This week i have mostly playing…
Aug 28th
Spider-Man 3 on the 360.
I think i’m the only person in the world who likes it but i do, i really do. Been thoroughly enjoying it all weekend. So much fun swinging through new york and the draw distance is pretty amazing. Fine, it’s a bit of a button basher and new york looks the same virtually everywhere you go, but i still love it. It’s not quite as interesting as Spidey 2 on the ps2 was, but that looks pretty dated these days.
But then, as you probably guessed, i’m a massive spidey fan. Even enjoyed the third film more than most people.
Started reading Civil War, it’s SOOOOOOO good. If you’re a comic book fan i urge you to check it out.
Rapture – It was a nice a place to live
Aug 24th
Completed Bioshock last night, most enjoyable but DAMN it’s hard near the end. End boss is a piece of piss though. In case you don’t know, there’s 2 endings and i got the bad one. God knows why though, I thought i did everything right but then i guess not.
Still only got 58% of the achievements, bollocks if i can be arsed to play through all that again just to get the rest of them. Maybe later on down the line…
Uploaded a video on Skate as well as that’s what you’re supposed to do, couldn’t bloody find it anywhere. I know they sit at skate.share.ea.com but couldn’t find mine. It was a hell of a lot better than half the videos there too. Stupid shitty ea website.
Woo, going to the races today, got a private box and as much food and drink as i can shake a stick at. Makes up for not going to Reading Festival this year. Really missed it yesterday but it got to half 11 and i was very happy to be in bed rather than 4 layers of clothing in a paper thin sleeping bag and fucking kids screaming their head off all night shouting ‘Bollocks’ coz oops, it’s a rude word and it sounds funny if you shout it. Christ, i’m getting old.
Adding Insult to Injury
Aug 23rd
Lanky Sanchez from my band had the red rings of death a couple of weeks ago, microsoft have told him another 3 weeks before he gets his 360 back and to add insult to injury he received his copy of Bioshock this morning along with this model of a Big Daddy, specifically a Bouncer. Pretty cool i must admit.
Further impressions of Skate
Aug 23rd
It fucking rules. Manuals are so simple they’re brilliant. Want this game, now!
First Impressions of Skate Demo
Aug 22nd
Well, it’s, um, different. It’s nothing like tony hawks and it feels like learning to walk again. You instinctively want to press A to jump, then Y to grind, only it’s not like that any more.
The flickit controls are very intuitive and do pretty much what you tell it to do. I like the grinding but jeebus christ, it’s hard. No more popping onto the grind if you’re in it’s vicinity, you have to get this bang on to land on the grind. But it does feel a lot more satisfactory when you land it.
I think the key is to get used to the controls. Once you are, i think it’s gonna feel very natural.
Remember back to when you played the first tony hawks game, it was good but incredibly hard. But the first time you actually landed a tricky move felt damn good. It’s exactly the same with Skate.
Whether you were good at tony hawks or not, it doesn’t matter any more, everything starts again with Skate
I would certainly recommend getting the demo, there’s enough there to see the game properly and it gets pretty addictive pretty quickly.
The movie after the demo is great, i love the trick where the character jumps over the rail but the board goes under it.
Defender of the PS3 – Yep, there’s one out there!
Aug 21st
Now this is piss funny, thanks to drunkenmonkey for pointing this out. This is some tossers review of Bioshock. Did i mention that he’s a tosser and his review is tossy? I’d suggest signing up to his site just to give him abuse (www.sonydefenseforce.com)
Here’s his pisspot review, look for the sly dig at the 360 vs PS3, it’s subtle but you might spot it if you’re good:
After many months of anticipation I finally got my copy of Bioshock and played through it over the past few days. There are many things to like about Bioshock such as the graphics (not animation), parts of the story and the water effects. That’s about where the good stuff ends.
First let me say how excited I was for the game after playing the demo on the 360. While the animation seemed stiff and you could tell the 360 was being pushed too hard it still looked like it had a lot of potential. So imagine my disappointment when I got the final version only to find none of the animation hitches, shooting glitches and AI was cleaned up. I also wonder how much better the graphics would’ve been had they not been compressed to fit on a DVD. Now I do not fault the developers for this, they only had so much system power to work with so maybe this will all be addressed with the PS3 version when it comes out.
To conclude, let this game cook in the oven just a little bit longer and wait for the superior PS3 version. Cleaned up textures, animations, AI, extra weapons, Home space, standard HDD and Blu-ray will make this flawed game into a perfect gem.
The scum of this world
Aug 21st
On a complete tangent to my usual rant i want to present a different rant.
There’s one kind of person worse than scummy chavs or drunks on the street. Worse than car salesmen and cold callers. Even worse than that annoying shouting tosser on the Safestyle UK advert (I say, ya baaay one, ya get one free).
