Well, thanks to my two updates tonight it's now 3:35am and I've gotta be up at 8:50am...shit, gonna be a fun day in work. Night people and hope you enjoy your December

Pinch, Punch First of the Month, No Backsies!

So, today is the first day of December, the final push before the new year, kids are starting their advent calendars, I've gotta put up my trimmings, and the stockroom at work is gonna be filled with the sound of Xmas songs for the next 25 days (which sounds good but as I'm the only one who enjoys Xmas in the stockroom the music is followed by the grumps and grumbles of old men).

Being at the end of the year always causes me to look back at the year and think about what I've done. Each year it's pretty dull, normally consisting of stuff like survived another year in school' 'finished school and started college' survived another year in college' 'finished college' and so on but this year I realised I can be more proud of myself, in a single year...

I've moved out, made new friends, reconnected with old ones, I've taken up a job for a charity, I've finished more video-games in this year than any year before it, I've opened a blog and kept it running, I've handled some hard times well (or at least well enough to mean I'm still alive and sane...ish) and had a few good times too. I've learnt new things including electricity costs a lot, life sucks without a TV licence, and money doesn't grow on trees. I've taken on the responsibility of two tiny lives in my Hamsters Mog and Mindy, I've rediscovered Tetris though the wonders of Facebook and I've discovered the horrors of being stuck in a small room with 15 chavs who all wanna mug me at best and kill me at worst. I've found new enjoyments like the AG Podcast, Kotaku (yes shockingly before 2008 I didn't know what Kotaku was), and a Cheese Burger at my local Cafe, Bettys. I've started more projects than I can count on my hands and fingers crossed I might actually get one to the point where I can show it off before I shelf it. I've gotten back into my online gaming (Gamer Tag : Ch0vY if you wanna say hi) and challenged myself to read a real book (not a comic book or a kids book) and it's slowly moving alone well. I've loved, and I've lost. I've sparked conversations with total strangers and discovered things I'd never have known otherwise. I've taken small steps towards a more healthy lifestyle (less crisps, more fruit and working in a stockroom always helps), I've discovered music more beautiful than anything I could imagine and I've seen sights more horrific than I'd ever want to imagine (no more 4chan for me!). I've made jokes about cripples to people in wheel chairs and made them laugh, I've made stereotypical references to an Asian guy and been thanks for it. I've been offered pills to extend my penis, keep it up longer, I've won the Spanish lottery at least 300 times, my 20 of my long lost cousins have died and left my over 1 billion dollars in total if only I had my credit card details at hand to give them...oh and I've broken my spam-filter. I've laughed, I've cried, I've even thrown up twice. I've acquired an original Nazi coat (don't ask...I just think they were sharp dressers), two walking sticks and a new hat. I've tried (and failed) to grow facial hair, and I've also discovered shaving over a mole causes a lot of blood. I've discovered new things about friends, I've moved on from old events. I've tried stuff I shouldn't have, yet still I've remained T-Total. I've stood my ground, and I've voiced my opinions. I've been told I should be a writer if only someone would invent a spell checker that can correct the wrong use of 'there', 'their', and 'they're'. I've been called Ugly, Fugly, Disgusting, and an Asshole (love you Mum...I'm kidding incase she's reading). I've watched Wall-E 4 times. I've been told off by the job centre for looking for too many jobs. I've been turned down by too many jobs. I've been accepted for a job, but may not start till May 2009 if at all. I've pissed everyone off by going though phases of using the term 'slappy wag' in every sentence. I've been mistaken for a girl countless times. I've gotten the chance to be there for friends, and I've actually used over £100 in phone credit (I can normally make £20 last a year). I've found out how good it feels to be the big kid in the park who makes other kids too scared to play on the swings. I've tried Sudoku. I've decided to kill the creator of Sudoku. I've won a game of Scrabble (for a Dyslexic that's a big thing). I've played Guitar Hero on a TV over 6ft tall. I've gotten to meet old teachers and see their disappointed expressions when I say I'm unemployed leeching off the government. I've spent a month replacing any term for 'Penis' for 'Winky'...that was odd. I managed to avoid watching even the smallest moment of the Olympics. I've even (to my surprise) managed to come up with theories on religion which have caused religious studies and religious people to question their views and opinions.

But alas I'm not happy. Why? Because even with all these things covered in just one year there are a million more things I wanna do with my life. People say 'oh your still young' but the truth of the fact is in this day and age (or any day and age) I could die in any number of ways at any time and maybe I won't have a significant effect on this world which will justify my existence in the grand scale of the universe, but I've been blessed with a life a lot of people don't get the chance to enjoy or even experience, so I wanna use it before it's too late. I want things to tell the grandchildren when I'm old. I want to grow wise with time though experiences, not what I'm told by others. I know some people might think not being happy with the past year after a list so long no one will be bothered to read it (can't blame you) is a bad thing, but if your content with what you've done with your life that means you have nothing more to live for, and then what's the point? We should always strive for more, but at the same time never beat ourselves up if we fail to reach our goals. I don't really know where I'm going with all of this, I guess I just wanted to rant but for once not about something negative. There is a lot of shit going on in the world right now, horrible things, tragic things, the last thing the world needs is people like me bitching and moaning too. So, enjoy one of the few times you'll read me being the optimist in life. Then go out there and do something you can look back on when you think about this year in your life and this chapter in your book if your ever rich and famous enough to con people out of a few quid.

