A Novel Idea

I love books. I also love games. If only there was some way of uniting my two passions...

What a coincidence.

Game books aren't exactly brand new, but they have been enjoying quite the rise in popularity over the past few years. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Halo all have their own spin off novels. Assassin's Creed has a few lack-luster adaptations. Even Gears of War, a series not known for its deep storytelling, has several tie-in novels all written by the lead writer of the series (At least that's what thirty seconds worth of research on the Waterstones website tells me).

Needs More Shotgun

Still working on posting more regularly. It's getting there. Maybe I'll post twice this month. Who knows?

Bioshock 2 was released, what, in March, possibly? I actually got it on release day for 35 quid, and it's now 7.99 on Amazon. Ah well time makes fools of us all.

Anyway, after playing it for a bit the day after release I remember thinking that it was vastly similar to Bioshock, which at the time, I had just finished playing. It wasn't bad but it seemed kinda samey which, when considering Bioshock, isn't all that bad. I got up to the second Little Sister Gather, and died quite efficiently, which led me to get stuck in a rut of not having enough money to buy ammo, and not enough ammo to kill Splicers. After a couple of attempts I quit out, and wandered off to go to a job interview.

About four months later (having passed the interview and training for the aforementioned job) I decided to pop back into Rapture, to see if anyone had fixed that leak (Spoiler: No)

It's more of the same. The plot might be a bit more convoluted, and some of the characters might be stereotyped, but under the skin, Bioshock 2 is almost a mod of the original. That's not to say that I didn't like it. The weapons started off disappointing, but once I got hold of the double barrelled shotgun, I was kicking ass all over again. The final upgrade to it left me somewhat disappointed. Random electro shocks? If I wanted to electrocute people I'd use Electro Bolt. Although I don't see why I would. Incinerate! is clearly the way forward.

Aside from the weapons and the plasmids, there's something a bit off about Bioshock 2. Nothing ever really felt as scary as it did before. There was a moment when I walked into a toilet and saw an EVE hypo on the floor I picked it up. When I turned around, a Spider Splicer dropped from the ceiling. Normally this would scare the crap out of me, but instead I went "Oh", hit him in the face with my shotgun, and blasted him across the room. It was then I realised I wasn't worried anymore. This was towards the end of the game and I was fairly tough, but still, I felt some of the magic had gone.

Speaking of the end of the game, the final area is a real plateau. The game builds up to a big crescendo and then just flat lines after a cool fight in the dark with a couple of Big Sisters. There's a interesting bit where you play as a Little Sister (Spoilers, I guess), but apart from that the end drags on for way too long.

Overall; I liked Bioshock 2, but I can see why it didn't go down too well. It didn't really try anything new.

Gasp, a new Bioshock Game! What a strange coincidence! Almost like I planned this post!

Immediate impressions; Apart from a dumb name, looks really REALLY promising. Can't wait to see where Irrational Games go with this.

Next time, shootings things in dark forests and being arty, it's Alan Wake, y'all!

Happy New Fear

Hooray! Rejoice! And other such sentiments! It's 2010, the start of a new decade, moving on from the zeroes to the tens (I'm insisting on calling them the tens. "Tenties" doesn't make any sense.) I think 2010 is officialing living in the future. I'm making this year my best ever. I'm gonna buy more lottery tickets.

So I didn't really say what I got for Christmas since I've been ill for a lot of it, and I've also been distracted by all the awesome games I've been playing. Here's a quick run down of what's on the table;

Borderlands; Really fun and awesome FPS and RPG hybrid, bit grind-fest at points, but always quite humourous
Bioshock; Brilliant-ness, but I can't go on about it, cause I'm writing something for NR
Mass Effect; This was really good, right up until the point when I actually had to start shooting at things. Then it all fell apart, cause the combat doesn't work.
Batman: Arkham Asylum; Holy crap Batman, it's the NewbReview GOTY!
Prince of Persia; Ehhhh....

ALSO. For Christmas I got iTunes credit. Hooray for that. So I bought DOOM Ressurection for the iPod. Why? I dunno, I was bored. As opposed to being a real first person shooter, it turns out it's a on-rails dealy, with a few interesting weapons, like a chainsaw, but apart from that, it's a pretty standard affair. Sometimes the accelerometer would become badly calibrated and I'd have to reset the game to fix it. Overall, not bad but not overly fantastic. I shoulda bought COD WAW Zombies...

Sorry about the lack of quality in this blog post. I've been busy with games and I'm still a bit sick. Also I'm lazy, and easily distracted, so I spent most of the time whilst I was writing this watching The Big Bang Theory. Go figure.

