Game reviewing and random rambling

Well it’s been 2 months since my last update, so I’ll likely struggle to remember everything I’ve been up to in that time. The biggest thing obviously is that I’m now a married man, and have been on my wonderful honeymoon to Florida. Everything on the wedding day went as well as we could have hoped for, which was great as I was expecting something to go wrong. Thankfully I was wrong and it was a lovely stress free day, even if I did end up with really sore feet by the end of the night from all the standing around for the pictures.

The honeymoon was awesome, Disney World really is such an amazing place. My only regret was that we couldn’t go for longer than 2 weeks. It was so hot and tiring and by the end of the 2 weeks we were ready to go home to recover as the heat really does take it out of you when you’re in it virtually all day. We spent far too much money over there on clothes and the like, but as it’s probably going to be the last time we go (at least for 10 years anyway!) we figured we might as well enjoy it. I’ll likely do a full blog post about it at some point with some pictures, when I’ve gone through the 11,000 (that’s not a typo) pictures we came back with.

In gaming news my reviewing career has really gone up a notch since coming home from Florida. I decided I wanted to do more than I was doing, so was looking for extra things I could do. My good friend Haly had been promoted to UK Reviews Editor for GamesAreEvil and one of her jobs was to put together a UK review team. She contacted me and asked if I wanted to be a part of it. I already worked for the GrE sister site The Portable Gamer so knew GrE well, and was more than happy to accept her generous offer.

A few days later, Haly contacted me again about another opportunity she’d heard about. She’d been asked to be the Senior Reviews Editor for Goon!negames, but as she had the new position at GrE had to turn it down. Jonathan Cullen, the man behind Goon!ne, asked her to pass the details on to anyone who may be interested, so she passed the details my way. A few emails later, and I was the new Senior Reviews Editor for Goon!negames.

This is a position I’ve done once before and something I was very happy to do again. The role basically entails contacting all the publishers and PR companies to ask them for press releases, game assets, and review code. It sounds fairly straightforward but it takes a fair bit of work, keeping on top of all the games due to be released, finding out all the correct contact information, then sending the emails out. You have to be careful in your emails as well as you don’t want to come across as someone who is just looking for free stuff. Hopefully it’s something I’m doing okay so far as we’ve already had Guitar Hero 5 from Activision and Need for Speed: Shift from EA arrive, with other games on the way. It’s something I’m really enjoying so far and hopefully something I’ll continue to enjoy for some time to come.

Thanks to this and the other sites I review for it’s been hard to find time to play my own games for fun for the past few weeks! I got Batman: Arkham Asylum the week after it came out and I’ve only had time to put about 2 hours into it so far. I’ve played the Fifa 10 demo quite a bit as it’s easier to grab 5 minutes here and there to play it. After playing it as much as I have, I definitely think it’s an improvement over Fifa 09, which is some going considering how much I love it. I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game so I can spend some time creating myself, putting me in Everton’s team and helping them to domestic and European glory. Fingers crossed I get a copy early to review so I don’t have to wait 2 weeks for it

Practise and persistence pays off

I’m about to type out a sentence I never thought I’d be writing on this blog. I still smile while thinking about what I’m about to say. On Saturday I did something I never thought I could possibly manage. I beat the Guitar Hero 2 expert career. For the longest time I was stuck on Freya, which is a little over halfway through the career. I actually gave up trying to beat it, but after spending a lot of time on Rock Band I decided to go back to it a few months ago, and beat it first time. I pretty quickly found myself on the final tier of songs after battling past songs like Psychobilly Freakout. I beat the first two songs of the last tier easily enough, but the next 3, Misirlou, Institutionalized, and Hangar 18 all kicked my ass pretty convincingly, so I decided to be happy to be further than ever, and left it at that.

Fast forward to last Friday, and on a whim I decided to have another go at GH2. Misirlou beat me twice fairly quickly, but on the third attempt I got past the section that had beaten me, and I flew through the rest of the song. Institutionalized took me 2 attempts, which left on up against Hangar 18. My good friend Daz had been stuck on it for nearly as long as I was stuck on Freya, and I’d tried it several times before, failing at 85% each time. This time however, my fingers had a mind of their own, and somehow managed to get me through the song on my very first attempt. Buoyed by this, I had two attempts at Free Bird, both of which ended in failure about 75% in. It was late and I was tired, so I left it for the night, went upstairs and relaxed on the PC for a short while.

