Thursday 30 October 2008

So, I'll just bend over, and Peter Molyneux, if you'd like to just insert...

So, guess what I picked up 2 days ago? I'll give you a hint:

logo

Yup, I got Fable 2! After well over a year of waiting I finally traded in half my 360 and PSP game collection to get the game of my dreams.

Now anyone who'd been following the progress of Fable 2 knows that Lion Head Studio has been dropping the ball on this one, and by dropping I mean throwing it down a well then squatting over the side and dropping a fresh crap on top of it...enjoy that image. There was the issue with the taking out of all the cool pre-order stuff, then the loss of the pre-order download stuff, then some freezing issues...this is where I come into it, and my wonderful tempting karma to kick my ass. I was reading Kotaku's story about the freezing issue a day before it hit the UK so I kinda took pleasure in the fact the US got the game before us but it was still buggy thinking they'd push to fix that before the European release...how foolish of me. I ran home with my copy 2 days ago and put it into my Xbox, and so it began! I was as excited as a small child at Xmas as I sat though the opening video. The graphics although not of the quality of something like Gears of War or Mass Effect were still beautiful and as a change from every other next gen game, colourful! So I began the tutorial when suddenly 5 minutes in my game locked up. "Strange" I thought to myself but noticed the kitten behind the TV and kinda tried to convince myself it must have been him knocking a loose wire or something, so I restarted my Xbox and started playing again, this time the game carried on fine...for about 10 minutes before once again it locked up! The odd thing was that unlike most games when they freeze, Fable 2's snow was still falling, the lights still flickering, but no one could move and the menus were not opening and after a few steps even my character would get stuck in place. I was a bit panicky now so quickly I pulled a wire downstairs and hooked my Xbox up to live to patch, I had to download 2 patched within the first week of launch so I thought this MUST fix it, so I started again, at exactly the same point (when you first meet your dog) it would lock up! I tried literally another 4 times and each time the same bit would crash as the boy or the girl. At this point thinking "oh crap, oh crap, oh crap" I checked my CD but it was perfect. Trying one more time after cleaning the CD (even though it was perfectly clean) I noticed something odd. Remember the days of the PS1, when you took a CD out the game would still play till it needed to load from the CD again? That's what was happening to Fable 2! The CD would just stop in the drive and all would go silent, all the characters would stop moving, any audio files would loop, then I'd try walking a little too far and it would try to load from the CD and BAM! I'd lock up! I tried 4 other Xbox 360 games and 2 Xbox original titles to see if it was my Xbox but no other game ran into an issue. So, yesterday I took my game back to Game Station to get it changed. The second I handed over the case the woman said 'freezing on you?' as if she'd been creepily watching though my living-room window. Within 10 minutes of chatting to the staff I realised I was far from the only one with issues. Getting home with my new copy I quickly played though the beginning and once again, I'd meet the dog and lock up. Getting VERY annoyed I began to dig around the net, soon after I realised the scale of this issue, apparently hundreds of thousands of people have been searching up the locking issues, others have lost entire save files 15 hours into game play, some have serious graphical errors, lots of people had lost their husbands or wives without reason. The game has more bugs in it than an ant hill.

This is when something kind of depressing dawned on me. Think about PC gaming. With the invention of Internet gaming games are released now with glitches and issues patched out over time, Hell even Bejeweled needed a patch! We are starting to see this in gaming on consoles now. Quality control and player testing for Fable 2 must have been at their minimum for this scale of bugs to be left in and probably justified by "oh we'll let the community be the testers and we'll patch any issues their raise" which is a nice idea except I paid £40 for this fucking game so I expect £40 worth of quality! When they finally patch the game a lot of my enjoyments gonna be over clouded by the fear of it's next lock up or losing my files, the first 2 days have sown mistrust of the game which will never be undone and a company which I've hailed as the best game development company since Bullfrog I now have lost a LOT of respect for.

Needless to say tomorrow I'm taking my copy back and exchanging it for Fallout 3, let's hope they wont let me down too...

Peter Molyneux has lost a fan :-(

Sunday 26 October 2008

The Legend of Zelda : The Shadowgazer

14

It's rare that I enjoy a fan game. I mean Fan Games are like Fan Fiction and Fan Art, beyond showing your love and appreciation for something, they don't really show off original concepts and normally are badly done and 90% of the time are made by horny fan boys playing out their sexual fantasies.

Thinking about it the only time I've truly given a Fan Game a chance it was a Final Fantasy VII on RPG Maker 2K and sucked pretty badly so I've been burned already, so when I was browsing Game Trailers and saw a trailer for a Zelda fan game I was expecting a suckfest but I must admit, I was genuinely shocked to find this was a bloody good looking game!

1

Currently there's only a demo up for download but playing though it I found that The Shadowgazer, although a little buggy at times, is in game play and story at a quality which I personally think Nintendo would be stupid not to back as a WiiWare game or something.

