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