It’s people who are still using IE6.
I hate IE6, actually hate isn’t strong enough, i absolutely despise IE6 with every bone in my body. It is a shit browser. It doesn’t work properly, there’s no support for transparent png’s, it doesn’t render CSS properly. Even images are a different sodding colour in IE6 to what they are in Firefox. IE6 is the worst scummy stinky piece of shit to ever grace this world since Netscape and it’s the bane of my fucking life. I’m a web developer by trade and i have spent the entire damn day getting a site i’m building to look the same in IE6 as it does in Firefox. What a waste of a day.
If you are using IE6 to read this then shame on you. It’s because of people like you that i have to waste a days work getting my sites to work on this joke of a browser for every site i build. I hate you and I hope your computer explodes, and i sincerely mean that.
Do me (and the entire world) a favour and switch to Firefox, please, i beg you, you’ll love it, every single person who ever made the switch has not regretted it for one second.
It’ll take about 10 minutes and if you enjoy browsing the internet then it’s the best 10 minutes you could ever spend.
http://www.getfirefox.com
The browser usage for July say that 37% still use IE6 and 34% use Firefox. But IE is dropping and Firefox is rising quickly.
Let’s get this below 10% before the end of the year. My life and my job will be so much more enjoyable, as will the thousands of other developers and designers out there and your browsing experience will be infinitely better, i can 100% guarantee.
Rant over, please go about your usual business
360 drops in price, a whole £30!
Aug 20th
Woo, the 360 has dropped in price; £30. Break out the fucking fireworks.
The prices are now:
Elite: £299.99
Premium: £249.99
Core: £179.99
But here’s the real kicker, if you want to get the 120gb drive for the premium, which virtually everyone reading this would want, it’ll cost you £130!
WTF!
So there’s 50 squid difference between the premium and elite, but to finally get a decent HD it’ll cost £130? May i be the first to say; ‘Fucking rip-off!’. What a sodding gyp.
Everyone will admit that 20gb is bollocks these days, you can get a normal 20gb HDD for about a tenner and 120gb HDD costs (just checking on Misco…) a whopping £31 including VAT. Even a 2.5″ HDD only costs £47 (those go into laptops in case you didn’t know). So how the hell can Microsoft justify charging £130 for the same thing?
Answer: Because they can!
The key word here is propriatory. Say it with me: Pro-pri-a-tory. It’s a simple but sinister word that makes you spend more than you should be doing; every single time.
You just make the peripherals proprietary and then charge whatever the hell you want for them! They house the HDD in that stupid flat thingy that sits on top of the console so you can’t use your own, bingo, they charge you whatever the fuck they like.
Pisses me right off, it really does. What’s wrong with making a connection for an external hard drive, so you can plug in whatever hard drive you like? Because then they wouldn’t be able to charge you £130 for something that isn’t worth above £50.
Failing that, give me the ability to backup my information on my 360 to my PC: Movies, Demos, Save games, etc. Really, how difficult would that actually be, they’re networked and Media Center works perfectly so it’s clear they can communicate. Christ the operating system is made by the same damn company.
At least the Wii went the right way allowing you backup saves onto an SD Card.
The worst thing is, everyone will pay it coz they simply have no choice..
This is another aspect where the PC wins hands down, no-one owns it so there’s always masses of competition on hardware, consequently it keeps the prices down.
Move over Tony Hawk – EA’s got a brand new bag
Aug 20th
The Skate demo comes out tomorrow.
For those who don’t know much about it, check this little bad boy out:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvTkfxx09A]
It’s not gameplay but i’m sure you can see what it’s going to be like anyway.
Difficulty Settings
Aug 20th
Has anyone ever actually played a games on Hard? (apart from Guitar Hero, which is kind of the point) I can honestly say i have never played or, more importantly, completed a game on hard.
In Max Payne 2 you complete it then you unlock the option to play the game on New York Minute which is the hardest setting. Err, no thanks. Why the hell would i want to play a game where i’m completely rubbish. I want to look good when i play. I want the sense of accomplishment you get when you kill bosses. I don’t want to get wasted by them 5 seconds into the fight. There’s nothing worse than not being able to get any further and turning the game off coz you’re sick of it.
God Of War 2 – The greatest game on the PS2 bar none. Complete that you can play in God mode, but who wants to play it anything but easy coz it simply more fun that way. You do tough levels so you can see what’s going to happen next, you want the cool cut scene at the end of the battle. Fuck Medium and fuck Hard right in it’s stupid ass, gimme easy every time (apart from Bioshock where Easy is really really easy and no challenge at all).
The way around this is to have one difficulty like they do with Mario. Or F.E.A.R. was great as it adjusted the difficulty as you went along. Keep dying? It just makes it a bit easier. Fantastic idea.