Right, I'm going to write an email. You didn't need to know that. GOOOOOD-BYE.

Snow Mercy

Just some business to attend to before we get started. I am now home for a month, it being Christmas and all. I am also quite sick and have a terrible sore throat. Apart from that I'm doing great.

Also, it's snowing. A LOT. I had to push a car today, I almost fell over in a road. Not the best of times.

Right onto the matter at hand; LEFT 4 DEAD 2

After the whole Tesco Entertainment debacle, I'd been itching to give this game a go, and when Robb told be that he'd got it, I was over to his place faster than a Survivor into a safe house. When I got there, he still hadn't opened it, stating he was "worried about zombies leaping out of the box" After beating him over the head with an 360 controller for being an idiot, we started up the game.

I don't have a great history with shooters. My aiming ability has never been fantastic, and I panic under pressure and end up flailing wildly around, hoping somebody chooses to walk into the path of my bullets. Having said that, I performed pretty well in L4D2, mainly because of two things; shotguns and katanas. I charged wildly through hordes of zombies, varying between blowing faces off with a combat shotgun, and slicing limbs with manic cuts of my ninja sword.

L4D2 looks very pretty and plays beautifully. At first, me and Robb had a manic strategy of shooting anything that moved. But after a while we started to work together, with me on close-range combat, and him on automatic, long-range weapons. It was really amazing to see how our team skills developed. At the start, we would leg it from any group of zombies bigger than us. By the end of our play session, we were co-ordinating tactical attacks on Tanks. As well as hitting people with guitars.

The game really won me over, and I'd love to get it. I may pick it up in the January sales and then play some co-op over XBox Live, but this all remains to be seen.

I've been playing a lot recently, ranging between Bioshock (really scary), Prince of Persia (needlessly repetetive) and Batman (excellent) as well as Wario Land 3 (it works! Also, it's great) so I may randomly post about them at some point.

But right now I'm sick. Leave me alone, y'all...

The Potential Death of A Cartridge by Perpetual Rain

I dunno, what do you think? This blog post title sounds like the name of a really pretentious art piece you might get in the Tate modern. It would feature neither cartridges, nor water, and be made mainly of polystyrene. And feature an apple somewhere. Okay, tangent completed.

Here's the thing about Amazon or eBay ettiquette. The moment something is sent, and I mean literally the moment (using your iPhone from the post office) you mark it as sent. This is so the people (in this case, me) who are waiting for the item in question (in this case, Wario Land 3) know to check their post box to see if it has arrived. Otherwise, it sits in the post box, ALL Saturday, a day filled with showers of heavy rain, resulting in the cartridge absorbing a fair amount of water.

Admittedly this rage could be mis-placed. I haven't actually tried the game yet, so it could work fine, but I know these cartridges. They struggled if they got a little dust in 'em, I can't bare to think how it'll handle a day of British precipitation.

However we are coming ever closer to my return to London, and my epic splurg of gaming that will ensue. I'm really psyched for Bioshock. Wolfenstein can't hold my interest for much longer.

Until next time, this is me, a guy who doesn't understand the words "end of term revision", saying I'll see y'all after the storm!

Stocking Up Shop

Tis the season to be gaming! That's right, I'm going HOME!... next weekend. BUT I'M STILL EXCITED!

In preperation for getting back on the Xbox, I am getting in a load of cheap old games to play until Christmas, which should both pass the time and boost my pitiful gamer score. So, in the fashion, let's run those games down together, shall we?


BIOSHOCK! Partially inspired by the recent coverage of Bioshock 2 (which looks very good) and also by the fact I've played it on a mate's console and it was pretty awesome. I like the idea of being able to upgrade a shotgun, and the fact I can combine that with telekinesis is basically my idea of some bizarre FPS-RPG nirvana. However, Bioshock is slightly scary and I haven't had a great history with scary things in the past. HOW WILL I MANAGE?!??

PRINCE OF PERSIA! (THE NEW ONE!) I liked the look of this game the moment I set eyes on it. I'm not entirely sure what you would call the art style (cell-shaded realism, perhaps?) but it looks beautiful. As far as I know the game got fair to good reviews, although apparently it's quite easy. For me this is a good thing. Easier games = faster gamerscore. I'm a wannabe achievement whore!

WARIO LAND 3! I am well aware this is not a 360 game, or infact a current generation game, but I was thinking about it the other day and remembering how brilliant it was. I have to say, maybe apart from Rayman and the original Super Mario Bros., it's probably the best platformer I've ever played. It's got non-linear level choices, multiple level endings, a wide range of enemies and power-ups, mashes platforming and puzzling brilliantly and has lovely visuals considering when it was released. I'm may even dig out my Game Boy Colour to play it as God intended. Although if I can't use it I'll use the SP.