So, what dose the game provide other than quality to make it different from other fan-games? How about the two key features:

Two parallel versions of the game world: the everyday waking world, and its nightmarish counterpart, unseen by all except those trained to use the Shadowgazer - a magical totem that protects the bearer from the nightmare realm's maddening effects

A rotating three-day schedule, governed by the comings and goings of the ships in the port town of Hyrule. Record valuable information regarding the nightmares of the passengers and crew in your Cabin Boy's Handbook

10

The custom sprites, the smooth animation, the classic music, the gorgeous Nightmare world (Silent Hill for those who don't like to be scared! :-D) are all perfect but there are a few issues which are a shame. Sadly the game has a fixed 320x240 resolution (same as the screen shots) which is understandable because no one finds stretched sprites attractive but still it dose leave you squinting a little at times and feels like on the average PC screen its a little lost. I also kept having an issue when walking up or down stairs in houses to different floors that as Link entered one floor he'd walk back down, but I hope this will be fixed soon. Finally the controls are a little uncomfortable using A and Z as the basic two buttons for Zelda games, which feels odd when Z and X are commonly used in Emulators for GBA and so on, also S is for your shield which makes it all feel a little more uncomfortable. Who knows, maybe they'll let you set your own keys in the final game!

20

Ok, so that's The Legend of Zelda : The Shadowgazer, there are videos on the official site but due to the capture software they run a little slow making the game look bad and I didn't want you passing judgement on the game off those. I recommend you download the demo (it's a TINY file, took me 20 seconds to download, no exaggeration) and give the game a real go to get a feel for what could be one of the biggest over looked indy games for a long while!

THE OFFICIAL SITE

Zom-B Servivor Set One

Well after finally getting everything set back up the slow process of working on my new web comic Zom-B has picked back up again. I've now finished the designs for the first four survivors (keep in mind I could end up killing off one or more of these over time to keep the cast fresh). More news soon I hope :-D

zom-b chars

Fallout's History

I can NOT wait for Fallout 3 :-D Chances are I won't have the cash to buy it for a while but that doesn't stop me getting all excited about it coming out. Thanks to Kotaku I found this video on Game Trailers though which might give some of you some insight into the Fallout series and could help you to appreciate the games more.

WARNING: This video contains spoilers for Fallout 1 and 2, do not watch if you've decided to play the first two games though ready for the third!

Saturday 25 October 2008

Fan Boys and Fucktards

There are many breeds of men out there, fighters, lovers, back stabbers, sinners and saints but there's one kind of man that's so immature he (or she) can only be referred to as a boy, Fan Boys

While checking out a trailer for Gears of War 2 today I found this comment by a user who shan't be mentioned on YouTube:

Ppl by now should know BY NOW GEARS OF WAR 2 WILL FLOP!!! RESISTANCE 2 WILL BE GOTY SHOOTER OF THE YEAR FUCK 360 AND THERE GAY ASS FANS LOL! HAVE FUN WITH THE 10 PLAYER FAGFEST, WHILE I PLAY THE 60 PLAYER COOLFEST LOL 360 WILL BE DEAD LAST EVER WONDER WHY IT HAS THE NUMBER "3":D

This is why I hate Fan Boys. Till recently I happily called myself a Nintendo Fan Boy, but due to toss pots like this I say it with shame now. My understanding of Fan Boys were people who were open to the other consoles but truly devoted themselves to one company and would defend them. When the Gamecube failed I stood by and defended it, I did NOT slate the Xbox or PS2 to try and make what was in truth a badly thought though console look better. Even now with the Wii, after selling my Wii and that was after months without use, I still defend the Wii as not a fad or a gimmick although I condemn Nintendo for almost turning it into one, I have not gone on the war path with Xbox 360 or PS3, in fact I've come to gain an element of hope for the PS3.

What is wrong with fucktard kids these days who seem to think being a fan boy is like being in Counter Strike, you don't get respect for being a moron who can't cope with failure so rages. I'm all for a little cheeky banter between fan-boys knocking each others favourite console, but flat out aggressive and immature comments in inappropriate places is just moronic.

Well, just wanted to get that off my chest...

Fable 2 in 2 days! =D

Thursday 23 October 2008

My Desktop

Well I think my computer is almost to the standard it was before the format and it's nice to have it back! :-D

So, now I'm left with this:

Ok so a rundown of what I've done to get this image!

1. Start Killer - This little tool removes the Start Button from Windows XP and the Windows Orb from Vista. You can open up your menu by hitting the windows key on your keyboard so it's not lost forever. This tool is pretty useless unless you want to restrict someone's use of the PC or your using a file dock such as:

2. Rocket Dock - A funky tool that anyone who's used an Apple Mac computer should be quite at home with. It features smooth animation for minimizing windows and a high level of customisation. I personally have set mine on the left hand side of my screen set to off-screen so no matter what I have open (excluding full screen games and so on) if I press my mouse against the left side of my screen the dock slides out giving me access to all my tools and software. Very handy and works very well with the Start Killer!

3. The wallpaper:

A very snazzy wallpaper that looks quite good with almost any icon on it. It also works well with the icon-titles in Rocket Dock. Sadly I have no idea who made this and can't even remember where I found it, if this is yours or you know the creator please contact me so I can credit you :-) (and yes this is the same wallpaper used in the blog, what can I say? It's grown on me!)