While on the PC, I had a look for a YouTube video of people beating Free Bird on expert, and from what I could see, I was failing at the hardest part of the song (Just after Solo I for those of you who know it). I realised that if I could make it past that part, the relatively easy star power sections that followed should ensure an easy passage to the finish. I went to bed determined to beat it the next day.

And beat the song I did. Armed with the knowledge of exactly what I needed to do, I got to my dreaded Solo I knowing that one good section would see me through the song. I just about scraped through the section, went through the rest of the song with nary a problem, and somehow managed to finish with a 4 star rating. I shouted so loud in victory I scared my cats! They forgave me though thankfully.

Out of all the things I’ve done in gaming over the years, this is probably one of the things I’m most proud of. I’ve been an expert or so level player for a couple of years now, but had never managed to break through my own invisible ceiling and take it to the next level of actually beating an expert career. Through perserverance, practise and patience I managed to do something I never thought possible. Now all I need to do is beat Guitar Hero 3, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Rock Band all on the expert career modes and I’ll be happy Unlikely, but hey, I beat one target I never thought I would, might as well keep aiming high.

In other gaming-related news, I’ve abandoned my aim to have a relatively small 20-game collection. After getting rid of loads of old games, ram and music cds, I ended up with lots of credit for Computer Exchange and ended up getting 10 new games in a week. Most are older ones, some of which I’ve owned before, but all are good and all with help me when I’m bored and wondering what to play. I wonder if I can hit 50 games at some point?

Game demos, Twitter and more

Game demos are a great thing, but they can be a bad thing as well. While they can confirm your hopes that the game you’ve been waiting for is excellent, they can also confirm that a game is rubbish so you save some money. The bad thing about them, is that they can often open your eyes to a game you hadn’t previously considered, which ends up costing you more money! This doesn’t happen overly often, as I tend not to bother with demos for games I’m not interested in, but as I mentioned at the end of my previous blog post, I tried the UFC demo on a whim and was hooked. The game is released this weekend and I really hope I can pick it up quickly. Everything I’ve read about it, from the fighting to the online to the career mode, all sound awesome and I’m sure it’ll dominate my playing time when I get it. I’m trying to see what games I can sell to get it on release. Fingers crossed I can manage it!

Another demo I tried and liked recently was the Fight Night Round 4 demo. Now this is a game that was definitely on my radar, after playing and loving every Fight Night/Knockout Kings game EA have made. The game is being developed by EA Canada (FN3 was developed by EA Chicago) so I was concerned how it would play out compared to the previous games. I’m pleased to report that it plays very nicely indeed. The action is much faster than FN3, so will take some getting used to for long time Fight Night players. The control scheme has been tweaked slightly, with hooks and uppercuts to the body being produced by a flick of the right thumbstick, rather than a rotation with the left trigger held down. It makes for easier combos and better in-fighting. The reliance on haymakers has been reduced once again, with them being slow to throw, and even if they connect, not guaranteed to do major damage. This is down to the collision detection in the game, which seems to register and differentiate between flush hits and a glancing blow. The commentators will even mention it in the game, and it’sa feature I’m glad they have.  The career mode they have for the game, entitled the Legacy Mode, seems like a much better career this time, with multiple title belts in each division, and a much more realistic fight world. The career mode was my major gripe in FN3, so if they’ve made a good career here and the action continues to impress, I can see the game taking over a large part of my summer, if I can drag myself away from UFC that is!

