HOLY THREE-HEADED MONKEY!

Okay, I didn't blog yesterday. Sue me.

But more importantly; new Monkey Island, and a rehaul = pure awesome. Bring on the press conferences!

Click here and then here. Woo!

Let's reschedule for Thursday. I'll yell at you about E3 then.

G4M3 H4XZ0R5... Or something

So as previously mentioned at the weekend, I got Uplink and Darwinia at the weekend off Steam for a low low price of only 6 quid, which works for me. I've been playing them all this week, all though not as much as I'd liked to, having to fit it around revision, but I've given it my best shot. Although I've only played Darwinia once. But I'm entitled to my opinion, so there.

Uplink is a hacking game, which I had no idea about prior to download, except it was a hacking game. Set in some kind of bizarre future where hacking has become so prominent, it qualifies as employment, you take on the role of an "Uplink Agent", whose job it is to, unsurprisingly, hack things. Right from the outset, you really buy into this illusion that it is REAL hacking. The game asks you to put in a username and password, and asks you to wait to connect to the network. It's all very nice.

Visually, there's not a whole lot to see, but it's not really necessary. It reminded me a little bit of text based adventures which I've never played. It is fun to hack computers though as the trace tracker makes you really impatient for the password to be cracked before you get traced and fined and OH MY GOD IT'S SO STRESSFUL!

Onto more relaxed things, Darwinia. I had no idea about this game either, cept it was a sort of real time strategy in a virtual world. Which is sort of what it is, but also sort of not... If that made any sense.

Set in "the world's first virtual theme park", Darwinia is a strategy game with a difference. You don't build troops, you run programs. You don't research upgrades, you get upgrades by collecting Research. You don't collect resources, you collect DNA spirits... Okay several differences. It's a nice change from your average strategy game. The visual design is very good, and does sort of look like what the internet might look like if it were visualised.

The only bad thing about Darwinia is that I feel I'm playing it in the wrong way, although I guess that's my fault, not the game itself. My strategy is to shoot everything, then send my little Engineers in to scoop up the DNA so they don't get hurt. But this strategy doesn't work, since the DNA fades away quite quickly. Ergo, I need to be braver. Actually that's true in real life =)

So that's my take on the first two Introversion games. I'll be playing them for a while yet, so expect to hear more about them.

Three things to cover, very swiftly, since this is already way too long;

1. My iPod has some how fixed itself. It seems to do that a lot. I think it has a learning chip in it.

2. I've been eyeing up the classic Fallout games in preparation for getting Fallout 3 on the XBox (that I don't have yet) Only 6 quid for all three on Amazon? Yes please.

3. View this for me;

This is what I've made using Word and Paint. I know it's not funny, but that's not the point. The point is that I did it. I desperately wanna do a Link's Awakening webcomic but ComicGenesis doesn't like breach of copyright, and I'm worried it wouldn't work.

Meh. What happens happens I guess.

Anyway, I've wasted too much of your time already. Catch you at the weekend.

Running away from Nazi Zombies

Shorter blog today, because I have been busy all day complaining about symbiotes and screaming like a little girl because there was a zombie chewing at my toes.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is good, mainly because I'm a MASSIVE Marvel fanboy, but that didn't stop me and singer-songwriter cohort o' mine Robb Akehurst moaning about why it isn't that good.
Main reasons;
- Crap voiceovers
- Not enough other people i.e. Where the hell is Iron Man?
- Iron Spider costume wasn't in it
- The storyline doesn't make any sense (although, as I argued, he shoots webs from his wrists, does realistic matter?)

Also we just like to pick holes =)

I suuuuck at FPSs generally, but I had a go at Nazi Zombies and ended up firing all of my ammo from a machine gun, which I argued was actually an anti-aircraft gun, at one zombie, AND STILL MANAGED TO NOT KILL HIM. Then I stabbed him and he died but the twelve others behind him ended up eating me. Shame. I got the feeling the guys I was playing with were getting a bit pissed off at me, but there we go. Screw them, and all there good aiming and there sensible...ness.

Ahh, forgot to mention Marvel; UA2... Ahh, on Monday then. No worries. See ya then!

I'm honestly not a Zelda fanboy...

I picked up Phantom Hourglass the other day, primarily because it was only £12.99 in Blockbuster, and in this recession that's going on, I need cheap games. I'm also trying to buy an XBox, but you gotta spend money to make money. Or gamer points. Whatever.

Yeah Phantom Hourglass... I'll be honest when I first saw it, I was immediately put off by it's top-down... ness. I'd been playing every top down Zelda game on handheld consoles since I'd got Link's Awakening back in... blimey, 1998. First PROPER game I got for the Gameboy Colour (the first game I got for the GBC was Men In Black; The Game, and the less said about it, the better) So, yeah I was really expecting a third person adventure game for the DS. They'd managed to put an N64 game onto the DS cartridge, and make it better, so I didn't see why we couldn't have Majora's Mask on the DS. I do now actually realise Majora's Mask used the Expansion Pak, and so it might have been a bit too big, but whatever dude.

Finally I get to the point. Phantom Hourglass. It's better than I thought. I was unsure of the control scheme when I saw it first, and I'm still not sure about it. There's not a lot of skill in swordplay, and spin attacks are kinda tricky to initiate... But I can live with it. I like the Wind Waker-esque naval exploration, and the cannon stuff is alright. The whole "drawing on the map" gets repetative. It's a clever idea, but lets face it, we all draw like retards on the DS, so you end up circling anything of importance and hoping you remember what the hell you need to do there.

Also, why the hell would a octopus be able to control winds? Okay, I'm playing a game about a boy accompanied by a fairy, but a flying cephalopod? I could do without that, Nintendo.

And yes, I wouldn't be lame unless I admitted to being stuck already. The second time you go into the Ocean King temple with the Hourglass. I've just blown up the wall to a safe zone, but now I can't work out what to do. There's a hole in the wall, I figure I need to get a bomb through there somehow...

Until next time, stay awesome =)

The Legend of Zelda; Twilight Fisherman

For no clear reason, I've starting playing Twilight Princess again. I beat the game once, back when the Wii first came out (although I'll be honest it took a while).

So yeah, I rode around on Epona for a while, shooting arrows at random vultures, killing Poes, swearing when I ran out of arrows in the big dungeon challenge. But then I decided to pay a visit to the Fishing Hole, just to see what it was like there. When I played the game the first time, I found that I was too rushed to stop and smell the metaphorical roses because the storyline was really dragging me along. In a good way.

So yes I've starting fishing in Twilight Princess. Not that's there's a lot of skill to it. It's just throw, wait, splash, wait, splash, pull, wind, pull, tip, wind, A + B, disappointment. Just for once I want to see Link take the fish and bite into it, just like I saw Bear Grylls do once. That was pretty gross. But the fishing itself is very relaxing. The area itself looks nice on my 480p television (because I'm just that awesome =D) I totally think that Hena is awesome. Rollgoal is officially the world's most aggrivating minigame, and you know I'm stuck on the level just before you get the Frog Lure. Heh. Frog.

In other news, I still want an Xbox 360, but I need a job first... My last job made me want to die, so hopefully the one I have lined up will be better. For no apparent reason, I really want Resistance: Retribution. No idea why. I've never played either Resistance games. I haven't even got a PSP. I may just get one though, just to play Retribution... There we go then.

Frog. That's a great word...