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.

Review: Singularity

Singularity is an FPS (First Person Shooter) which takes place on a Secret Russian island where they were experimenting with a newly discovered element called "E99", the soviets version of atomic energy. Throught experimentation the Russians discover that E99 has the power to manipulate time and shortly after arriving on the island you fall through time back to the 1950s, where your presence causes the time-lines to change. It's then up to you to help a group of renegades to restore the time-lines to the way they were.

I really enjoyed the story and I found that it helped with setting the pace throughout the game. I did find that if you're not paying attention when you start you can miss some of the impact of the first few "decisions" you make in the game. The Graphics I thought were really good the effects when you use the TMD (Time mainpulaton device) on items worked really well, I also liked when items would retro grade around you.

One of the things I was a little disappointed in was you could only use the TMD in one way, press . Yahtzee made the same observation in his review, not that I'm comparing myself to him. The Graphics I thought were really good the effects when you use the TMD (Time mainpulaton device) on items worked really well. I also liked when items would retro grade around you.Although the shooting aspects of the game we're good I'm not sure if I can truly call this game an FPS as the set pieces are sporadic, it's not in the same league as the CoD games but I did find that it worked well enough.

This was one of the very few games that I thought I would try on the hardest difficulty and although there were a couple of sections that I did find to be quiet difficult I'm glad that I did start on Hard. I think I would go back and play it again, but it won't be anytime soon, not just because I've got plenty of other games to be getting on with but it will also allow me to forget the story somewhat so that I can get back into it.

Overall I found the game really enjoyable and if your looking for something a bit different to your usual FPS's then I definitely recommend that you pick this game up. 

General Update 03: Liberty City Bound

Howdy Gamer-folk,

It would appear that I've been slacking off on my blogger duties but don't worry I'm not dead, I have actually been quite busy. Last Friday I picked up Singularity, I was really enjoying it until I got stuck but then I did jump straight in on Hard. It is my theory that if you start on a harder difficulty then your learning curve will be much steeper but I also think that if you don't try this then any strategies that you have used for medium might not be applicable when playing on the harder setting. So I set a challenge for you dear reader next game you pick with a game with variable difficulty why not try going for a difficulty one up from what you're used to?

On Saturday I picked up another new release Lego Harry Potter. I really enjoyed this game as well, it's exactly what you would expect from a Lego game. With previous knowledge of all the Lego games I found I was able to breeze through it rather quickly. So I've now completed both Singularity as well as Lego Harry Potter, reviews to be posted soon, I promise.

So what else have I been up to as it has been a couple of weeks since my last post. Well a two weeks back the Crackdown 2 demo was released. I've not played on it much but I have enjoyed what I've played. The first time I loaded up the demo I was rushing around like a headless chicken trying to pick up a many orbs as I could. This soon stopped when I realised they weren't permanent. however there are 10 achievements that you can earn in the demo that will unlock when you play the full game.

Crackdown 2 is released at the end of the week and I have all of the Solo play achievements for Singularity so I've managed to borrow GTA IV off of a friend and have been running around Liberty City, it's not holding my attention as much as I would like and I'm still not seeing what the hype was all about. In fact I was hoping it would be a lot like Red Dead Redemptionbut it's not.

I have been working on trying to add another page to go along with my Review Leader Board. While I am still trying to work out how to display it, it will be my hall of Fame/Shame it will show all the game that I have gotten the full 1000G, 'Hall of Fame', as well as all those games where I'm lagging behind, 'Hall of Shame'. I will post an update when it is available.

Yet Another Bank Holiday 'Round up'

Yes we have had another bank holiday weekend and this meant more gaming for me and I really do need more time for gaming, in fact I should probably be playing right now but then how would you know how I was getting on? 

So what was I playing? Well seeing as I had finished Alan Wake I thought I would try something a bit different. I ordered Red Dead Redemption early last week and it turned up on Thursday so I've been playing that but I saw that Doom 2 was released on XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade). So on Friday I downloaded the demo as well as the one for Doom. It was fantastic, and seeing as the original had dropped in price to 400MSP (Microsoft points) I bit the bullet and bought it.

I also saw on my Twitter feed, Gamerpraggers if you want to follow me, that the Ninety-Nine Nights 2 demo was released, however when I went to look for it however I was Schtupped, as it looks like it was only released in the States. I have sent a message to SUAM (Sent you a Message) to see if it's going to be coming out over here, so who knows I might get a mention on Saturday. Although now I think of it I didn't put my gamertag on the message so it might not be me getting the mention! Damn it!

