Nothing Doing

There has been a lack of updates here recently. Reason; I've honestly got nothing to talk about. The new laptop fell through, I've been slowing been turning my room into a Coca-Cola advert (and seriously suffering from the effects of this) and hammering my head against a wall because i STILL don't have Torchlight. Curse you, ambiguous god-like entity.

This also has the impact that I've had nothing to write for the Newb Review, so I may wheel out my old review of Grim Fandango. I am probably going to be appearing on the podcast this week so check it out on the site

Finally, my one sentence review of that Tekken game that was on PSP;

You can play as a kangaroo.

Take from that what you will. Now go 'way...

Revenge of the Free Weekend

Rising up from the depths of the sea like some ancient, eldritch god, it's the return of the most terrifying event in my PC gaming history...

THE REVENGE OF THE FREE WEEKEND!

...the horror.

Ever since my last experience with a free weekend on Steam, I've been wary of them, although this has been about as effective as telling a magpie to lay off the shiny things; I'm generally attracted to the word "free".

After giving this post such a bad intro, it actually went quite well. You may or may not know the superhero MMO "Champions Online" is getting a new update quite soon, and to promote this (as well as the game itself I suppose) there was a free weekend. And so, I blindly plowed in, although this time I expected to be stopped in my tracks at start-up.

However, getting to the start up turned out to be quite a challenge. Observe;

Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but this was after 4 hours. FOUR. HOURS. 50% in four hours. I actually slept over night and when my laptop went into low power mode, it stopped the thing so I had to restart the entire process... Fortunately when I did, it went a lot faster, only around 45 minutes. When I finally did start the game, as I expected it froze and sent me back to the desktop, but fortunately, this helpful window popped up;

This cheered me up, as most games (I'm looking at you, Portal) throw a hissy fit and decide that my computer doesn't deserve them. So after clicking this option, the game started running and I made it through to the main menu, and then onwards to the character creation screen.

In CO, there are a ridiculous number of customizations options that you can choose from. Everything from nose postion, to colour of your socks to the shape of your shoulder pads. It took me a while to get to used to all of the options, but once I had, I designed a pretty cool character... Although I forgot to get a screenshot of him on his own. So instead here's a picture of him shooting some giant alien bugs called the Kula or something;

As you can see, he's basically a private detective, although he does have a cyborg hand. Who says that amputees can't be superheros?

So after shooting a million more of these things, and then fighting a giant robot and blowing up an alien mothership (which sounds really exciting but essentially requires pressing the 1 key a lot, and then every now and again holding down the 2 key) I headed into the desert... For some reason.

At this stage, I finally got to "buy" more superpowers, something that had been confusing the hell out of me. I'd been leveling up for ages, and yet I still only had my "shoot" and "shoot for a bit longer" moves. When I got to this so-called Powerhouse, I got to trade in my points for more moves. After careful deliberation, I settled for "Bullet Ballet", because that sounded the coolest. Unfortunately, this move seems to comprise entirely of elbowing the bad guy in the face, which was a massive dissapointment. However, I did get the jet boots power, so I instantly flew as high as I could. This became a problem when I realised I couldn't get down, so I turned the boots off, and ended up a very broken robo-detective on the desert floor.

Overall, CO has got a lot going for it, but it's just not implemented in the right way. Powers are distributed badly, quests are nothing new, and the combat isn't breaking any major convetions. If I could afford it, and I had the time, then I might look into playing it for a few months, but right now, Renegade, cyborg gunslinger and licensed private eye is going to take a crime-fighting vaction.

See y'all at the headquarters!

Life is one big RPG...

Or so it would seem that way. It's all about the upgrades, people!

Finally. Finally, after literally years of complaining, I am upgrading my laptop. Yeah, the E System 3115 with it's 1.73Ghz processor, 1MB of memory and 80GB of hard drive has served me well enough in the past (ignoring the problems with Portal and Time Gentlemen, Please) but now I'm moving on up.

THIS is the laptop I'm getting, although, technically it's not, sort of making that link pointless. Whilst it's still the Acer 5738, it's got a 320GB hard drive instead of 250GB, and actually has real graphics card (the main reason I like it). It's also got an AMD Athelon processor (I think) which only runs at 2.0Ghz, but I'm perfectly happy with that. Oh and it's rocking up Windows 7, which honestly isn't a big deal for me, although apparently it can give me 15% more battery life, although I have absolutely no idea how.

So there we go. I should be getting it sometime around next week, so The Toaster isn't finished yet, it's still got some time left before I sell it to someone, then run off laughing about it.

On a similar vein, I've been getting excited about Torchlight, which I can honestly admit I only found out about three or four days ago from the Steam frontpage. It's sort of Diablo-esque click-a-thon, probably because it was made by a load of the guys who did the first two Diablos. I don't know what interested me about it, but it's a low-spec game, with an cool gameplay idea (procedurally-generated-item-collecting-dungeon-crawler-with-a-wolf-sidekick), and I've downloaded the demo. I'll be honest, it doesn't run as well as I'd hope, so I may need to get a laptop... HEY. I just realised...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a full circle.

The other day I bought EDGE. I've given up all hope.

See y'all in the Dungeons!

Size Matters

God bless Steam and its digital distribution prowess. We all love 'em.

T'other day, I was perusing the virtual shop of Indie games, and my eyes came to rest on "The Wonderful End of The World", created by Dejobaan Games (bringing you quality video games for over 75 years).