Paper Mario & Friends

No, not the name of the next game in the Paper Mario series, in fact this isn't really about Mario at all, it's more about Nintendo. I am a long time lover of Papercraft, I made my first model about 3 years ago (a paper Prince from Katamari, fucking hard but damn was I proud till I dropped a book on it) although there are a LOT of Japanese sites to sift though to find good papercraft to cut up and glue together. I was browsing the net today though and stumbled upon Nintendo Papercraft!

Nintendo Papercraft is a huge site that catalogs and links to hundreds of different Nintendo based papercraft works for you to make ranging from the simple box characters all the way up to intricate highly detailed models of characters like Ganon or Falco Lambardi. There are also some strange models like the PictoBox from Wind Waker and Sonic pops up in the Others category.

The Categories are simple covering all the major titles from Nintendo and each is over flowing with models to print out.

One thing I liked about this site also is a discreet link under the Category list which will take you to a 16+ Minute Tutorial on how to rip textures from N64 games and turn them into papercraft. With helpful stuff like this for budding papercrafters you can be sure the site will be stocking up on new models for years to come.

So, if your interested in making yourself a Paper Mario Hat to wear or maybe Link's Master Sword to hit people with (will probably bend after the first hit though so go for the heart) or even just a cute little Box Bunny Mario then check out the site!

Website : Nintendo Papercraft

Fable 2 Review

Right, time to review the game! Now then...this is currently the third attempt at starting this review because Fable 2 is one of those games where you don't know where to start when it comes to explaining it. Let's go for the basic points first starting with Story.

The story in Fable 2 follows you, a hero who doesn't know it yet. You and your sister (who sounds like she's voiced by someone from Eastenders) are homeless orphans living on the streets with dreams of one day living in the Castle. Needless to say life doesn't stay like this for long as something major happens which causes the world around you to change forever. The plot in Fable 2 is just as dark as the first Fable but this time with better voice actors, and the fact your an orphan with only your sister to look after you in the world it feels like so much more is ripped away from your character than in the first game. I'll admit I've not finished the story in Fable 2 yet but think I'm about half way though and so far I'll give it too them, Lionhead Studios have written a long story full of interesting characters, dark moments and some good humour. To accompany the major plot as you move though the timeline you'll also follow the stories of some lesser characters like a businessman who's always asking for help with some idea or another.

So, moving on from Story lets talk about Audio, another area that Fable did right but Fable 2 has improved upon. Although a lot of the world doesn't use music the ambient sounds as well as the chatter of children or the calls of market stall owners really gives the game a feeling of life. Voice acting is all top quality and kudos to LH Studios for using the voices of not only Stephen Fry but Zoë Wanamaker and the man behind Firefly's Shepherd Derrial Book, Ron Glass. When there is music it's very fitting to the atmosphere of the area your in and works very well in battle. The use of audio in this game also includes the wise choice of when to use none at all. A few times I've managed to get though Demon Doors and into the twisted worlds behind them and the lack of any music or ambient sound at all gives a really weird, unnerving but beautiful effect to the areas.

Right then, I think next we'll cover game play...now lets watch Fable 2 fall on it's face. Now don't get me wrong, the basic controls are smooth and work well, but there are so many issues with handling in this game. Your character turns so slowly at times you'll end up looking like a moron as you walk into walls. There is also the issue of your characters inability to swing at small boxes on the floor resulting in you having to kick each box one at a time instead of doing one fine swoop. Using items is a slow and cumbersome process involving you having to pause the game, go to your items menu, find the item you want to use and pressing a, but if you want to use the item twice you have to go though the same process again as the second you use an item it closes the menu. There are hotkey's for the D-Pad to use items but they will only appear when the game feels you NEED them and there seems to be no option that I can find to hotkey items myself. Another control issue which bugged me was spells. In Fable 1 you'd hold down your trigger then press A,B,X or Y based on what spell you'd hot keyed to what button to cast it. In Fable 2 you only have one spell button, you assign spells to it based on how long it's held down, the problem with this though is if you want to use a spell above level 1 you have to hold the button down without being hit for a few seconds, which is almost impossible if there are more than about 3 bad guys on screen. Issues are not just limited to controls though, there are also problems like the lack of an ability to steal anything off shop shelves like you had in Fable 1, the ability to buy items in bulk is gone, and battles jump between stupidly easy to next to impossible. Visually some fights can get so confusing due to the number of bad guys on screen I was left unable to see my own character and just button bashed the X button till everything died. House owning is also an area of game-play which is vastly over rated. You make very little money renting stuff out considering how much you'll put into the house. I've spent well over 50k on houses in the game but for all the houses combined the rent is only 1,300, makes it hardly seem worth it.