Sadly Windows Blinds (at least a worth while copy) isn't free so I'm stuck with the blue start bar for now but I imagine this would look best on Windows Vista, if you try it on a Vista computer send me a screen of the final result!

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Testing Windows Live Writer

So every time I format my Laptop I try something new, last time it was removing my Start button and replacing it with a pop-up Mac style dock. I quite enjoyed that and have opted for doing it again this time. So this time around I've decided while getting Windows Live Messenger to pick up Windows Live Writer. I thought it was some kind of Windows Vista Notepad but it seems its not as when I opened it instantly I was asked if I had a blog and when I said yes it asked fro my Username, Password and Blog Address. Overly trustingly I handed over the details and after a little uploading and downloading I was presented with a text window, the one I'm typing this in right now. What's odd is that the Title is the same font and colour (as is my text and background) as when it's on the web site, so it appears I'm getting a real-time preview of how my post will look...which is pretty damn cool. If you can see this post then I'm quite happy with the tool and would recommend any blogger pick it up :-D (It also has a built in Spell Checker! JOY!)

Only two major tests though...

1) Can this upload images?
Image000
If you can see that then yes...

2) Can it run youtube videos (I normally have to fiddle around in the code editor on Blogger to do this, lets see if we can bypass this)


If you can see this, wehay! :D

PSone Classics / PSP


Ok so today my Laptop finally did a nose dive into fucksupvill leaving me with no option but to do a full system format. This is a common thing for me because no matter what anti-virus software I have running, no matter how careful I am with my downloads and no matter how often I clean out my computer to stop clutter, something WILL fuck up. So anyway, while waiting for my computer to format (a slow process) I picked up and dusted off my PSP. Realising Silent Hill Origins was in and feeling too wimpy to give it a play but too lazy to get up and go pick up a fun game off my shelf I opted for the more expensive option. Having just upgraded my firmware to version 5.01 (literally days after version 5.00 so god knows what they fucked up to rush out a 0.01 worth of updates) I was keen to try out the PlayStation Store newly added to the PSP menu, so I logged in and dragged myself kicking and screaming though page after page of register information. Finally I had my account so I began to poke around the sore and in fairness it's not a bad little place.

It has some full games, some demos (FINALLY!), even a few free wallpapers for your PSP backdrop. None of this truly interested me though once I found the PSone Classics area...I swear if there was ever proof of a god it would be in the ability to play classic titles on a PSP. So quickly I ran downstairs to get my bank card and bought myself £5 (yes this meant getting up and voids the whole "I'm too lazy to get a game from my shelf" but come on...PSone classics!) worth of spending money in the store, now this is where I start to compare because although I am FAR from a fan boy of Sony they just won themselves some brownie points in my eyes because where Nintendo use Nintendo Points, and Microsoft use Microsoft Points, Sony use £ (or if your American $)! No trying to work out exactly how much a game is in real money instead of silly money like the other two which is actually quite nice, but in fairness what do Sony have to hide? I mean on Wii I paid about £8 for Mario 64, on PSP I paid under £4 for MediEvil! So all is good right? Sadly no...


After buying my game I got to downloading it...this is where things started to suck a little. The game was about 360mb and in fairness over a wireless network (and considering I'm yet to find a console with speedy internet) this was bound to be slow, but it felt slow even with this in mind and finally after downloading the installation took almost as long! By the time the game was ready to play my laptop was formatted and waiting for me to use it.

This was a kick in the knackers but still, MediEvil! So I quickly loaded up the game and in fairness the game ran perfect, I'm yet to see anyone online come up with an emulator for PSX titles with as few floors as the one in the PSP so that was good. Alas though there was a down side, one that could be fixed with a simple peripheral I'd happily buy...there’s no second shoulder buttons! Because of this they have replaced L2 and R2 with the left and right on the joystick (which I had to manually change to the D-Pad cause playing a 3D game with a D-Pad is the perfect way to make your thumb hate you so much) and up on the joystick (or D-Pad) for both buttons pushed together. This on paper seems like a good substitute but it's not when you have to press up on the D-Pad to go into first person view and break a finger trying to press left or right on the joystick at the same time, it simply doesn’t work :-(


There were a few others issues with the emulation, the sound was too quiet, the screen was too dull and the resolution was thumb-nail, but in fairness all 3 of these can be fixed by pressing the Home button and fiddling with the settings but NOWHERE do they tell you this so I didn't discover these options till I hit the Home button with the intention of quitting though frustration and the fact my thumb hated me.

All in all PSone Classics on PSP works well, and if they ever release the Final Fantasy VII-IX titles on it I'll be buying them, but if your interested in getting a game, look though the list and ask yourself "how will the controls work with this title?" before you part with any cash.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

Zom-B

As I said about 2 posts ago, I <3 Web Comics and I've run a few in the past. For the last year or so I haven't really done much, just a BOK strip every now and then when I hear a joke I know I can only get away with telling on the internet, or a few doodles for plans for a future return of Life Of TimmY, but I haven't actually started a comic series with potential and tried to meet that potential in a long while. Lucky for me (and maybe for you) that dry spell is almost at an end! For I give you:

Zom-B is a comic following the funny side of a grim near future where zombies have risen up and humanity is falling. The plot is very simple, a group of characters surviving the end of the world, but the comic isn't entirely about that but more about how the characters, each from very different walks of life interact with each other...but you know...in a less boring way than I'm making it sound.