Moving away from game demos, I’ve been spending more time in the Wastelands of Fallout 3, completing the Broken Steel DLC. It’s another great addition to the game, especially as it removes the ending and ups the level cap to 30. With the confirmation that we’re due to see another two episodes of DLC for Fallout, it may well be time for me to restart a third time and go through it once more. I’ve always held the belief that it’s possible to create a character that has perfect stats with a level 30 cap, and while I won’t manage it on this playthrough, I’m confident that on a 3rd playthrough I can end up with a perfect character. It’ll likely take a bit of planning to make sure I have a character will plenty of useful perks, but it’d be fun. Plus I love the game so much that it’ll just give me an extra excuse to go through it once more

Away from gaming, I’ve taken a leap into the world of Twitter. I’ve seen it mentioned everywhere before, and never really saw the appear. On a whim I decided to join and start following a few friends, and before long, I had about 40+ people following me, with me following about 80-odd. I’m really starting to like it, it’s a great way to make contacts if you follow people in a similar field as yourself (in my case, my part-time journalism) as well as giving me a chance to follow some people I’m interested in, such as actors and poker players. If you fancy following the Tweets of a gamer/journo/poker player, feel free to do so here -http://twitter.com/DaveyPitch

The more observant of my regular visitors (all 4 of you I think) may have noticed a new header image on my blog. It took me all of 5 minutes in Photoshop. Yes, I know you can tell, stop laughing. It’ll do until I can manage something better anyway

That’s all for now I think, might do another update next week if I manage to get UFC this weekend.

About time I did a gaming update again!

Well, after being nagged by Jen and Stevie I figured it was time I did a gaming update to go along with the Disney update I posted earlier.

The last few months have been fairly quiet in terms of new releases, as it always is. Thankfully I’ve been able to get my hands on some of the better releases to review recently, including games such as Skate 2, Rise of the Argonauts, Race Pro, Deadly Creatures, and my current review games, Blast Works on the Wii, and WWE Legends of Wrestlemania on the Xbox 360. Out of all of them, Skate 2 is my pick of the bunch. I was a huge fan of the first Skate, and the sequel takes everything that was good about the first game, improves them slightly, adds in some extra bits and pieces, makes hurting yourself an enjoyable distraction, and comes out as an exceptionally good game, with real longeivity. There’s just so much to do in the game, and just skating around New San Vanelona is fun as you find your own lines and make up your own tricks as you explore the city. If you enjoy skateboard games at all, I’d fully recommend it.

Since the last update I’ve bought and gone through both Fallout 3 DLC releases, Operation: Anchorage, and The Pitt. Both are enjoyable and for only 800 points are worth downloading, though I have to admit to enjoying The Pitt more, as it has a better story and the new weapons are more enjoyable to use (who wouldn’t enjoy chopping people into bloody giblets with an auto-axe?). I’ve put about 50 hours into a 2nd playthrough of the game as well to get all the achievements I missed the first time, and now I’m just waiting for the Broken Steel DLC which is due out on the 5th May. I’ve got the points ready for it to buy as soon as it becomes available.

I’ve also started playing Mass Effect again lately. It’s such a good game and thanks to the 3rd person action it keeps you interested, as I feel story heavy RPG games can lose some replayability if the fighting isn’t as good as it can be. I was a bad-ass on my first playthrough of the game so this time I’m going to be a hero soldier. I’ve still got about 3 playthroughs left if I want to get all the achievements, but thankfully at around 25-30 hours per playthrough it won’t be as bad as it could be. Certainly if I had to do Fallout 3 several times I’d be looking at 50+ hours per playthrough.

What has really dominated my time lately is the DLC for Fifa 09 – Ultimate Team. For anyone who collected the Panini football stickers as a kid, you’ll understand the basics of the game. You build your team up by buying packs of cards, either Bronze, Silver or Gold. You buy these packs with coins you earn for the matches you play. Each pack may contain players, staff, club information such as kits and badges, training cards, and more. If you get players, you can put them into your team if you want them, or you can send them to your collection (which is like putting the stickers in your book) for a coin bonus. Anything you already have you can trade with friends or sell it through an eBay style marketplace. While it’s hard to describe it, I think it’s one of those mades you really need to experience to appreciate properly. Building a good team takes time, as you need to get your team chemistry right, by having players from the same nationality, playing in their correct positions, and hopefully in the right formation. I’m about 120 matches into the mode, and have a full Spanish team with a Spanish manager, but my team chemistry is still out 88 (out of 100) as some of my players prefer different formations to the 4-4-2 I play. Thankfully you can get training cards which will change a players preferred formation, but these are very rare and can be really expensive to buy. It really is like crack, so addictive and browsing the marketplace looking for bargains is very compelling.