So apart from riding my way across the wild plains for southern America and Mexico, and shooting demon spawn from hell on Mars' moon Phobos I also broke the 40K barrier. I've also been thinking about possibly setting myself a challenge but I'm not sure yet what to set, it might be to do with raising my percentages as at the moment, according to xbox360Achievements.com, my achievements Percentage is 59% and my points percentage is 58%. So my challenge could be to raise one or both to over a certain percentage but that's not very original so I think more thought will be needed before I decide on something. 

So things will probably be a bit quiet for the next couple of weeks and then it will get quite hectic as we have E3, which will be huge as well as interesting as we'll finally get to see what's been done with natal as well as find out it's real name, as well Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, and Singularity released on the same day then I have a week before Crackdown 2. I think I'm going to need a plan. . . but you can count on me, to at least try, to blog about what comes out of E3.

Hellish Weekend

Another weekend gone and what a nice weekend it was weather-wise. The past week has been a bit jumbled as I’ve been trying out my new games. I started Dante’s Inferno, and then tried Darksiders for a bit. Saturday night I completed Dante’s Inferno. Sunday I completed it again after playing through on a new game+ (a new game with my stats from the first play through). Sunday afternoon I tried out Red Faction Guerrilla and I like it, it’s a bit like Borderlands crossed with The Saboteur, I also had a jam on Lego Rock Band. As I’ve yet to try Half Life, I think that will be next, might give that a go tonight.

That’s all I’ve been up to so what about there in the real world? Well if you remember a few weeks ago I posted about a viral website, www.GKnova6.com which was for a game that as yet still remains unknown. As the first message was decoded it was found to mention April Week 2, this turns out was April 9^th, when the website was updated. People have already worked out the latest message, which, after a slight spelling mistake lead to a local papers wanted section, which gave a, at first glance, random set of letters with a message “you can find me at the cheeping River. It’s near the Cheering Viper.” It was worked out that the clue for the cipher came from the last sentence. And once the message was decoded gave out co-ordinates for several important land marks, including the white house, the CIA headquarters and NORAD. For more details on the exact details of the latest update check out Move Viral.

But does this actually help us? In Short, No. we are a little closer to working out who though as Bethesda has come forward and publically said that this site is nothing to do with them which leaves COD and Singularity. If I find more information I will up date.

Curiosity

While reading some of my news updates I saw one that I left, and I now wish I hadn’t. The title on the RSS feed was “A Mystery USB Drive Arrived Today”. I assumed that this was to do with the recent update that is coming to the Xbox to allow USB drives to be used as additional storage. However upon ready this story it would appear that it’s a viral marketing campaign, much like the Bioshock 2 something in the sea website, for a new game that has yet to be revealed. A USB drive was sent to various gaming sites, such as IGN and Joystiq as well as some COD fan sites, in a plain manila envelope with no return address, however there was a post mark from Maryland, America.

The drive contained 2 items. An audio file with a man’s voice reading out a quote, "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also", as well as "Don't believe everything you see." followed by this sequence of letters:

MOD ZZZ JNQRYD3FRP

The other item was a text document with the following words in “Cryptography; Isotope; Philanthropy; Hydrogen; Ember; Rebirth”.

The Quote was by Julius Caesar and applying a Caesar cipher, with a shift of three, to the letter sequence reveals it to spell WWWGKNOVA6COM which does in fact lead to a website, with a television set which can be tuned using the dial. The set appears to repeat a message, a quote and then “NOVASIX” repeated along with various images.

Some clever bod, over at joystiq.com has found that the quote is from Francis Bacon, and he like Caesar has a cipher named after him. Bacon’s cipher uses different type faces to hide a message in plain sight, like some robots I know of ;). In the case of this message the “NOVASIX” is spelt by two voices, one male and one female. With the bacon cipher the repeated spelling of “NOVASIX” becomes “April Week Two”

So what does this mean? There are several opinions on which game this might mean, the first is that it’s for the new Fallout Game, Fallout: New Vegas, with the nuclear references it’s possibly and with Maryland being the home of Bethesda it’s defiantly possible. However others seem to think that it might be a reference to the new Call of Duty title this year. The text in the text file seems to contain a Google analytics code use by Activision. But there is a third possibility, and it’s a game that I’ve been looking forward to since I first read about it, and that is Singularity. However it may also be something completely different. I guess we’ll have to wait and see but I will be watching the website and I will update if I hear anything else.