Right now all I have is the cover page for the comic which has been uploaded to it's future home on Drunk Duck and can be found HERE. As I develop characters and zombies no doubt I'll post images of them here to show them off (till Bit Of Corn is online) but the best thing you can do is check on the Drunk Duck Comic page every few days, I hope to have the comic started soon but with things going on in my life I can't promise ANYTHING right now.

Ps. Oh and no, it's not pure luck that I'm working on this comic close to the release of Left4Dead, in-fact L4D is a strong inspiration and I'm hoping the popularity that the game will no doubt have will help my comic get somewhere :-D it's a sell-out move I know but fuck it, if it gets me readers!

Sunday 19 October 2008

One Week...

In one week I'm going missing and it would be safe to presume I'm dead, why? Because in one week I get paid...at the same time Fallout 3, Saints Row 2, Farcry 2 and Fable 2 (yes not one original IP, although I have no idea when Dead Space is out) will all be out and within my grasp...I'm going to be dead to the world for a little while. So, why am I so excited about all these games? Well if you genuinely need to ask I'm a bit ashamed of you...FOR SHAME! But yeah, I don't wanna spam my page with a video for each of the games mentioned but here’s the first of some build up videos released for Fallout 3, Enjoy:

Saturday 18 October 2008

5 Web Comics To Check Out...

Since about 5 years ago I've been in love with Web-Comics. Not those piece of crap sprite comics, or ones ripping off anime in the way you'd expect of a rapist. No, I mean genuinely funny or interesting comics. Hell I've even run a few (Life of Timmy, BoK, Chav Town and so on) myself with varying dedication and success. So weather your new to Web Comics or an old fan like me, why not check out these five and see if there are any gems you love, Enjoy:

1. Cyanide & Happiness
A strange comic with no set cast, no artistic ability, no running theme (other than the fact it's very funny) and a few different artists causing a variation in both art and writing. This leaves the comic feeling constantly fresh unlike a lot of comics which after about 20 strips your ready to stop reading. Well worth a look!

2. John and John
A comic not for the innocent minded out there. John and John is a perverse comic which shies away from no sexual topic. The jokes are a variation of funny jokes, the kind of jokes you laugh at cause their gross, and the kind of jokes you laugh at but hide it cause you know the joke was just flat-out wrong. I'd recommend this but remember, it is 18+ and probably NSFW.

3. White Ninja
White Ninja is pretty weird cause just like Cyanide & Happiness the art sucks, also the humour I personally find half the time sucks. Yet when a strip is funny it's VERY funny, it's also the kind of strip you can read for hours without getting bored. Worth a look :-)



4. KinokoFry
Wow, a web-comic by a girl...that isn't anime, a love story, or furry? Something’s not right here...never the less although I'm pretty new to this comic I love it, it's disjointed humour and twisted visuals as well as beautiful at times artwork all mix together for a very enjoyable comic you'll keep coming back too for more!

5. Dueling Analogs
Of course I couldn't do this without at least ONE game related web-comic! Dueling Analogs is a well under rated web-comic after coming out a few years too late to make it's name as one of the big players in the game-comic craze but that isn't to say it's a bad comic! In-fact you wont find any miscarriages, or horrid lack of updates here like two of the leading game-comics and it's also a VERY funny comic if you play games enough to get the jokes!

Friday 17 October 2008

A little bit of class

This site was started almost 2 months back now and I must admit I had no real intention to take it anywhere, but I've quite enjoyed it so far even though no one reads it. So, as a mini-celebration I thought I'd add a little drop of classiness to the site in the form of this snazzy new background! I can't promise it looks good on anything bigger than 1280x800 cause that's what I've setup the site using so I can't tell if there are floors or issues but in truth if your running a screen bigger than that, screw you for having a better computer than me!

Enjoy

More posts soon :-)

Mother 3 goes English!


If there is one game I am quite ashamed to say I’ve never played it would be anything from the Mother series, or as we English speaking people call it, Earthbound. The series began on SNES and in truth I know little about it or what happened to it, all I do know is that the third instalment was released on GBA but only for Japan which annoyed a lot of the fans, but not one who settled down and started painstakingly translating the game via rom and after quite some time has now released the English Patch for the games ROM file. Now I should make clear I have not tried this patch and I don’t own a legal copy and thus it would be naughty of me OR ANYONE ELSE to get this patch and a ROM from some website like mininova.org but in case you do own a copy, here’s the website:

Sigur Ros

Ok, it's rare I post anything music related on here...hell I don't think I ever have before, but I can pass these guys off as worthy of a mention on two fronts:

1. They were used in the trailer for the new Prince of Persia game and made it 10 times more beautiful and actually make me wanna get a copy of the game!