Ok what next? How about the online mode? LH Studios bragged about the drop in system for Fable 2 and in fairness I have to admit it works beautifully. One second I was running around alone, the next minute a menu popped up, I picked what gold, experience and so on I wanted to share and my brother jumped into my game, took about 1 minute and wasn't confusing (although we did have some issues with hearing each other over our headsets, but I've put that down in one of the billions of glitches in the game). Sadly though that's about all the praise the Online mode gets. For some unknown reason you cannot bring your own character into someone else's world...this makes NO sense as every item your character can wear is stored on the other persons CD too meaning the information you'd have to send over the net to use your character would be tiny, the fact you can see the hosts character means viewing other peoples characters wasn't an issue for LH Studios so I have no idea why this was messed up, the only logical reason I can come up with is the fact they'd admitted the online co-op may not be out with release but managed to rush it and get it in, maybe they had to cut corners and we'll see this change in a future patch. This isn't the only problem with the co-op mode too. The second someone joins your game or you join theirs the camera switches from the nice smooth good working camera you've gotten used too and becomes a fixed camera, nether players gets control over it and it limits the movement of characters so that they cannot be more than about 10 feet apart. This doesn't sound too bad but numerous times while playing we'd be unable to see where we were going because the camera would get stuck in front of us, or would shift violently without warning causes us to run the wrong direction, sometimes it would even move in a way where one of us would get stuck until the other came running back. The online mode is something that got me VERY excited for Fable 2 along with many friends and we all feel cheated by it.

Ok so how about Downloadable Content? Well there is none. A lot of people would see this as a bad thing but I see it as a good sign. How much would it piss you off if you baught a game brand new only to find content online at a premium price? You'd feel you'd paid full price for half a game. Also to be fair LH Studios have just announced a peice of DLC which will unlock a whole new land with quests and a continuing plot and in a move of kindness will release a patch which will allow players without the DLC to still co-op with people with it, good of them if you ask me.

So, that's Audio, Gameplay, Story, Online Mode and DLC...what else? Oh, visuals!

The graphics in Fable 2 are beautiful, sure the textures are not amazing but everything works so well, the fact plants will move under your feet looks beautiful, the way the lip sync on even the smallest mouths of children are done perfect looks good too and shows a good level of attention to detail. The landscapes are very immersing and truly inject some colour into this brown generation of gaming. Sadly there are areas where the visuals fall down a little though. Almost all the women in the world (and the men) are pretty damn ugly unless their whores, also a lot of the weapons in the game are rehashes of previous weapons with new textures which feels a bit cheap. One of the biggest issues I had with the game though is my classic complaint, it's not very SD TV friendly, and I know a lot of people will say that's a silly complaint to make in a world which is going HD but there are still a lot of us who can't afford HD TV's and as long as there are I will continue to see this as a problem.

God I've written enough for a short book and there's still more to go, almost done now though!

Next the matter of character customisation. This is a major part of the Fable series and what caused it to stand out in a world of other RPGs. All in all it's pulled off very well in Fable 2 but I do have some issues. I played as a woman with the intention of turning her into a hot goth chick (what can I say, if your gonna give me the tools to make a sexy woman I'm gonna do it). Alas this went horridly wrong though because the second I upped her physical strength she turned into a huge butch lesbian bordering on the edge of being a genderly challenged man. To make it worse although I'd only taught her a few basic spells as I wanted to mainly use my sword these spells had caused the magic markings on her skin to appear. Also due to a few bad deeds my skin was covered in some freaky lines which just looked ugly. I know LH Studios wanted to make everything have a reaction in the world but I quite liked Fable 1's system where stuff like getting fan required eating a shit load of food, not having 3 or 4 pies. Things had to be done in excess for the effects to show which worked well, in Fable 2 you have to be careful of EVERY action incase it turns you into some cross-dressing whore look-a-like.

Oh, I almost forgot something unforgivable! The Dog! Fable 2 prides it's self on an IA Dog which accompanies you and sniffs out treasure as well as doing tricks, looking cute and chewing on the ankles of bad guys who are knocked to the floor. He can be useful but half the time he feels kinda pointless, he'll bark at chests which are blatantly in the open and anyone can see, any treasure he finds in the ground for you to dig up is usually crap, and his only REAL use is to get you though 1 demon door and find treasure for the archeologist quests. Maybe if they'd given some more interaction than fussing, scolding, feeding and healing it I'd have enjoyed it's company more but in truth I'm starting to wonder about the mental health of the guy in my local Game who told me by the end of the game he had kinda bonded with his dog. In fairness though he doesn't really get in the way if you can ignore his barking, so he's no major issue.

So, time to end this review by summing up for everyone who skipped the wall of text above. If you did read your probably a bit untrusting of Fable 2 with all the issues I raised but in fairness sure the controls are badly thought though, and 90% of what they promised us isn't in the game, and the online mode sucks, and the golden line that's meant to lead you around will constantly get confused and send you the long or even wrong way, and you'll spend way too long doing timed button tapping games to make money, all of this is overlooked if not forgiven by the humour which will have you at least smiling if not laughing at times as well as the well written plot which will keep you playing and telling yourself 'just 10 more minutes' till it's 6am. For every issue in Fable 2 there's some element of charm or some little nod to the previous title which will cause you to forgive it and carry on Some of the games floors are almost charming in themselves, and if you need more convincing to give this game a shot all I should need to say is Stephen Fry man! Stephen fucking Fry!