I’ve also been playing the UFC Undisputed demo a lot since it came out. It’s a brilliant game and the demo has completely sold it to me. I’m a fan of the UFC but the game was never really on my radar as I thought there was no way they could do the sport justice. It turns out I was wrong, as the game has some excellent fight mechanics for standing fighting and the ground game as well. It has proper flash knockouts as well, where a well timed punch or kick can knock your opponent out instantly. There’s never been a game that has managed to implement them as well as here, so it’s all looking like it’ll make for an excellent game. Roll on May 22nd when it’s due out.

That’s it for now, maybe I’ll do another update in a few days. It won’t be 3 months till the next update though, I promise!

New Disney Update

It’s now 3 months and 5 days until we go away to Disney for our honeymoon. It only seems a few weeks ago that we were talking about it and booking the holiday. The time really is flying by, not that I’m complaining of course. The quicker the year goes, the quicker it’ll be before we go away. I just hope that time slows down a bit when we’re actually on holiday. 2 weeks just won’t seem enough, especially considering all there is to do in Disney and all the surrounding areas.

I suspect that out of the people who read my blog (about 5 of you probably!), none of you have gone to Disney. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were wondering why I’m so excited about staying in a complex that is heavily oriented around kids and families. There is of course the fact that I’m a big kid, so I fit in nicely. However, there are definitely more reasons than that….

Firstly, the weather. Nothing to me reminds me more of being on holiday than being in weather that we will probably never see in this country. So whether it’s -15c in New York (Jan 2005, in the middle of their coldest winter for 30 years), or 35c and 90% humidity in Florida, it’s weather we won’t be getting in this country and I love being in it. I’m lucky that I’m comfortable in either extreme so I’m never too bothered by it. Either put me in a big heavy coat, or a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and I’m happy

Secondly, the vibe there. I’d never claim to be the most travelled of people, but I’ve been to a fair number of places in the UK, Europe and America, and there are only 2 places I’ve been to where there’s a tangible vibe there. New York is one of them, and it really deserves its title as “The City That Never Sleeps”. Even at 11pm in winter there was always activity and you can just tell you’re in a special city. Disney is the 2nd place with a vibe, but one completely different to New York. It’s just so relaxed and friendly, it really feels like a magical place where you can leave your troubles at the door and just enjoy yourself. You’re never rushed, never hurried, never made to feel like you’re a burden, and always made to feel welcome and special. The Americans are the best for customer service anyway, but in Disney it’s kicked up another notch.

Then of course, the parks themselves. As you’d expect there’s a lot there aimed towards young kids, but there’s still plenty of enjoyable activities in every park. Walking the World in Epcot is great, as you walk around the outside of a huge lake in the middle of the park, and each section is themed after a different country. You have places like England, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and more, each having it’s own building style from each country, along with appropriate shops. England has a pub that serves proper lager, and a fish and chip shop. Great stuff. There’s also shows like Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular and Lights Motors Action at Hollywood Studios, both of which are incredible to watch. That’s not even mentioning all the rides and stuff that adults can enjoy. Oh, and virtually every park puts on a fireworks display/show every evening at 9pm. The one at Epcot, entitled “Illuminations: Reflections of Earth” is easily the best firework display I’ve ever seen, lasting about 20 minutes and set to music. It finishes with so many bright fireworks that it virtually turns the night sky into daytime again. I’ve probably seen it 4 times now and I can’t wait to see it again. Then of course you have the other parks outside of Disney, such as Universal Studios and Sea World. Universal is amazing, probably even better than Disney for the rides that are there. Sea World is great fun as well, with Clyde & Seamore Take Pirate Island being one of the best shows you’ll see (Clyde and Seamore are seals, and very good actors too!).

