Some Quick Reviews

Been a while but my heads not really in the game today to make a full post so instead here are some sum-ups of the games I've been playing this week:

Painkiller [Xbox]
The PC version was amazing, the Xbox version...all I can say is God Damn Loading Screens!

Whiplash [Xbox]
Funny, Twisted, You'll laugh at times but hate yourself for it, but still the game feels like it's lacking an element of quality you find in Platformers like Sly Cooper or Jak and Daxter.

Dungeon Explorer [PSP]
A week later and it's still boring...

Pariah [Xbox]
Actually a quality game which I wish had been brought over to the 360 for a nice graphical upgrade. the Game only falls short on it's controls when you use a (surprise, surprise!) Vehicle!

Jelly Car [PC]
Bloody hard and annoying game, but so damn fun!

World of Warcraft [PC]
Shame on me :-( I know, I know. Anyway, not a bad game and one of the better built MMORPGs, if your looking for one, don't trust the bad opinions of the game, try it for yourself on the 14 day trial.

Hyperballoid 2 [PC]
So. Much. Fun! It's breakout made how it should have been made but never could before the here and now.

Think Your A Big Halo 3 Fan?

Some people have too much time, and too few friends...



This actually makes me feel good about my life...

Xbox Avatars

My god I'm going a bit tigger happy with the update button tonight!

Just saw this and as an Xbox user I'm getting pretty excited about having access to Avatars so this made me squeal with happyness, Enjoy.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:af0e0dcd-5cff-43a2-bd32-4841fe6a89d1&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Avatars in the new Xbox experience">Video: Avatars in the new Xbox experience</a>

Euphoria

Throughout the history of video-games there have been trends or technology that developers have latched onto. Some have been good like real life physics, or 3D graphics. Some have been less good like the recent removal of health bars from all FPS, and my strongest hatred in video games...Rag doll.

Rag doll came out a while back and was hailed as the step forward in gaming with it's realistic death effects as characters slumped to the floor and stuck their arm though their chest or spun their head like they were possessed by the devil. Rag doll has had a lot of glitches since day 1 and I've never understood why no company has taken the time to fix it, but I'm guessing as even people who hate the system (like me) still buy the games, why waste time and money on fixing it?

Lucky for me and others someone has FINALLY made an effort to go up against rag doll! Not only have they fixed the glitches though, they have given the system a total overhaul involving AI, and real-time animation instead of just making their models go floppy. It's already being used in such games as The Force Unleashed and GTA IV and looks amazing. I'm really excited about seeing this popping up in more and more games and just goes to show how technology is moving forward and where once designers would cut corners and cheat to give effects, these days we can actually enjoy the genuine effects :-D

Anyway, me telling you about it wont have half the effect seeing it will, so check this out and enjoy!

The Corpus Clock

Nothing fancy, grumpy or witty to say today, my brain is currently that of a fine gunk...nice huh? Anyway, instead I thought I'd give you something to watch, this has to be the most awesome clock ever made so enjoy the Corpus Clock:

Portal : Prelude

God bless the people at Kotaku, without them I'd miss out on about 90% of any games news and any I found out would be about 3 months late, and thanks to them today I discovered what looks to be my favourite game mod next to Zombie Master and Source Forts...Portal: Prelude!

I loved the original Portal, it was funny, challenging, fun, and quite creative. The only problems? It was short and left way to many questions although I'm not sure exactly what the questions are. Luckily a modding group have been working on Portal: Prelude :D a game which takes place before the original game, back when the Aperture Labs are still populated and not souly run by Glados.

In all honesty I'm a bit too knackered to write up a load of crap which wont sell the mod at all so instead check this out:

Portal: Prelude Official Trailer from NykO18 on Vimeo.

and take a look here:

Mimobots

This is very sad, very nerdy, and to even look upon any of these is to give up any hint of a social life, buy a copy of W.o.W and start screaming down your microphone at other counter strike players about how everything that is your fault is a hack. For I give you, Mimobots:

You might be thinking 'ok, so their weird little models, so what?' and I'd have to reply from atop my epic steed of epicness 'NO FOOLISH MUSHROOM! FOR THEY ARE USB PENS DESIGNED BY SOME OF THE LEAD ARTISTS IN THE VINYL TOY WORLD!' to which you'd hit me off my Shetland Pony for typing in all caps...*ahem*

So yeah, something quite boring, officy and ugly is finally sneaking it's way into the weird and to use an 80s word..."Zany" world of Vinyl Toy Artists, the people who mass produce farting blue Skunks or Ghetto Darth Vader Masks.