2. Their fucking beautiful! Seriously, listen to the song below and try telling me that doesn’t just feel amazing to listen too!

I don't have much to say on them but here's a damn gorgeous song by them, and my second favourite but most powerful for first time listeners. Enjoy, I did.

Thursday 16 October 2008


So the other day I was invited to the Cinema! This is a rare occurrence for me considering I’m about as social as any teen Disney actress is likeable. So, as I wasn’t paying (thanks Morrison :-D) my friend took the role of movie-picker so we went to see How To Lose Friends & Alienate People. I’ll admit this would not have been my first choice because if the trailers were anything to be trusted it was going to be a sucky movie, I also had doubts about how many more good movies Simon Pegg can be in before he dose a shit one. I must say though I was pleasantly surprised!

The basic plot of the movie is one that although not totally original (small timer goes to the big city to become success but ends up selling out morals but finding them in the nick of time) has been done in a way I can’t think of being used before, following a guy in the celebrity journalist role, quite a nice breath of fresh air in well over used concepts that have been bouncing around recently. Something else that was nice was the fact this movie was a comedy, but not a ‘fun for the whole family’ comedy! Why should this be so important? Well because recently I’ve noticed you get 3 kinds of comedy: Teen Movies, which I’d rather die than watch now I’m no longer a teen and realise they are the height of badly made crap. Adult Spoof Movies (no I don’t mean Lord of the G-Strings) which since Scary Movie 2 haven’t been made very well in a long time, and finally Family Fun movies, most of these are horrid all black cast ‘oh no you di’ent!’ bullshit churned out by Disney to justify the use of anyone who isn’t working for Pixar. So in fairness this was a nice change because it was an ADULT comedy (lots of naughty words, some boobies and male-frontal nudity and so on) but didn’t fall back of childishly bad ‘look! I made a gay joke then pulled a woman’s top off!’ jokes over and over which was really nice, it felt like a comedy for more mature people, not 18 year old dick heads.

One thing I hate in almost every movie, it even dragged down some brownie points on Wall-E for me (and I’m a man who loves his Wall-E!), is the sad moments. The bit in a happy fun movie which brings a tear to your eye even though you know it’ll all be fine in the end. Thus I love this movie even more because although it had it’s moments where you felt bad for a character, it didn’t feel sad which was nice. Combine this with the fact I think almost everyone in the cinema laughed at most of the jokes (very few jokes missed the target) and a good cast with believable characters and some very funny bitchy nods towards the celebrity business and you have a very good movie on your hands!

Thinking back over the movie I think the only problem I had in the entire thing was the fact I’d baught a drink bigger than my bladder so for the last 10 minutes I was praying the movie would end so I could go pee. Other than that the movie was genuinely an enjoyable movie and me and my two friends left the cinema with smiles on our faces and were talking about and quoting the movie for the whole walk home. I think my run of bad cinema trips is finally at an end, so what should I see next? Leave a comment if you can be arsed but I doubt you can.

Oh and DO NOT trust this trailer if you think it looks crap:

HE DOSE NOT CALL VINCENT A PLONKER! HE CALLS HIM A WANKER! FUCKS SAKE!

Seven Daaaaays...

So, exactly one week till Fable 2 hit’s the shops here in the UK and as it gets closer I find it harder to sleep, like a kid on Xmas eve knowing that sleep will cause the morning to come sooner but never the less unable to close my eyes with excitement for the copy of Pokemon Stadium I was desperate for but instead though a misunderstanding got Pokemon Snap which resulted in me wasting a year of my life in a Photography Course in College somehow convincing myself real life photography would be just as fun as snapping Pokemon, take it from me, it’s not half as fun without boobies involved…god I’ve gone way off topic now, where was I? Ah that’s right, one week to go for Fable 2! There is a sad side of this I’m not proud of though because although I’m unable to sleep with excitement for the game I’ve been looking forward too the most this entire year (yes more so that Spore, Metal Gear Solid 4, or the less popular “Jillian Michaels Fitness”) on launch day I will be unable to buy a copy due to the money I was planning on using to buy it not exciting after my Landlord decided to take it in rent…trust me kids, when your parents charge you rent for living with them, appreciate it, cause it’s a hell of a lot better than some stranger charging you double it and doesn’t even cook for you! So yeah, I’m all excited, looking up reviews, previews, feature lists and so on but in full knolage that I wont beable to play the game for a minimum of another week after release. So, as you all begin counting down your last week, remember poor me with my fortnight left before I get to enjoy what may be the best RPG on a current generation console…bastards :-(



Ignore the woman and this is a smexy video game-play wise :-D

Monday 13 October 2008

It's Almost Here...