TRAILER

Fable 2 Take 3!

So, yesterday I was in town looking around, avoiding the guy dressed up as a teddy bear, and trying to talk my house-mate into hugging the other guy dressed as Santa when I walked into Gamestation to find Fable 2 for £20...now keep in mind just down the road it cost £39.99, and I'd forked out £39.99 for my original two broken copies. Now I know I had vowed not to touch Fable 2 for at least 6 months due to the looooooong list of fuck ups, let downs, and general butt-fuckery when it came to working CDs, but at £20, and the offer only on for a week I gave into temptation and spent half this fortnights food money on a copy...so back to frozen chips every night for me for 14 days.

Anyway, I got home, stuck the game in and rushed the sloooow intro (I've now seen it over 5 times...needless to say at this point I'd begun to hate the guy selling the "magic" items) and got to the point that my game ALWAYS freezes up aaaaaand...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT FUCKING WORKED!

Yup, I am now officially a Fable 2 player! About fucking time Lionhead fucking studios!

Anyway, Just wanted to post this I'll get to writing the review now

<3

If Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, How Many Do?

So, I was in town yesterday hanging around in the game shop bugging the staff with questions about Fable 2 CD issues and so on when I noticed the setup demo for customers to play on the new Sonic for everything except the little white box that specialises in party-based DVD games (Wii). Now as any gamer will know, sonic went down hill a while back, the specific title he lost his way on is a little mixed up though, some people say it went bad after Sonic 3, some people say after Sonic Adventures on the Dreamcast, others say sonic is still good while rocking back and forth in a dark corner drawing their fan-art and stuffing their faces with Pocky.

Anyway, there is a whole new generation of gamers growing up now without a good Sonic title, lets just say that. Because of this I was more than a bit unwilling to try the demo so I must admit I hung around and watched others play...oh...my...god when will Sega ether put a bullet between the blue bastards eyes or make a chuffing good game?! Visually the game, although quite polished, felt like it was lacking something and cluttered up the screen to horrific levels of ugliness. It was slow...a sonic game...that's SLOW, wtf?! Worst of all was the combat which has been butt fucked and replaced with a warehog hack and slash style battle system instead of just jumping on things or spinning at them...you know...like sonic is MENT to do.

I know I can't give an accurate review of the game based on looking over the shoulder of an uncomfortable gamer lacking the same to avoid the controller of doom, and I know after I've posted this I'm gonna have to wait for the demo to pop up on XBL and try it out just so I can back up my rant here, but seriously, how on earth dose Sega continue to fail at a game which was good for its simplicity?

Sorry

Whoops, sorry for the lack of updates this weekend, had some planned but instead abused my back changing the setup in my room to make it more Nerd friendly (wide screen TV next to bed and so on). I'm collecting up some stuff for a list-thingy for web 2.0 fans though :-)

I'm also gonna write up my basic + and - of NXE on Friday.

May update soon <3

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly #1

Bored of doing my usual '5 random things to check out' or reviewing a game that no one cares about anymore or something I thought today I'd start something a little different. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly will pop up every now and then and in one post I'll give you one game I consider good, one I think should be burnt, and one that's just down right hideous. So, let's begin:

MMO

The Good
Magic World Online
I hate...HATE Ancient Asian MMO's, their way over done, boring and feel horridly unoriginal. Every time I play one it's the same dribble and gets boring, no creativity. Because of this when I'm presented with an Ancient Asian MMO I skip it, every time, this includes Hero Online, Kal Online and plenty more with the word 'Online' after them. Oddly though the other day in a mad fit of 'what the hell, let's give it a go' and because I'd run out of other MMO's to try I downloaded Magic World Online. This is hard for me to do...but I have to admit I enjoyed it I've put a few hours in and although the game isn't without it's bugs, boring bits and grinding (a lot of grinding) it feels like if the guys behind Legend of Mir had made an up to date version of their game this is what it would be like. Sadly there is a huge draw back. Although the graphics are 2D, the word is huge and because of this the download file size is HUGE. 2.28 Gigs for the install pre-patch isn't pretty for a 2D game but in fairness if you want a quality 2D MMO it's worth the download time (provided you have the bandwidth).

The Bad
Atlantica Online
Atlantica Online will strike you as an odd one for me to stick down as 'Bad' because it looks so bloody gorgeous. I'll admit it's up there, way up there, when it comes to graphics, but sadly that's about it. The game play on it is so boring. The GUI is about as simple as brain surgery and the battling although seems awesome at first, quickly becomes a bit boring and over done but unlike every MMO that works like this, at least their one click battles, these are about 25 click battles...joy. The quests are pretty boring, the characters keep spurting out the same single line over and over and I don't mean that in any exaggerated way (every time they attack, every time their clicked on, every time they do ANYTHING they'll say the same line which my good lord will drive you insane O_O) The download is 2.04 gig which is a lot for a game which is needlessly confusing from the start, boring, and will annoy the piss out of you.