After that, there’s Cirque Du Soleil: La Nouba. If you’ve never seen a Cirque show you’re really missing out on an incredible event. The La Nouba show in Florida is simply amazing, a mix of acrobats, clowns, jugglers, entertainers and great music. I’ve seen a few different Cirque shows now (on TV and in person) and La Nouba is easily my favourite. We were watching the website for weeks, and the moment the tickets went on sale we grabbed them. Last time we were only 10 rows from the front, and we’ll be even closer this time, a mere 6 rows from the front. They initially tried to put us on the back row of the front section, but a bit of ingenuity in reserving seats in seperate browser windows got us the seats we wanted

Next: Shopping! I’m not really a shopping kind of guy, it’s something that I do when I have to and not for any longer than is necessary. It’s different over there though, as everything is so much cheaper than it is over here. As an example, when we were in New York we picked up some pairs of Calvin Klein jeans for under half the price you’d pay in the UK. I’m not someone who tends to wear a lot of named brands (seeing I wear normal clothes in work, they’d get wrecked very easily), but when it’s as cheap as in America it’d be foolish not to buy some. We’re going shopping on our second day there in August so we can buy stuff before we spend all our money everywhere else!

I really could go on and on for some time about what we’re looking forward to the most over there, but it’s hard to narrow down exactly what we love about the place. All of the above, and so many other reasons, all combine to make it a brilliant place to spend 2 weeks. Roll on August 3rd!

Game reviews, Dead Space, and more

Hello and Happy New Year to you all. Taken a bit of a break from posting over Christmas so I could enjoy the time off and game as much as possible. I hope you all had an enjoyable time and didn’t have too many hangovers.

It’s been a while since I posted anything and there’s been one exciting changed for me since then – I’ve started reviewing games again. I initially applied to be a reviewer on XboxGameZone, and I was initially unsuccessful in my application. I started frequenting their forums though, and stayed chatting with the lady in charge. Just through normal chatting, she mentioned how busy things were and they had a big backlog of reviews to get through. I offered to help out if she would like the help, and it just went from there. After a couple of reviews I was formally offered a place on the review team, which I was very happy to accept. I’ve had 3 reviews published there so far – Don King’s Prizefighter, Rock Band 2, and Blitz: The League 2. I’m now working on my 4th review, which is Call of Duty: World At War. Needless to say I’m very happy to be reviewing again. As I’m sure everyone knows, I love playing games and I love talking about them, so being able to do it officially is a huge thing for me. Hopefully it’s something I can carry on doing for some time. I’m also well into double figures for published reviews now as well, after my time at Tech-PC (now defunct), Deaf Gamers, and Xbox360Achievements.org. One day I’ll get around to copying them all here much like Haly has done on her blog.

On the gaming front, I’ve been quite busy there lately. As well as playing the above games for review purposes, I’ve played and finished both Dead Space and Prince of Persia since my last blog post. Dead Space was simply awesome from start to finish, and is probably just behind Fallout 3 in my game of the year list. It’s probably the best survival horror experience I’ve had, possibly even better than Resident Evil 4 (Dead Space had no annoying “protect” sections bar one that lasted 20 seconds). Of course, Resident Evil 5 is a mere 2 months away so Dead Space may not hold the crown for long. Dead Space had some genuinely scary moments though. I won’t go into too much detail as I don’t want to give anything away, but there are some enemies in the game you absolutely hope you don’t meet, at any time. After meeting them for the first time, you know you’ll do so again, but you don’t know where, and you don’t know when. It’s tension like this that creates the brilliant atmosphere in Dead Space. Add in beautiful graphics and amazing lighting, and you have one of the most atmospheric games in recent memory. If you can play horror games, you owe it to yourself to play it. Just make sure you play it alone at night in the dark, it’s the only way to do it

