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.