The Ugly
4Story
4Story will make no sense to you looking at it, not just in pictures but videos because it looks good, and I genuinely thought it would be my new MMO to play religiously...theeeen I spotted something. 4Story is hosted by the nemesis of the MMO, Game & Game. Game & Game are notorious for picking up good or at least interesting looking MMO's, badly translating them to English, then sticking them on servers as old as I am leading to epic lag causing REALLY shitty game play. Once again they've done the same with 4Story. The game play jumps around constantly, it took one time 5 minutes for an NPC to talk to me thanks to lag. Game & Game have the ability to make ANY game ugly and they've made this one hideous though the fact it seemed like such a quality game before they hosted it. I wouldn't recommend this game for a few years, give G&G time to go bankrupt and someone else to buy up the rights to hosting then give it a go and I'd say you'll be facing a high quality game

So, there we go, that's the first GB&U, fingers crossed I'll be able to make more of these soon and I hope you enjoyed it and your a little curious to try these games. Let me know of any you'd recommend for any GB&U lists too

New Look? I'll Say!

So, as you can see the Den has a bit of a new look. I fancied a bit of a change after the fancy look for a while. Something that would fit my cool Xbox Avatar (I have to admit I've fallen in love with the Avatar System on NXE ) and something a little brighter.

My weekend starts tomorrow so fingers crossed I'll get some updates out on here soon I'm kinda low on content right now though, might go on an MMO spree, give some short reviews or something unless I find something worth giving a long rant on, but I'll try getting some kind of update online.

Anywho, I'm off to lose against the end boss in Gears of War a few more times, why is he so bleeding hard?!

<3

It's Mii- I mean, It's Me!

Ok so I just finished playing around with the NXE update and I'm quite happy with it, I'm still getting used to it though cause it is a total over-hall of the original system, there are also a few bugs Microsoft didn't expect on launch day even after a week of beta-testing which is a shame (mostly slow loading content or not loading at all) I'll give it a week then write a short review of the NXE when I'm more at home with it (if I can be arsed).

Till then one thing I'll say is I LOVE the Avatar System Seriously, I know it's a cheeky rip off of the Mii's but you can forgive them considering just how much better than Mii's and how much more integrated they are into the Dashboard. The fact you only get one pre-profile means you feel that your Avatar is YOUR Avatar unlike the Wii where I owned over 100 Mii's and could use any of them.

Anyway, as I'm gonna be a bit quiet for the next few days (as always I'll try to update a few times on the weekend), I thought I'd let my adoring fans see their Moriarty in his full glory!

 
FEAR ME!

EEEE! TOMORROW!

Only a few hours till I can turn on my Xbox and see something like this

EEE! *sex wee!* 

I'll try to update after I've toyed with NXE a bit but I'm ill and have work and all so I'll probably end up in bed by 7pm :-(

If There Is A God, This Has Condemned All Humanity To Hell...

Guitar Praise 'Rocking Jesus' trailer

Still better than WiiMusic though

Left4Dead...again?

Jesus Christ! I just stuck on Left4Dead again to show my house-mate, for starters playing in a dark room at 1am it's even more scary (but you'd have to be a bit weird to not know that) but more importantly I'd forgotten about the director feature in which every time you play a level it will be different. Obviously not the level it's self but the number of Zombies, what types, where their placed and so on.

Good example of this would be just now. I was playing though the demo finding it a little harder than last time but only a few more Hunters and Smokers, nothing major. Then I got to the final push at the end, here's how it played out:

FIRST TIME:
I run into the room, hit a switch and suddenly I'm swarmed by a pack of zombies which I had to fight off till I got to a mounted gun and ripped them to bits. The End

SECOND TIME:
I run into the room and instantly I'm attacked by a few zombies, while working on these I didn't notice the fucking huge monster coming up behind me which hit me though a window and down a flight of stairs. I had to empty about 15 shotgun shells into it before it dies. Then I run over to the button and hit it causing the swarm of zombies, but this time they come out of a second window too blocking off my way to the mounted gun, quickly I grabbed a Molotov Cocktail and set the floor in front of me on fire and picked off the left over zombies with handguns. The End

Not only dose this keep even the demo fresh, but makes every moment potentially cooler. The first time I was bowled over by the game alone, second time I was won by the shear awesomeness of fighting giants and burning zombies. This truly keeps the game fresh and makes the 20 levels in the full game seem like they could last for a long long time before they get even a little dull. This is gonna be a good game.

Then I showed my house-mate Mirrors Edge...she thought it was bland, boring and kinda sucky...Mirrors Edge is losing fans quickly :-(

And Now Something A Little Different...

This is genuinely someone's 'About Me' on a social network site I'm a member of...

ryt mi name sarah im 19 i live in dirty denaby

im at college doin mechanics

yh im single n wt lvin tho lol

i ant a lemon so dnt ask cuz il av t smash ya lol

lv mi m8s lol

im always up 4 a laugh lol

i ate snobs cnt stand erm

im a chav n wt lol

if ya dnt lyk me get piss ov cuz i wont lyk u eitha

i ant shy im a gobby bitch oh well i tel ya ow it is dnt care if i hurt ya feelin oh well thts me n ant a nice bird im a nasty 1 lol

cnt wait t move art mi mams il b doin a party lol

so really life is shit

if ya mingers dnt luk at mi page

cuz i wont b lukin at urs

if ya want mi msn ask 4 it.

ant got nwt t say so cya bye fuckin gone xx

All I can say to that is I'm now officially pro-abortion right up untill the age of 20...