Sunday 12 October 2008

Two Worlds [Xbox 360]

Believe it or not (and based on my previous game reviews I guess not believing it is more likely) it is rare that I find a game I genuinely don't like. I mean normally I'll slate a game for being crap but in truth I wouldn't blame someone for enjoying it, I mean I don't slap people for paying Counter Strike even though I'd rather get raped by an inbred hill billy with aids than play (a.k.a suffer it's arsehole of a "community" it seems to pride it's self on) it because I can understand how getting your head shot off by some cock with a God complex might be entertaining to someone if they have a thing for throwing PC accessorise out of windows. So yeah, I'd consider myself open minded to that extent, but alas there are games I can't fathom me or others playing, there is a list actually (Killzone, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Evil Twin to name a few) and none of these games are based purely on the fact I didn't like the genera, or the story or something, the hatred for these games goes much deeper than my personal preference and instead is based on bad game play, boring designs, lack of creativity, horrid glitches or just laziness on the development end. So, the game I want to rip a new one today?

Yup, the game is called Two Worlds but I've done some checking and even though the logo makes it look like the second game in a series no game came before it, and in truth if one had there wouldn't be a second.

So, what's wrong with this game? God where to start...

I played the 360 version but apparently the PC version scored a little higher in reviews and the games set for PS3 next year, so keep that in mind if you don't agree with my opinion based on the other platforms, as for 360 players who think it's a good game...seriously...I wanna slap you silly.

Anyway, the bad things! Let's start with the CD sound! As we all know a 360 reading a CD is a little...well...let's just say we all turn the TV volume up. This isn't a major problem in most games though cause most of the loading is done in small chunks, not for Two Worlds though! The CD genuinely never stopped loading the whole time I played it, I thought my 360 was dieing and even tested 4 other games in the drive to check. Every time I turned my character to face another direction my CD drive would die a little inside.


Then we have the issue of frame-rate. Now there is a reason I love console gaming. When I buy a game for my laptop in it's current state 90% of the time even if I have the right specs, I can't run the game very well. On a console if I buy a game I can expect it to run, once again not Two Worlds! Indoors the frame rate must have been running at a good 30fps, but the second I stepped outside the frame rate would die, sometimes I couldn't have been getting higher than 5fps if there were too many monsters on screen, it was like running Doom 3 on Windows 3.1!

The controls next, these were sloppy, and I don't mean not very intelligent positions for buttons or something, I mean to cast a spell I'd pull my trigger and wait up to 3 or 4 seconds for the game to register I wanted to fire my spell, by which point the monster had moved and I was shooting fire at the floor while getting raped by an Ork in the ear! Sword swinging was almost as bad so it seemed unlikely it was some kind of 'casting time delay' and I tried with 2 game pads so it wasn't a hardware issue (one wireless and one wired too).


Audio we'll tackle this time! Music wasn't bad, monster and battle sounds were good too, I thought this would be the one area I couldn't knock the game...then I spoke with an NPC. They genuinely speak like their reading the script for the first name with no real emotion in their voices and use 'Ye Old English' but it feels out of place and at times like their making it up. I genuinely had to turn off the audio at times and just read the subtitles...well I tried but that leads onto our next issue:

GUI! Yup, Graphical User Interface! This for me and a lot of people is a make or break point in a game, WoW and Everquest, both amazing games, but WoW has the best GUI so guess which game I'm currently selling my soul too in monthly instalments? Two Worlds GUI is never really explained in-game and it's one of those games where you NEED it explained to you. The back pack is hard to find your way around, comparing items stats is impossible without a HD TV (and before you complain that I'm knocking a game for it's use of High Def, yes I am, because most of us can't afford HDTV’s yet so fuck off!) as well as most subtitles meaning you have to listen to that horrid audio!


Game play was drab, first they send you into a dungeon, which consists of 2 rooms and about 4 monsters to kill...fair enough. The problem comes when you walk outside after an easy dungeon and even walking on paths you presume are safe you get attacked by everything including pigs which kick your level 1 ass into the dirt and piss on your grave. Equipping higher level stuff is almost impossible without a HDTV or lucky guess work and even if your the best fighter, the game doesn’t pause when you talk to NPC’s meaning you can come out of a conversation with an Imp chewing on your left butt cheek cause your 3 feet too far for a guard to be bothered to walk. Prepare to die...a LOT.

Story...eh...this is where I can't genuinely give you a review...cause the game was so horrid even though I forked out £30 for it, I've played it no more than 3 times cause it's so unplayable. I genuinely thing with a HDTV and the console power of a PS3 or a high end PC (and maybe a few game Mods) it could be fun, but as far as the 360 version goes this is a horrid game though and though. If you want a free roaming fantasy hack & slash to play, pick up Oblivion Game of the Year Edition or something, it's not amazing but hell, it's vastly better than this crap and the best you'll get unless the stick Gothic 3 on 360 one day (you'll hear me singing the praises of that as soon as I get a PC that can run it!).

So yeah...don't buy it...and don't trust this trailer:

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Fringe

What's this? A post? One that has NO video-game reviews, news, or rants? Yeah right, when Pigs fly!

Luckily I found this then huh?


Any who, I've just finished watching the first 4 episodes of the new sci-fi show Fringe. Out of curiosity before I started watching I turned to the wonders of IMDB and checked out their basic sum-up of the show and got this:

A television drama cantered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.