This is all still a week away. I'm killing myself writing this.

Until then, this is me, a guy who HATED Wario Land 4, signing off until I make it back home y'all!

Dis-Fable-ed

Why can I never think of any decent puns to go with my blogs? Next time it'll just be words about the post, not some crap joke.

So Fable 2. It's a fantasy game, and a sequel to a game I've never played. The plot is alright although the amount of freedom you have to do whatever you want means that the story is ignored most of time. Also, Stephen Fry does one of the voices, so the game gains lots and lots of Awesome Points (tm).

I guess the big thing about Fable 2 is the concept of freedom to do whatever you want, with your character being a reflection of these moral choices. Now, a lot has been said about moral choices in games and that's not particularly something I wanna get into now, but I think Fable takes an interesting approach to it. Bar the end of the game choice (which was completely stupid, by the way) the game doesn't make an epic deal of the decisions, compared to, say, Bioshock or Spider-man Web of Shadows. The majority of the choices that you make affect your characters alignment, meaning your character is a better reflection of YOU. YOU. THE PLAYER.

Fable 2 is a nice looking game as well. There are some lovely looking locations in there like Oakfield and Bower Lake. The caves are also nicely designed, and there are some brilliant light effects on the exits of them. Some of the characters have crappy models, but they get the job done, I guess.

I've actually beaten the game, and I thought the ending was incredibly anti-climatic. SPOILERS AHOY!

So you collect together the three heroes, and they all give you power or something, it wasn't very well explained. Then, evil Lord Lucien shows up and kidnaps everyone, which is expected of him, because he is generically evil. Then he goes on to talk to you, but I wasn't listening at this point. Something about chaos. Then he shot my dog. NO! MR WOOFYPANTS! Although his real name was Maxwell. Then he shot me and I died. But I didn't and you have to go through this whole creepy dream sequence with your (dead) sister, and then you run off into this horrible battlefield and get the music box from the start...

So you finally reach the spire and Lucien is draining magical power from the three Heroes, for no apparent reason other than it's evil, although I had been doing the exact same thing ten minutes earlier. Then you hold A to activate the music box, and this stops Lucien (somehow) and then I shot him, and he died.

And that's how Fable 2 ends. What a gyp. Okay, you get to make the decision to resurrect the dead people, or the dog, or just get loads of gold. Admittedly, I was gonna get the gold, but I decide to bring back the dog, a decision which the game then yelled at me for. Stupid game. Mr Woofypants must LIVE!

Speaking of live, I got a wirless router t'other day and am now online. Go me. My connection is pretty awful, but it works well enough for me to download some trial games and some free DLC for Fable.

Also, you'll have noticed the new layout. Mmm, coffee-coloured...

Next time, Portal, y'all!

Bioshocker of the year...

Gasp! Surpise! Epic plot twist! And other such sentiments!

Bioshock 2 has been revealed... again. Re-revealed. Whatever, I don't know. Point is, Gamespot revealed some new footage and interviews with the guys from 2K Marin chatting about the game and so on.

And I'm kinda worried for it. I mean it looks okay, and I wanna play it... But... eesh.

I'm interested by the new concept of being a Big Daddy as opposed to the same character as before. There was the section before where you "dressed up" as a Big Daddy, but actually being one... I dunno. Of what I played of Bioshock, I liked the plasmid powers and the weapons, and both of these look to work quite well in the sequel. The pyrokinetic ability is pretty cool, especially combined with gunplay.

But the reason I'm catiously optimistic is that I think that what made Bioshock so atmospheric, bar the tons of sea water (yes I just made a pressure joke, deal with it), was that the Big Daddies were ever present forces, that you didn't feel you had to attack. When you did, you really felt threatened by them, and would run around trying to dodge them, because they were a great strong hulking mass, that had no intelligence, just hatred. But now, you are the Big Daddy... And the only thing you have to be scared of is the "Big Sister"

Which are essentially athletic Big Daddies and who I forsee will result in many gamers swearing a lot at their televisions... But ce la vie, I'm sure it'll be brill =)

In a complete different, could-only-be-vaguely-linked-via-genre, change of subject, I have bought Wolfenstein 3-D on my iPod. And why the hell not? I know little about this game, apart from;

- It's got Nazis
- It's got zombies
- It looks a bit like DOOM
- The guy looks like the guy from DOOM

But yeah I only bought it this morning and I've played it a little... The controls aren't great but it's good for a laugh, and the minimap is handy. More on this next time.

And finally, I've joined Twitter. Hooray for this;