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

It's Almost Here...

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:

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?

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 :-)

DOWNLOAD

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