I’m in two minds about Prince of Persia though. It was an enjoyable experience while it lasted (probably about 10-11 hours), but it’s very repetative, with no real challenge to it. You can’t die in the game, as your companion will always save you, which takes away any fear when playing the game. You have 4 main bosses in the game, which you will each face 5 times. Given that the tactics of each boss is nearly identical, the combat becomes extremely boring after a while, with you just trying to get through it as quickly as possible. The acrobatic side of the game is fun though, travelling from place to place by wall running etc. The most fun part I found though was the light seed collection. There’s 1001 light seeds in the game and finding all of them makes for an enjoyable experience. You need to collect 560 to finish the game, so you’ll need to collect a minimum of 400 or so above an beyond that, which should take no more than 3 hours or so, once you understand how to get them all. Some are hidden out of the way but when you realise where you need to be looking they’re all relatively straight forward. I’m glad I bought the game in a sale though, I would have been annoying had I paid £40 for it. £15 is a much more realistic price for it. Hopefully the inevitable sequel will improve the combat a lot as it would go a long way to making the game better.

A final note now to say that my willpower is worse than ever. The 20 game collection I mentioned I wanted several posts back is not even close to being a reality any more. After my birthday and Christmas, buying games in the sale and trading stuff around, I’m left with a collection of 37 games. There’s at least 8 of them I’ve either not played much, or not even played at all. At least now the new releases are drying up again I’ll have plenty to keep me busy!

The three biggest releases this year – done and done

Yup, that thread title means that Fable 2, Fallout 3, and Gears of War 2 are all completed. In my opinion they are the 3 biggest releases this year, on the Xbox 360 at least, and they all came out one after the other. After finishing the storyline for all 3 games, I can definitely say which one is my favourite so far, and that game is Fallout 3. I’ll take each game in turn though…..

Fable 2 was a huge release for me. I absolutely loved the first game, despite the fact it delivered on so few of the promises that came from Peter Molyneux. The 2nd one was much better in that respect, but it still wasn’t everything that it Peter originally said it would be (I’m still waiting to plant that damn acorn and come back later to find a tree. Perhaps he’s saving that for Fable 3). Despite that though, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. It had a fairly interesting story, though I was waiting for a twist that never came. There was plenty to do in Albion, from woodchopping to gambling to serving beer. You could romance the citizens in Albion, get married and have a family. There was more than enough to do to keep you busy, and it never felt like it was just tacked on as an afterthought. It was there to give you variety and a wide way to spend your time, and the game needed it as well, as the main story was relatively short. The combat was good, though far too easy at times, especially if you used magic. A quick level 3 time control spell to slow everyone down, then a level 5 fireball area spell and pretty much everyone was dead. I think I only ever got knocked out once, and that was my own fault for not keeping an eye on my health. I did enjoy the game very much though, to the point where I happily spent ages running around the whole of Albion finding all the Silver Keys and Gargoyles to get the full 1000 points for the game. Always nice to get the full 1k.

Next on the list was Fallout. It came at the perfect time for me, as I went off work for nearly 2 weeks with back pain, and gaming was one of the few things I could do without much pain. I must have put about 75 hours into Fallout in about 8 days, which is a hell of a lot of gaming! I enjoyed the game so much though. It wasn’t a game without flaws (what game is?), but the minor flaws in the game didn’t spoil the game at all for me. The Wasteland was an incredible place to just walk around and explore, with so much to see and so many places to go. It was amazing just how much there was there, random broken down buildings and encampments, that were nothing to do with any story whatsoever, they were just there to explore. The main niggle I had was how difficult it could be at times to navigate through the ruins of DC itself, as most roads were blocked by broken down buildings. It meant you had to use the Underground system a lot, but you could go into one system hoping to come out where you want, only to find you’re somewhere completely different. Having a slightly better navigation system could help this, but I guess it would take away from the feeling that you’re alone in a vast wasteland. The main storyline in the game, while short, was very well done although it, like Fable, had no twists that could change the way you look at everything. Why don’t more games have a Knights of the Old Republic style twist to them?! Still, after finishing it, I could easily have gone through it again, had I not needed to sell it to fund future purchases. It’s definitely one of the games that will end up in my permanant collection when it comes down in price in a few months time. I think I’ll be ready to go through it as a good character by then.