Now am I alone in thinking that sounds like a mildly quirky x-Files? I'm sure I'm not so I went into this show with a bit of a "eh, it's gonna suck" but I was happily suppressed! The show is pretty damn grim and sees no problem in wiping out 140+ people in the first episode in a very disturbing way (seriously, 5 seconds before the intro music you'll get what I mean). The plot is a good one which right away throws you into a dark conspiracy with lots of different characters with no clear good/evil (kinda like Noah from Heroes in season 1) which will keep you watching if nothing else dose. The show is quite evil too because although each episode can be watched as a stand alone show, there is a constant underlying plot filled with questions which I don't think we'll get the answers too in the near future. Quite evil is the last 5 seconds of each show too, where they show a quick image, or a few seconds of something with no explanation of what’s going on but you know it'll all make scenes later down the line.


The characters in the show are all well written although sometimes a little one dimensional (which is forgivable) and the actors play their roles very well. One thing I did notice which was a little odd for a show of this millennium is that the female character, although good looking, isn't some young bit of totty but in fact feels more like a realistic woman within a government agency which is nice, admittedly it seems they've gone for the sex appeal in one of the main male characters, but I guess they had to shoe-horn it in somewhere for the more shallow TV watchers just like they shoe-horned in the black woman (I have to point this out every time I make this complaint about any show or movie that dose it. I am NOT racist, there is a black guy in this show who I think fits in well, but the "personal assistant black woman" thing was done in Sex and the City the movie and it felt just as out of place there as it dose here as she seems to play NO important or even slight role in the show at all).


All in all this is a really good show, I loved it and can't wait for the next episode. One warning though is this is a gruesome show which actually had me looking away from the screen at times (something I've not done outside of a Asian Horror) so if your not a fan of the gruesome world of special effects I'd recommend maybe giving the show a miss, or at least have a pillow close by to hide behind for the yucky bits. Otherwise WATCH THIS SHOW!



Oh...and my god can you feel the hints of Lost in it?

Monday 6 October 2008

Cave Story

With my current lack of cash freeware games are becoming more and more appealing too me. In truth though this game has been one I've loved for a long while, even when I first got my 360 and couldn't get enough of smashing the crap out of zombies in Dead Rising, or first installing a copy of Sam and Max Episode 1, I'd still stop and take time to give this game a little play, I've been playing on and off for well over a year now in small 5 minute plays and I'm genuinely surprised a game can be so long. What am I talking about? None other than Cave Story which if you haven't heard of, with it's confirmed Wii Release you'll hear of it a lot more soon.


So, what's the game about? In truth I've never taken much time to take in the plot and only skimmed to get to the game play but from what I remember you play a soldier from the surface who's somehow ended up underground in a village with some cute little dog like things when one gets kidnapped, you take it upon yourself to save the little fella which of course leads onto a bigger adventure. In truth plot isn't what sells this game but I do have to admire it because it's where the text comes in the most and this game has been lovingly translated to a quality you'll never find in a Korean MMORPG or something.


So why did I speed though the plot? Not because I'm impatient or anything, hell, I loved Final Fantasy VII for it's long winded plot, no, the reason I sped though it with Cave Story is because the game comes into it's own in game play. How is it original? It isn't! The game play is pure fun side scrolling action, with an odd 3 level system for each weapon (taken from some horizontal space shooter you'd find in some 20p arcade) and pickups along the way which boost your HP bar (and when your running around with 10 times the HP you had when you started the game you start to feel a little smug about yourself...it's sad I know but trust me you'll feel the same). There are no real puzzles although every now and then a mini-quest to collect some items to get past something to move on in the game. The Boss battles are challenging but usually they'll throw you a save point just before it and a box to refill your HP. It's rare these days to find a game which isn't trying some epic new game mechanic to stand out, and I know in the freeware world you have to normally do something insane to get noticed but although I love seeing what developers come up with, there are a lot more misses than hits, so it's nice to play a game which is simple, old school and most of all fun :-D

Graphics are an odd one to cover for this game. If your looking for a game based purely on the graphics stop reading now...thinking about it leave my blog and go buy a PS3 you chav. Cave Story prides it's self on it's 2D 8-bit graphics and audio and I love it for this. The game genuinely looks like it would be at home on the NES and in one sense I wish it was because I think the only thing that could make this game that little more awesome is if it came on one of those old NES carts and I could play with a game pad from back when having an a AND a b button was quite advanced.



So, to sum up this is a game which I hope with it's up coming jump to console will get the recognition it damn well deserves. It's a high quality game which can be over looked based on it's 8-bit goodness and even though it'd fully free to download for Windows, if it hit's the Xbox Live Arcade one day I'll be buying it. Till then I recommend you download it, but if you need a little more convincing below is a trailer for the game, Enjoy :-)

Sunday 5 October 2008

5 Free MMO's I'd Recommend

Hello! Tis I! Moriarty!

Sorry I haven't been around much, been very low on content for the site since my landlord has raised my rent for the month (don't ask...) so till next month I'm skint meaning no games!

But alas! Not all hope it lost! Because thanks to this wondrous thing called the Internet there are more free things to play with than you could find at any Nymphomaniacs Anonymous meeting!