Admittedly though it's not the weird ones by the odd artists which caught my eye, it's the even more nerdy one:

Yup, he's finished killing the Covenant and before Microsoft take him off Bungie and put him in a piss poor game he's taken some time to be a USB Pen just for you! Now before any self respecting nerd contacts me with hate mail I'm not a huge fan of Halo, and it's not so much that it's halo based which appeals to me, it's more the fact it's game franchise based. Some people call it selling out or trying to leech a few more £ off us, but fuck them, I enjoy my NES keychain and my Pikachu Gameboy Colour bag (yes you may send me hate mail now).

So, if your curious about nerding it up, why not check out Mimobots website here:

5 Free Games To Try

As I can't seem to find 5 sites worth looking at this week, a day late, I'm gonna give you 5 totally free games you should give a look. So, due to a serious lack of sleep leading to an inability to waffle, here's the list:

1. White Chamber - Not to be mixed up with White Chamber the online flash puzzle almost impossible game, White Chamber is a horror point and click adventure based in a space-station. Although the whole game is what feels like a bad western attempt at anime fan art, it's still pretty damn creepy and feels like a space-age Silent Hill at times. I finished the game in one night with a little help from a walkthrough as admittedly this game isn't huge but it's a good little game with an interesting, although a little short, plot. The ambient sounds are bloody creepy and the moments when the ship messes up had me looking over my shoulder the rest of the night and sleeping with the lights on. Well worth a look.

2. Notrium - This top down action game is a hard one for me to put my full recommendation behind because I'm yet to get very far into it stupidly picking the hardest class. The basic idea is you've crash-landed on an alien planet. You have a safe house and that's all. Your mission is to survive which involves hunting down technology to build stuff to help you, collecting food, keeping a fire going, and trying not to get killed by the wildlife. For a game with such basic graphics and a clunky GUI it's bloody fun and I sunk hours into the game last night, only true problem I found was a lack of help with keys in the tutorial.

3. Ocular Ink - This bizarre action game feels like it should be on Nintendo DS not PC. This fun but down right weird game sees you taking the roll of an eyeball with a paintbrush. You have to use the brush to attack enemies by swiping at rocks and so on to knock them into the bad guys. The controls can be a bit funky and it's a bit hard to paint signs on the floor, but it's still a down right weird and fun game.

4. Zelda Classic - We all remember Zelda on the NES right? If not leave my blog now and shame on you! Anyway, not all of us have a working NES, in fact most of us don't anymore, but fear not! Zelda Classic by chance lets you play the classic Zelda game on your PC, but the cool thing is thanks to the editor tools the community have made totally new quests, and even total conversions as well as graphic updates for the classic game. Well worth a go weather you know of the orogins of Zelda or not!

5. The Spirit Engine - I've played this on and off for a good few years now and love the game. It's battle engine is original and a bit weird, the plot...eh I must admit, I've never paid much attention to the story. Graphics are top notch with sprites the quality of Metal Slug. Fun, long lasting and a good way to judge if Spirit Engine 2 is worth the $18. I strongly encourage you to give this one a go! :-D

So, To Sum Up...

Hello! I haven't posted in a few days have I? Sorry about that, between my inability to find some good content and my really...REEEEEALLY messed up sleep pattern right now (going to bed at 11pm to wake up at 1am isn't healthy) I've been putting off working on an update.

I'm still kinda low on content, no new or good/bad demo's on Xbox Live, the two games I picked up the other day to review are RPGs meaning they are gonna take forever and a day for me to get anywhere in them worthy of writing anything (plus I feel bad subjecting my housemates to me playing Final Fantasy XII in the living room) and even my own game collections looking a bit drab. I have one article planned but it wont be out till next week cause I need to get paid first.

Anyway, today instead I've decided that all the games I've played in the last week, I'm gonna sum up my opinion of in a single line, oddly sounds easier than it is, so here we go:

Dungeon Explorer [PSP]
The concept of dungeon crawling has been an age old fun thing from D&D to Diablo yet somehow Dungeon Explorer has managed to make it boring.

Final Fantasy XII [PS2]
Feels like they pulled the modem out of the FFXI package and sold it as an offline game with characters as deep as my belly button.

Fable : The Lost Chapters [Xbox]
A sadly disliked game by most because of it's inability to live up to a hype even the next game can't achieve nor any game for that matter, but well worth a go if your curious as to why everyone squeals with orgasm when you say "Fable Two".

Metal Arms : Glitch In The System [Xbox]
I was shocked to find not only is this a good and well built game with only a few glitches, it's also quite funny at times and very very heartless.

Kane&Lynch : Dead Men [Xbox 360]
Fuck you guy driving the truck I'll kill you one day!

Spore Creature Creator [PC]
Apparently Spore it's self sucks donkey balls but weeks after buying it I'm still enjoying the creature creator even after making 50+ creatures.

Maximus XV Abraham Strong - Space Mercenary [PC] (that is genuinely it's name)
I love this game so much, not because it's good but in fact because it's so bad, like a cheesy 80s movie, we love them BECAUSE they suck.