That brings us nicely on to Gears of War 2. I played the whole thing in co-op with my good friend Leo, which definitely made the game more fun. The storyline was much better than the first game, with one small twist I definitely didn’t see coming. The ending was weak though, like everything just stopped dramatically because they ran out of time to finish it up. The story though is completely open to a 3rd game, which I’m sure will feature 4 player co-op (the success of Halo 3 in co-op should ensure more and more games do this as well). Action-wise it delivers more of the same from the first game, with some new additions, as you’d expect. I like the new weapons, and the ability to use your grenades as a proximity mine by tagging them onto a wall (only really useful in online play though). If you enjoyed the first game, there’s no reason for you not to enjoy this one just as much. And then there’s the Horde mode. With up to 5 players, surviving wave after wave of Locust attacks makes for an amazing game mode. It’s fairly easy early on if you have 5 good players, but as you push through the levels it can get quite challenging, even on Casual difficulty. Over a couple of nights a group of us managed to survive all 50 levels of Horde, which we were very happy about. It’s a great game mode, probably the one addition that will see the game stay in my collection for some time, as it’s just so much fun to play.

When it’s all said and done, Fallout for me picks up the honour as game of the year so far. With so much to see and do, a great storyline, wonderful combat (the VATS system is awesome), interesting characters and some excellent enemies (Deathclaws are great fun, but hard as nails), it’s a near perfect role playing game for me. Bethesda have come up with another classic (I put nearly 300 hours into Oblivion), and I hope they stick by the series and make a Fallout 4.

Saying that though, I’ve not finished Dead Space yet, so there’s still for that to change. It’s been awesome so far, easily the scariest game I’ve ever played in my life, with some genuine pant-changing moments. I’m about half way through and really need to spend some more time on it, if only so I can loan it to Nokkon and stop him badgering me about it

My willpower gets worse and worse

In my last post I mentioned how bad my willpower is when it comes to games I want. I tried to take my game collection down to a decent size, but instead ended up with as many games as I had to start with. I knew there was even more coming out I wanted, and that I’d likely get them, and I was right.

I finished Fallout and Fable (more about them in another post soon), so I decided to sell both of them as I wouldn’t be playing them for a while, and I’d rather sell them now for good money and buy them again cheap. WIth that money, and the money coming for my birthday on Monday, I decided I was getting 3 more games – Scene It: Box Office Smash, Rock Band 2, and Lips (the last 2 released this week). That’ll take my game collection back up to 29 games, which is what it was when I decided I needed to cut down the amount of games I had. I really think I may have to cancel my games rentals as I need to spend more time playing the games I’ve got, as there are some I’ll happily get rid of, when I’m finished with them!

I need there to be more hours in the day

My willpower is rubbish

Yup, it really is. In my blog entry “Too Many Games” I realised I had a game collection that had 29 Xbox 360 games in it, which was simply too many as I could never play them all. I decided to get rid of Civ Revolution, Condemned 2, Lego Star Wars, Lost Odyssey, PES 2008, Smackdown 2008, Star Wars: Force Unleased, Top Spin 3, and Euro 2008. That brought my collection back down to a more managable 20 game collection. I bought, completed and then sold Lego Batman (very enjoyable by the way), again keeping the collection the same size.

Then I started looking at the games I wanted. Due to getting rid of the above, I could afford to pre-order Fable 2 and Fallout 3. A 22 game collection then, not so bad. Then I realised all the other stuff I had that I could sell. My PSP and games were never used so might as well be sold. I had 3 DS games I didn’t play, so they could go. I had some old PC games which could also go, along with some PC hardware that was lying around. It all added up to enough to also pre-order Dead Space and Gears of War 2. The collection was growing again.

I then found 10 old PS2 games I had no use for at all. I knew I wouldn’t get much for them if I sold them, but in trade perhaps I’d get enough for a cheap game. They actually turned out to be worth more than I thought, as Computer Exchange gave me £37 in trade for them. Sat on the shelf was Mercenaries 2 for £38, so with a shiny pound coin, I returned home with another game.

Then something very lucky happened. A few months ago I traded in quite a lot of stuff into Computer Exchange, and ended up with over £100 worth of vouchers. After buying some stuff, I had £38 left, but I lost the vouchers while we were on holiday in August. We looked everywhere, in every bag, in every bit of clothing, but they were gone. I’d resigned myself to not having a game (I was after Beijing 2008 at the time), and stopped looking. Then yesterday morning, Lynnie was emptying one of her bags, and out fell the vouchers! We’d both been through that bag at least once, so we’ve no idea how we missed them before, but I wasn’t complaining.