I've been interested in DG for a while now, ever since I heard about the ridiculously named "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity", and when I checked out their site, I found myself enthralled by the concept of TWEOTW (great acronym by the way)

The backstory to the game, as taken from their website, is as follows; "A joyous trek around the Earth to gather everything you can before it's eaten by a giant fish head".

Yeah...

So the basic premise of the game is this; go around and pick up as much stuff in the level as you can. The challenge comes from your size. You see, your character is made up from the items you collect within the level, and the more items you collect, the larger you grow. This allows you to collect larger items, and as a result, grow taller, and then you can... you see where I'm going with this.

I really like TWEOTW. The art is well done and works well. There's a diverse range of levels, each with individual jokes in them. The props in game are all used in multiple levels, but the effect works well. The music is a real stand-out point for me, it sounds brilliant. Each of the levels has it's own unique track and they are all perfectly suited to their level.

TWEOTW came out in 2007, and it's taken me this long to get around it. Next week I'll be bringing you breaking up to date news about Skullmonkeys.

See y'a- WAIT!

I conducted an interview with the guys from Mode 7 Games the other day, and it's now up on The Newb Review. Check it out here, why not?

See y'all on the new homeworld!

Border-Line Psychopath

ShackNews has no function to embed video into your own site. How utterly strange.





Borderlands is a game I really want, and as per usual I have no idea why. It's like Fallout 3. I couldn't care less about it then suddenly BAM. I want it so bad.

The general consensus on the net seems to be this; good, a few flaws, but I'm still playing it. The RPG elements have been slightly criticized, but the art style and the co-op aspects have been praised. I, for one, like both the art style and the range of characters. I'll probably play as the soldier, because shotguns are clearly the most superior weapons. Ever. So here's hoping for a shotgun that fires lazer-grenades. Oh man that'd be so damn awesome.

So yeah, I'll probably get Borderlands for Christmas once the hype has died down and some of the DLC has been released. Fun times.

On an entirely unrelated note I got X-Men Origins: Wolverine on DVD today. Fun fact; it comes with an easy-to-obtain digital copy on the disk, which I will put onto my iPod very soon. But more importantly...




And with that thought children, I'm gonna leave y'all to the wolves.

Ich bin ein PSP owner

Well sort of. I have one on me. It's just not technically mine.

But first to business! This late blog comes to you courtesy of a shoddy internet connection and several coughing fits. And also my lectures. Those take up lots of time.

Went home at the weekend, on a rather long train journey. I started to fall asleep towards the end, so I played a little CivRev on my iPod. Nothing makes a train journey more exciting than dropping a nuclear ICMB on Paris. Except nachos. Nachos make anything more exciting.

At home, I actually ended up playing no Fallout 3, a fact that surprised me most of all. Instead I recompleted Shadow Complex with all of the items collected (for no real reason) and also played a little bit of Halo 3. Halo 3 is okay, but a tad dull at times. I really should have adjusted the controls because they felt way too sensitive.

I also watched a lot of The Simpsons Season 11, because my parents gave it to me as sort of a well-done-for-surviving-one-month-at-uni-without-resorting-to-theft. I think I deserved that one. I haven't stolen anyone's milk. Yet.

I also missed out on the oppotunity to get StarCraft for £10. This is because I am an idiot. Learn from my mistake, children.

But to the crux of the matter ; das PSP. Although I've yet to take the plunge and actually buy one (with all that money I don't have) I have borrowed one off of my neighbour, who got it a few years ago but never played it.
I've been playing a bit of God of War; Chains Of Olympus, which is fun but fairly tedious. Although I got to fight the bastard offspring of the Cloverfield monster and a dragon. Can't complain...

Right, gotta sleep. Oh an speaking of Shadow Complex... GO!

A Time for the Signs

I don't think I should feel bad about paying such a small amount for a game.

I mean the reason that I only paid a dollar was that I figured it would be in pounds anyway so I could tell exactly how much I was paying. But it wasn't so a pound seemed like a round amount.

World of Goo. It's an incredibly popular game on both the PC and the Wii (and I also hear rumours of an iPod version), and to celebrate its first birthday, the game's designers 2dboy decide to do one of those "pay what you feel like" events that have been gaining in popularity recently. I thought it was a sweet deal, because WoG costs 17 quid on Steam, and I can't afford that in a reccession.

This made me laugh way more than it should have

A physics based puzzler, WoG presents you with a crazy world, filled strange globs of goo that can stick together to form different shapes. The goal in each level is to reach the pipe, which carries the blobs of gunk off to the shadowy "World of Goo" corporation. The story progresses in the form of short cutscenes, which give away small bits of the background story, although still enough to keep you in the dark (or should that be goo?)


That's one of the things I like most about WoG; the shadowy coporation behind the whole set up of the game. I've just finished Chapter 2, and I sort of think I know what's going on, but the story is very well laid out. The signs left about by the Signpainter are a genius touch, giving you a different angle on the event unfolding around you. The art style is also fantastic, and works with the gameplay so brilliantly, I almost fell over. Oh, and it runs well on The Toaster, which is good.

This is a weird sentence. However, this cutscene had brilliant music (which obviously you can't hear)

So, World of Goo. It can be very cheap now, if you want it to be. It can also be ridiculously expensive, but I don't see anyone paying a million dollars for it. Although that would be fantastic if somebody did. 2dboy would go on forever with that backing.

Next time, on The Starting Village...

Edd returns home and re-discovers the 360!

Aliens get shot at in slow-motion in all new Fallout 3 DLC!

And Edd wishes he had a decent game to play on the train ride to London!

All this, and perhaps more, in the next exciting installment of The Starting Village!