Chav Town

A while back, god about 2 years ago now, I had to do a final piece of my Multimedia ND in college. Most people were doing promotional posters, or on-screen digital work, so I opted for what I know I'm kinda ok at and decided to make a comic. I was waaaay behind on time and quickly coming up to my dead-line. I had about a week to make the comic including writing and finding a style. Somehow I managed and without sounding smug, the college has continued to display bits of my comic on the walls even now to stop the inspectors from thinking no one works there.

Anyway, while looking though some unmarked blank CDs the other day for my setup CD for Ubuntu I found a copy of the comic and thought I'd share :-D

Keep in mind this comic is 2 years old now, so even I cringe at some of the art/writing elements, it was also highly rushed so the backgrounds behind the characters can be pretty damn shoddy at times. Anyway, I now give you, for the first time in the Den, a non-game related post and, Chav Town:

Lego Indiana Jones Demo Review

Ok now I know up until now my demo reviews have been a bit harsh, ripped the shit out of Too Human and couldn't even find a point to reviewing the SC4 demo. I don't wanna come across as someone who whines and nit-picks for the hell of it, the internet is full of people like that, you can find them here and here :D

So today I went on Xbox Live (where else?) and downloaded the Lego Indiana Jones game. I downloaded this based off the demo of Starwars Lego I'd tried out a few months ago and loved. Needless to say I wasn't let down by this demo!


The game its self is simple, no epic graphics, no dialog, and very family friendly. This also means it's quite easy, and although you'll find I'm the first to complain games these days are getting too easy, I think games like this should be easy cause if I wanted a hardcore gaming day I'm more likely to load up Gears of War or Kane and Lynch, not Lego. This is the kinda game you wanna sit down and play when you've had a stressful day at work and fancy something with simple, not laugh out loud, but fun humour to it, and the demo provides that from time to time, as well as pretty good controls, a simple interface, and just fun game play.

You wont find any 'all new' features in this from the Starwars game, the franchise isn't about that thank god. This is like switching from Day of Defeat to Counter Strike, basically the same game with a few tweaks, and a totally different look.

But I'm reviewing this as if I've played the whole game, this is just about the demo! So, what can I say about the demo? It's long, a whole level of the game. It's a good level with a key and well known moment from the movies even if you've never seen them. And the 'collect all 10 chests' mini-quest within the level had me replaying the level 3 times! I was told by a friend that the demo even had a co-op mode, but I couldn't find it so I don't think that's true, but you can't condemn them for that considering they've put a nice chunk of the game into this demo to give you a real feel for weather or not you wanna play the rest.


I have to admit after playing this, when I've got the cash I might go out and buy all the games in this franchise :D

Well worth a download, especially if you have kids or are a kid at heart.

Soul Calibur IV Demo...Review?

Right, I did a review a few days back of the Too Human demo on Xbox Live. I quite enjoyed the idea of reviewing demos as well as games because it's a slightly untapped area, and not all of us have the internet speed or hard drive space to go downloading any demo online. Because of this I downloaded Soul Calibur IV on Xbox Live to write a little review of the demo...this proved impossible...why?


Well after downloading an oddly small file I loaded up the game to find the whole menu! Nothing had been blacked out for the demo...then I pressed A...nothing had been blacked out but quite happily they'd tell you the option would not work in the demo, bit of a kick in the balls. So after poking around I finally got to the character selection screen where they gave me the choice of 2 characters, admittedly they gave me both characters second skin too, that was actually quite kind for a beat'em'up demo but then the game started...they gave me literally 3 matches...wait...did I say 3? 2.1 is more like it. Each round lasted 1 KO (you had to kill 2 people to get a K.O but they were one after enough and the battles lasted all of 40 seconds) and after 2 rounds of boring run of the mill characters seen in previous SC games suddenly I was put up against Yoda! DUN DUN DUUUUU! Yes the series spoiling character who I wish would prove to god that Gorge Lucas has abused the life he gave him. Anyway, Yoda said his bit then...the demo ended...no fucking fight! Why even put him in there, we all knew the shitty little snot monster was in the game anyway! Not as if one person squealed at the sight of him in the demo!


So yeah, then I was shown a bunch of screens of the same run of the mill game play and sent to the main menu...there’s nothing to review. I dunno if the controls were good cause who leans the moves in a demo? We ALL button mash.

So yeah...there’s that down the shitter.

Max Payne

I just sex wee'd...

My 5 Links of the Week #1

I love the internet, and by love I mean LOVE. Because of this love of the internet I tend to spend way too much time on it, and thus where most people are happy jumping between myspace and youtube I tend to explore deeper into the vat of crap in hope of finding some gems. From time to time these gems are found, but their normally hidden between an anime fan site and a porn site.

