game would become a bit of a button masher.

Crysis 2
Again this was a game that was showing off the multi-player mode rather than the story and to be honest the multi-player mode hasn’t sold this game for me. You can choose your role when you respawn and this gives you a different ability for each class as well as specific weapons beneficial for the class. However it did feel and play like every other multi-player shooter I've played which is a deal breaker for me.

Gears of War 3
It was while I was at the Expo that I read that it had been delayed by 5 months, but I did get a chance to have a go on the beast mode that was being shown. It’s something new for a multi-player shooter which isn’t a bad thing. It’s enjoyable and while I haven't played Gears 2 yet the delay means i have a chance to play it before I get Gears 3.

Dragon Age 2
I was a little worried as i knew that Bioware had changed the focus from 6 possible characters to one and that they had made some changes to the combat. After playing the demo i like the change to the combat. it makes it feel more like an action RPG as i did think that just pressing one button to launch an attack put a barrier up between yourself and the game and you didn’t get the immersion that you might want however that has changed each button press translates to an attack. The other change is with levelling up, instead of all the skills there there are smaller skill trees and you can spend the points on the trees you want which is an idea I like. One thing that did confuse me was when it was set but I wasn’t paying that much attention to the story as I wasn’t going to be able to get into it.

That’s it for the first part of the Expo. Stay tuned for Castlevania Lord of Shadows, Halo: Reach, Brink, Bulletstorm, Hunted Deamon’s Forge, Mafia II, and Fallout New Vegas.