Mirrors Edge

Well, I just finished the Mirrors Edge demo...I've gotta say although the game seems amazing, and I didn't find it half as confusing as people made it seem like I would...I was a tad let down by the demo length. I mean Left4Dead's demo felt like a short but full level, this felt like it was just the tutorial. The lack of a skip button making you watch the same boring clip every time you failed a tutorial pointer was annoying too. I have high hopes for the game but in truth I had high hopes for the demo so I feel a little disheartened now

I'll write a real review of this one when I pick up a copy sometime when I have the money for it (which will admittedly be a while off)

Valve is one of those game-companies I love but hate. I love them because everything they seem to make (over looking the early years of Steam) is classic and also because it's nice to  see a small games company doing so damn well considering their up against the likes of EA and Blizzard/Activision. Alas at the same time I hate them because although their doing well, they take the piss a lot. Their only new franchise in years was Portal and they had to bring in a team to simply re-hash their old game concept with a more Half Life style plot and graphics (don't get me wrong, I loved Portal and the fact even friends who hate FPS have fallen in love with it). It seriously felt like Valve were printing money from giving us a fuck you in the form of such classic titles as Half Life Source...what was wrong with Half Life? or how about Counter Strike Source...once again I found no issues with the original.

 

I'm happy to say today though that Valve have won back a bit of my love to replace some of that icky hate though releasing the demo of Left4Dead...my god...I'm in love.

The demo was about a gig to download so if you have low bandwidth limits you might wanna hope they stick the demo on some magazine's promo-CD or something but if you can afford to download the demo it's well worth the download time!

The graphics are amazing, I mean as a console gamer I've come to accept that what we see on consoles is normally not what you'll see on a high end PC but it's normally good enough to over look...L4D was gorgeous. The environments captured the feel of an 'end of the world though evil running zombies OH SHIT THERES ONE!' city and the Zombies themselves, there was nothing quite as creepy as running backwards loading my shotgun desperately as a screaming female zombie charged at me, her eyes wild and her mouth soaked in blood.

Audio wise the game is...ok I'll admit I have a bit of a gripe here although the sound effects worked perfect, the screams of the zombies scared me silly at times, and in the underground car park hearing the whaling of a child made me wee myself, but all of this was spoilt a little by my NPC team-mates shouting 'reloading' over and over in moments when I was holding my breath in fear of a zombie hearing...kinda, you know, kills the feel of realism a bit.

Game-play is where the game picks back up again. From the second the level starts, after about 3 seconds while the camera zooms into the back of your head (when did games start doing that and why do they still do it? Never made sense of it) your dropped right into the action with a mad dash to grab a gun of your choice and some ammo and for the love of god don't forget your med pack! The second you open your first door the action truly begins with you picking off zombies around every corner as quick as you can before they realise your there and charge at you with a pleasant scream which calls for the need of a change of underwear.

There are so many game-play mechanics I love in the game based on what I've seen so far, the smooth and basic weapon switch is useful because if you go shotgun like me after 8 shots your fucked if there are zombies left so a quick hit of the Y (or whatever it is on PC or PS3) and you have your handgun out. Zombies nibbling on your nipples? Don't worry just pull the left trigger and you'll smack them away giving you some much needed time to empty a round into their heads or run like the wind. There are also little details which although wouldn't have been missed if not there, make the game feel more whole including the fact if you get too close to some cars their alarm will go off which will notify a horde of zombies to where you are to rip off your big toes.

In truth I could go on for ages about the mechanics of the game which makes it spooge-worthy but I don't want to spoil finding out a lot of them for you in-fact I should stop now before I spoil anything more for you, this is the kind of game that no video dose justice (but there'll still be a video at the bottom for you to check out) and you really should discover for yourself...in a dark room...alone. Seriously, I know it's a multi-player game, and no doubt there is a lot of fun in playing online, but you should play level one in single player just to enjoy the scary feel of the game before it's spoilt by some knob who only cares about their game-score stealing all your kills and running though bits that if you haven't played before, you'll be crawling inch by inch though in fear of zombie-rape.

Good Game, Give it a Go!

Been A While...

Wow, almost a week without updates. Sorry about that, was ill Monday till yesterday and had work which I'm still getting used too so I was knackerd every night but now the weekend is here! I just need to get my room to a slightly respectable state, move my Xbox 360 up to my TV and get it connected to the net and wehay I can get the Left4Dead, Mirrors Edge and Banjo Kazooy demos! :-D That should give me a little to write about.

I can't promise that means updates ahoy because I have a knack for losing motivation 3 paragraphs into a post (It took me 2 days to finish the Dead Set post...don't know why).

So, I just finished watching E4's Dead Set, now I must admit I didn't know about this show till a few days ago when two of my friends were talking about it, I was totally confused and spent about 5 minutes trying to work out what the hell they were talking about and how much crack they'd smoked. Anyway, soon after I popped down to HMV and found the DVD, the moment I saw the E4 logo I died a little inside but decided to give into the peer pressure thought "if everyone else has seen it I have too!"...now this is unlike me because everyone has seen Skins but I would rather be fiddled by Garry Glitter than watch that televised abortion. Anyway, tonight with the encouragement of my house-mate I finally settled down and watched all 5 episodes of Dead Set back to back, I've got to admit E4 have managed to do something right!