So, off to town I went, looking to get Halo 3 and GTA 4 (they came to £38 2nd hand). I walked straight into the shop, picked up both games, and paid with my vouchers. As I left the store, I noticed PES 2009 was on the shelf for £40. Now, Computer Exchange is a 2nd hand store only so I was a little surprised to see that in there only 3 days after it was released. Still, I’m a Fifa man now (more on that in another update) so I put it back down and carried on walking. That was until something else caught my eye. Saints Row 2. For £40. 3 days after it was released. I picked up the one and only copy they had (disappointing someone in the process I think), and went back to the till to ask if there was any chance I could get that instead. The staff, who are always exceptionally helpful there, were more than happy to sort that out, and out I walked with Saints Row 2 costing me £2.

So, after trying so hard to cut my game collection down to a reasonable size, with pre-orders and cheap games it’s gone back up to 26 games. That doesn’t even include games like Guitar Hero World Tour, Scene It Box Office Smash, Rock Band 2, and Sacred 2, all of which I’ll be wanting to get with either birthday or Christmas money. Looking through my collection, I still can’t really see anything I’d be happy getting rid of (I tried and failed twice with Bioshock and Mass Effect, I just love them too much for that). So, I guess I’m stuck with a rather large games collection again. Oh well, at least I’ll never be short of games to play

Edit: I also forgot I’ve got Dynasty Warriors 6, and Fifa 09, so that makes 28 games! Even more than I first thought.

Star Wars – Force still on it’s leash

At least that’s the impression I was left with by the time I’d finished the game. The Force that the Apprentice wields is very impressive at times, blasting open huge metal doors and throwing Tie Fighters around. However, you’re still left with the impression that they could do more. His powers are shown to be truly amazing in the quick time events and cut scenes, where he can crush AT-STs into a small metal box, and control the descent of a Star Destroyer, and things like that only serve to further your disappointment that you can’t do things like that in the actual game. I suppose if you could it would make things far too easy, but you’re still disappointed nonetheless.

The game itself was pretty good, besides the 2 glitches I had (more on that below). The story was good and ties things together nicely, without ever being really shocking with the details it reveals. I was hoping we’d get some deep story with a twist that changes the way you look at the story, but I guess Lucas would be running the risk of annoying a lot of fans by changing too much. The action was pretty non-stop, and it’s a game where you can use the achievements to help make it a more varied game. As I said 2 posts down, you can vary the gameplay by going for the various kill achievements using all your different powers. This forces you to not rely on one particular power and definitely adds some nice variation. The levels are all very linear (which I don’t mind so much, there’s plenty of open world games around if that’s what I want), but they’re all very pretty to look at and most definitely have a Star Wars feel to them.

Now onto the glitches. The first was easily the most annoying, and is pretty common. Partway through the game, it stopped giving me bonus objectives, instead showing “*Default Text” in its place. This glitch also causes the game to stop tracking your holocron collections, and your force power kills (it still counts who you kill, just not how). It means I couldn’t get the achievement for collecting all the holocrons, nor could I get any more “Kill 100 people with force lightning” style achievements. It was pretty annoying to be honest. I wasn’t playing the game solely for the achievements, as I did find it enjoyable, but I was purposely collecting all the holocrons and there was no point in the end.

The other glitch I had was right at the end. I finished off the final battle, choosing the good ending, and right as the final movie was about to play, the game froze and I had to reset my Xbox. Thankfully I still had the achievement for finishing the game, and for the good ending, but I hadn’t unlocked the movie, and the game still had my last continue point before the final battle. I decided to do it again, this time going for the evil ending, and got the achievement for that as well. For once a glitch managed to work in my favour.

Overall I did enjoy it, and I’ll definitely be renting it again in the future, but only when it’s been patched and I know I can get the achievements without it glitching on me. Hopefully that patch is already being worked on.