I'm an avid fan of the MMORPG and the MMOG and a newbie to the MMORTS but I love them all. Sure their grind-city, and yes their communities suck, and of course you spend forever trying to get to one level just to spend forever to get to the next, but never the less I like them :-D Because of this I thought today instead of some review of an Xbox title or a 36o demo, or even a filler list of one line reviews of my bad taste in games, I'd subject you to a top 5 of my favourite MMO's I've played. I used to run a Free MMORPG List so I've played a LOT of them too :-D don't expect to see any you wont have seen on MMO sites, but here is my view on 5 of them which might help you pick one and if not, might entertain you for a few minutes, so here we go:

1. Risk Your Life 2 [YL2]
Why I've put this game in my list is a little strange. The graphics leave a LOT to be desired. The community is awful. Quests are boring. And the glitches in the game which cause boss monsters to appear in newbie villages and so on are beyond annoying...so why is this here? Because even with these issues RYL2 is FUN! It's the only MMORPG I know where within the blink of an eye you can level, you look pretty cool from the start, and the battle system is quite literally Hack and Slash and fast paced (I'm yet to see ANY other MMORPG which says it's battles are fast paced live up to the claim). If you can talk a few friends into downloading this with you I think you could have a lot of fun, check it out.

2. Perfect World [PW]
Perfect World is one of those games that from the second you run it your quite suprised it's a free game. It's graphics are good, it's gameplay is just right filled with quests, lots of items, armour and mounts as well as an interesting use of the jump ability. One of the cool things about PW is at any time you can pull your character back into the character-creation system and edit them to make them look different, this can be useful for people who get bored of the same look quickly or people into Role Play. There is a draw back to this game though, and it's the one that turns a lot of people off, the translation is pretty damn bad. Still, worth a look, you'll probubly enjoy it if you can look past the one floor.

3. Dream of Mirror Online [DOMO]
I love this game so much :-D it's graphics are just right, it's quests are varied, interesting and even though you into an instance from level 1. There is also something kinda fun about beating the crap out of an adorable pig...I need help. There are a lot of classes to pick from in the game to use with one of 4 races, the only draw-back being you have to get to level 20 before you can change class but when you change class you go back to level 1 again, this meant when I played and became a Swordsman I was one of the only people who dared change class from Basic, although this may seem crap it did mean I was the only one walking around in some pretty cool armour which makes you feel damn smug. The translations are a tiny bit off in the game but not enough to spoil anything and sometimes can be funny (I genuinely saw a Cow meow). I'd recommend this game but due to it's not very chatty community I'd recommend dragging some friends on too.

4. Dungeon Runners [DR]
If there is something that's seriously missing in the world of MMORPGs it's humour. So many serious games about saving the world from a relentless evil, so many depressing and grim looking futures, luckily though DR is a breath of fresh air! Dungeon Runners dose exactly what it says in the name, it's all about running though dungeons in a beautiful 3D similar to WoW but in a Diablo style game play. The game is fast and you'll level up quickly. It's also one of those games where you look cool pretty damn quick kitted out in full armour and a sword bigger than the penis size you lie to girls about in chat rooms. Within a few minutes of playing I'd beat the crap out of a wolf cub with a club and picked up off it's body an Axe that was apparently forged in 'Da Ghetto' (no joking), strait away I knew I'd like the game! Also any game where if you upgrade to premium you get a goblin that eats unwanted treasure and craps out old rocks in my opinion! Sadly though I've just mentioned one of the games draw backs. This is a free game but for a low price you can upgrade to a premium account which allows access to a lot more features as well as the armour you'll desperately need to survive harder dungeons, this means the game will become almost impossible after a few dungeons without paying for a full account, but it's fun while it lasts and worth a poke as the only funny MMO out there.

5. Gunz
Gunz is one of those games which will probably be the only one of it's kind. This death-match guns and melee game lets you look cool from day one...for all of 5 seconds till someone empties an Uzi into your face. The game is VERY fast and not very forgiving but damn dose it let you look cool with wall runs and using your sword to latch onto walls and so on it it one of the few games online which lets you act like Dante from Devil May Cry or something. This game is truly the ultimate in cool as far as MMO's go. Of course though it has a downside. The games community has become similar to Counter Strike where for every 1 nice player, there are 50 morons who just shout stuff and blame every death on hacks and ever kill on skill, it's childish and will put you off playing quickly if you don't remember to not take it seriously. If you can over look this the games quite fun and worth a go :-) good luck, you'll need it!

So there you have it, 5 MMO's you can try if your ever bored and want to play something a little less anti-social. Keep in mind I recommend these 5 out of all the games I have played, not other peoples opinions so please don't leave any comments about how Runescape rocks or Maple Story owns compared to DOMO because I don't care and anyone with an ounce of sense knows Runescape always has and always will suck unless your a paedophile trying to find a retarded 12 year old to touch, and Maple Story is quick to follow and the only excuse I will accept for anyone playing ether of these is because they are female (why the hell do women like Maple Story? o_O I mean...I know women’s taste is different from men, but a sucky game is a sucky game) or their trying to sleep with a female who plays the game.

Anyway, hope this will keep you busy for a while and I'll try to update again soon. <3