If your from anywhere outside of the UK although the show might still appeal to you if you like zombies and so on, you wont get ANY of the references like Divina McCall, the genuine Big Brother "stars", and this years UK Big Brother House.

So, what's the show about? Well as I've mentioned so far, Big Brother and Zombies. The plot follows the survival of a group of staff and contestants from Big Brother at the dawn of a Zombie Apocalypse, which I'm surprised NO ONE has done before, I mean we've all thought about the concept of the house-mates being stuck in the house and so on, about time someone actually did it. Anyway, the story feels very much like it drew all it's inspiration from the 'of the Dead' series, which of course is a good thing because they are the 'how do to a Zombie right' of the movie world. Of course the plot it's self is pretty slim, and to explain any of the sub-plot would mean giving away spoilers which I'd like not to do, but all in all it's a good foundation for some more British Zombie movies above the humorous tone of Shawn of the Dead.

Of course there are some down sides. While all of the actors play their roles well, it feels like the 'bad guy' of the story was a bit beyond belief which is a same because most of the other characters felt real and at worst a little exaggerated. There is also the issue of a lot left untouched. I mean some of the characters seem to act as if there is a tone of background story to them but you never get to see it, also the Zombie outbreak is never explained, nor is it really looked into much. There is an odd moment in the show where on the radios people start picking up a french repeating broadcast, the only world any of them can translate is something like "shelter", they never translate the rest or even bring the whole thing up again for the rest of the show, I'd like to know more about the world outside this one show, but although I complain as if this is a bad thing it is also a good thing because the world the story is based in leaves so many questions unanswered it screams out for a spin-off show of some sort and I really hope they listen to the screams and make it because the writing and production value of the show were both top notch and beyond anything I've seen on E4 in a looooong time.

So, interested in watching the show? There are probably torrents out there for the whole thing but of course I can't condone the use of illegal downloads, one thing worth checking is 4oD, I don't use it so I don't know if it's on there but give it a check out, if not you can always buy the DVD. If your a Zombie fan I REALLY recommend this, it's VASTLY better than the horrible piece of crap known as Diary of the Dead.

Ooo, I say! Some news! Well I Never!

No, nothing about Obama and the U.S Presidency, I'm from the UK, I'm happy to say I don't entirely care so long as he stops America fucking up the world for the rest of us.

No, this news is Den based. As you may have spotted there is now a picture of poo on the right hand side of the site...why? Because I'm currently trying to fiddle the site to make it more, I don't know, human? I mean I've been churning out posts but I get the feeling with each post I'm typing as if I'm a wannabe editor, not just some guy posting on a blog. This place is my little corner of the Internet and I feel it should reflect me a little more, hell, some people might even wanna know a little about the moaning git behind the last 41 posts.

I might fuck up and the whole site will go down, me and HTML have a weird relationship which normally results in a lot of stuff being deleted and me shouting at my screen then crying on my keyboard, so brace yourself for a bit of a choppy time with the Den.

So, what have I done so far?

• WikiPedia
  I've added a little plug-in to my Live Writer so that I can link and word to the world wide wiki for you guys to get a little more info with the click of a link, this will help when I go off on rants about stuff people don't know or care too much about but their curious to understand. It also makes the site look kinda intelligent...kinda.

• Profile
  That picture of poo is not just there for fancy decoration, no, it's the start of a small profile about me which I'm still writing up. Yup it's one of those god awful favourite movie?' kinda profiles but I can't be arsed to write up one less run of the mill.

• :-)'s
  As you may have seen in the last post I've removed the :-)'s and the :-('s and instead use and although I don't like the way these stick out and look kinda odd based on the style of the site so expect them to go by the time I'm done editing unless I can fix the black space around them.

• Topics
  I love video-games, that's been an obvious theme though my blog for a while, but I feel I'm tight casting myself to being a guy who moans about games which feels far too restricting for me so as you no doubt noticed (if you red) my last post was music based, I intend to also post on news topics as they pop up and I quite fancy going back to my old ways of ripping apart movies in the same fashion I moan about games.

• Packing Up & Moving
  This isn't set in stone but I'm thinking about when I get my new web-site setup moving the blog into the hosting there, although I've become quite settled into my little spot on Blogger so I might keep the Den open as my little hide away from my site, expect some shameless self promotion though.

• Art
  When I started the Den I had hopes of starting a small gallery on here, then losing motivation I had plans to bring my Deviant Art account back to life, but as anyone who's clicked the link knows that's gone about as well as brain surgery with a brick. I'm hoping to inject a little more art into the blog soon, I can't class myself as a wannabe comic artist and general artist if I don't show my workings. Speaking of which Zom-B isn't dead yet, but A4e and the Charity Shop are taking up most of my time so I'm gonna pick it back up probably in February.

So there you go, a wall of text which is no doubt tl;dr but if you did read it I hope all these updates give you a warm feeling in your belly...because if they didn't give you that feeling, then you might have stomach cancer...might wanna get that checked...