Anyway, from now on once a week (providing I've found enough good sites in the week) I'll be posting a list of a few good sites I'd recommend you take a 5 minute nose at. NONE of these links are here because I know the owner of the site, or I get money though the advertising or anything, these are all sites I've enjoyed or feel others will enjoy and find useful.

Ok, now that's out of the way lets move onto the list!

1. Moshi Monsters - Remember NeoPets? Remember the simple days before they got over run with adverts and become much more about sucking money out of it and just ended up sucking? Well Moshi Monsters is like that only much better. The site is Flash based (so if your on a slow connection you might have some loading time to wait and if your on a crappy old PC this might system-lag a bit) and they use this well. You can interact with your pet as well as decorate their room with stuff bought from the shops. The only real downside I've found with this site right now is that it's so young meaning there are not endless lists of items to buy, and there are only a few pets, but I think this site has the basis for a high quality site in time so why not get in now if your into this kind of thing, well worth mentioning to your kids too if their bored!

2. Ashens Birdhouse - We all remember those old LCD screen games you could pick up in markets for about £5 (or fifty billion Zimbabwe dollars) which to the untrained and quite stupid (or your parents) eye looked like a DS or something, or those 'no console needed' rip-offs of popular computer games? Good cause if you don't this site might be lost on you for I give you Dr. Ashens Birdhouse! Ashens is a strange guy who reviews the lowest quality crap in a humours way and truly is the embodiment of the British way with his attitude to...well...everything. Well worth a watch and if you enjoy his videos he's currently looking into making a DVD!

3. Zero Punctuation - Another video collection if your a gamer you most likely already know of the wonder which is Yahzee's Zero Punctuation. The show is a once a week (updated Wednesdays) no more than 5 minute review of a game. This sounds dull I know but just try watching one video and you'll be hooked, Yahzee's sense of humour is nothing short of wrong and his world and life views are truly what grumpy old men are made of.

4. Nintendo Super Squad - There are some things in this world that should never be questioned and only enjoyed, one of these things is the NSS. This web-comic is nothing short of weird, taking characters from Nintendo games and screwing them up beyond all logic for a twisted story which actually seems to both go nowhere and also everywhere. Trying to explain this bundle of weirdness to you is really a waste of time, your better off taking a peek yourself, if your a Nintendo fan you should quite enjoy this comic...just don't take it too seriously or you'll hurt your brain trying to work out some of the random crap.

5. Weebl's Stuff - If you have been on the internet for more than a few months no doubt someone has shown you at least one of Jonti's cartoons but just in case your new to the interweb or live under a rock here is Weebl's Stuff, a weird site full of the most bizarre cartoons and songs. It's also home to Weeble and Bob a strange cartoon series that's been going for years now. Worth checking out, will fill a few minutes in your life :D

Check back soon for another collection of links!

Songbird Music Player

I love software. Hardware is to me kinda like getting the minimum grades to get into college and so on, it's just annoying and can spoil something that should be fun. No, for me it's all about software, but I've never been a fan of using the same old software made by Microsoft or another big company, one because it's nice to support the smaller people, but also because they tend to make more of an effort with their software than big companies do. Songbird is a prime example of this.

When you boot up Songbird it looks like a slightly less pretty version of iTunes, but what's this? No iTunes store?! Already a vast improvement, but this can't be all that's good about it right? Right! Just like Firefox is to Explorer, Songbird is to iTunes in the sense that although in some areas it's lacking the facy bits (eg. a smooth album art juke box system, the one you can get on Songbird needs a LOT of work) but makes up for it in cool features like the ability to download pretty good plugins, and I don't just mean new codecs or a new skin, I mean stuff like what you can see in the right hand side of the screen shot for this tool, LyricMaster.

LyricMaster alone sold this to me (well, not so much sell as it's free), when you play a song in Songbird this tool quickly (and I mean VERY quickly) searches all of it's database for lyrics to the song playing and pops them up with the choice also to save the lyrics to your computer. No longer will you wonder what the hell the Scissor Sisters sing in Don't Feel Like Dancing, or if it's his first real sex dream or six string!

This isn't all that I like about Songbird, oh no. It uses a simple selection system allowing you to pick bands by genera, band, album, or some other options including Beats Per Minute. The built in web browser, although a little slow, is useful if your on a computer which takes a while to load up a new program (even if it is FireFox) and you wanna quickly check something. Also let's say you find a tune hosted on a website you like but you don't wanna clutter your hard drive with the mp3, why not just link it up to Songbird and stream it strait from the site though your player?

Little features like this have caused me to fall in love with Songbird and remove my copy of iTunes and only use Windows Media Player when VLC is on the frits (which as we all know, it always is)

I'd recommend picking this up even if it's just for a quick poke!