<3

Fridays here, let the weekend begin!

So, not been an update in a little while, sorry been bogged down with A4e's new training course and working in a Charity Shop. Now though the weekend is here and I get 2 days of relaxation, late nights, too many computer games, and wishing I had a social life Joy For All!

Anyway, beyond Fallout 3 I don't really have anything new thanks to my money being shit right now so I can't promise a lot of updates over the weekend but I'll try my best to bring you a few. In the mean time here's something to give a listen too, I've mentioned the band Sigur Ros before, an Icelandic band who specialise in ambient and beautiful music which they believe musically shows the beauty of Iceland, and although I haven't seen Iceland I can believe them. These guys are the inspirational music I stick on when I'm drawing, writing, or playing a challenging game of Solitaire (and have gotten me out of a few scrapes in Minesweeper too!) so if your looking for some music to get you into an artistic mood I'd recommend giving the play-list below a listen.

Before I embedded a song by Sigur Ros but this time I'm going to embed a collection of my favourite and what I think are their most defining songs in one, give them a listen if you have 5 minutes and pick up one of their albums if you've got some spare cash

Enjoy, I did:

5 Reasons To Get Fallout 3...

So, I've been playing Fallout 3 the last few days, I've got to say although I HATE it when people over hype a game cause there is no way it lives up to expectations, when it comes to Fallout 3, seriously, I'm not saying it's perfection, but it's the best game of it's kind. So, instead of reviewing the game seeing as every site on the net already has or will have a review up soon, I thought I'd just list a few things I've noticed which I think combined warrant anyone taking a look at the game.

NOTE: I played the game on Xbox 360, I've heard nothing but bad mumbles about the PS3 version so nothing I say below should be applied if you only own a PS3, although the PC version apparently runs just as well as the 360 one.

1. Battle System
I'm the kind of person who doesn't like change in my games. I mean I like new game mechanics but I like them in new games, I don't like it when an old series tries something too new (Final Fantasy XII). Due to this personal stance on change I was a bit nervous of Fallout 3 because the original 2 were VERY different (top down 2D rogue-like games with turn based action) from the new one which uses a real time first person shooter system with your character stats effecting your hit/miss ratio as well as effecting the V.A.T.S (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), but oddly it works and as you level up as your hits are more well aimed you feel you've truly improved which is quite hard for a first-person shooter to pull off. The battle engine comes into it's own though with the V.A.T.S, I can't really explain it very well, so I'll just say, LOOK!:

2. Visuals
Know when you play a game that's really going for beauty you can see amazing views in the distance and you think 'wow' but really you know their just impressive textures you'll never get to actually explore? In Fallout 3 there are endless times when you'll see something miles away and think 'wow' and then get to run up to it and explore it and find awesome stuff! And some of the structures in the game are beautiful, I mean even factories look amazing standing on top of a hill in the dark only lit by the moon. It truly is a beautiful game but in a grim way because it truly gets across the feeling of a depressing world after a nuclear Armageddon.

3. Humour
As you no doubt know by now the game is set in a future where the a-bombs were dropped, almost everyone is dead, and anyone out side of vaults lives in shit holes and there is no sign of humanity repairing what's happened ever 200 years after the war. Oddly though the game still manages to be funny in such a grim world, but at the same time they've used the right amount of humour so that it doesn't take away from the feel of the game, but also not so little that the game depresses you.

4. Play it YOUR way!
With so many titles out these days that offer open ended worlds with a story you can take or leave and make your own adventure this sounds like a run of the mill thing to point out as a plus, but name me one game that did it well? Oblivion kinda, but a lot of the quests felt a bit boring and with little reward, and they just felt like quests disconnected from the game world, when you finished one people wouldn't talk about you and what you'd done or anything. Fallout 3 changes that. I mean I've been playing for 3 days and done hardly ANY of the games main story, but though sub-quests and so on I've done some world changing things, and not only do I see the effect in the form of peoples reactions to me (do evil things and people fear you or treat you like crap) but also though the radio stations where news stories follow my every move telling people what I've done, encouraging people to treat me good or bad based on my actions. Also though sub-quests I've changed the face of the game. Any fan of the game will have heard the example where you get to pick weather to blow up a town or keep it, well this isn't a main plot device, no, this is a sub-quest that actually effects the face of the game world, which makes quests feel so much better than other games.

5. Messy Fun
About an hour before writing this I went into Rivet City, bought 30 hand grenades and went hunting in the city for super mutants. Trust me there is nothing quite as beautiful as using the V.A.T.S with grenades and perk which causes every death to be messy...true art if ever I saw it.

So, there you go :-D now I'm back off to play my game one last time before I start a Job Centre course tomorrow...joy...pure...fucking...joy.

I'm Not Dead!

Hey just a quick post to say I'm NOT dead :-D

I'm currently hooked on Fallout 3 which I swapped Fable 2 for after one too many fuck ups and no sign of a fix before Xmas.

I'll try to post tomorrow with a mini-review of the game otherwise some kind of random thrown together 'Top 5' list of something or other to keep the site from gathering too much dust while I'm hooked on Fallout 3 ^_^

<3