Editorials

As Seen On T.V.

We all have to do things we rather not to sometimes, putting ourselves out for our loved ones. Going to watch a film you’ll hate with your partner, staying out late and not drinking to provide your friends with a safe ride home, grinding enough sleeping pills into your elderly relatives tea to make their final moments peaceful ones.

For me, as this is a gaming blog and not a euthanasia one, it’s more a case of buying a game I ordinarily wouldn’t. It’s my sisters birthday next week, and as she’s an adult there’s nothing she desperately wants or needs. She did kind of hint that she wanted money, but even though I tend to ask for the same thing …

Microsofts Conference.

Microsoft’s conference was yesterday and if you haven’t been around online since yesterday evening, then you may just find the internets alive with a certain piece of news. However, I’m not going to mention anymore to do with that just now, I’m gonna re-watch the entire conference and post everything that happened. Enjoy.

Initially, predictions for Microsofts E3 from many sources seemed to include a new Halo, more fromn Lionheads Fable 2, new dashboard and the possibility of some sort of Wiimote style device.

“Big franchises are the mainstay of our industry”, never a truer word said, especially considering the Autumn/Winter period we had last year with Halo 3, PGR4, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box all being …

Blending “youth” culture

Been meaning to write about this for a little while. As gamer’s we’ve gotten pretty used to being victimised by the likes of the Daily Mail attacking our past-time, and all we can do is complain wether its on podcasts or in text on dedicated sites such as this. Soem even take it to the point of voicing their opinions on comments pages up and down the internets. Videogames have been blamed for rises in crime, actual murders, education levels dropping, obesity, you name a problem, our chosen past time has probably footed the blame for it from one source or another, and you can usually find alot of the bile stemming from so called publications such as the Daily …

WASD The Matter You?

Gotta no respect? That may be the best title I’ve ever come up with.

Without wanting to sound like an advert for a razor, for me as a gamer, control is everything. You can have the greatest gameplay mechanics ever conceived, the biggest sprawling worlds packed with the most ludicrous enemies, but if you can’t interact with it all properly then the game will never reach the heights.

This is why I’ve never really embarked on a full blown love affair with the Survival Horror genre. sure there’s been some drunken one night stands, brief but mind blowing encounters, but there’s only been a handful of serious relationships. Me and RE: Code Veronica went steady for a while, D2 was awesome in …

A PC Engine

Well I never thought it would happen but it has. I didn’t see it coming, I just didn’t, maybe I was being naive thinking I wouldn’t be affected in the way I have…

Ok deep breath Ben, you can do this.

I am… a PC Gamer. Wow, it feels like a weight has been lifted, I feel green and new, ready to face this world of new challenges . Alright so I’m exaggerating for effect, but I am genuinely taken aback by how quickly I’ve been hooked into the world of PC gaming.

I got a new pc a few weeks back, my old one had started making weird clicking noises before slowing right down, it also had real problems booting up. I …

Chou Anarchy

You may or may not have heard of the Hanabi festival. For those that haven’t rather than being of some religious or cultural importance, it’s actually the slightly misleading name Nintendo give the brief stint where they release import games on the Virtual Console.

Last time round the festival saw the release of the likes of Super Mario (The Lost Levels) and Sin & Punishment. This time around they standard of releases are a little more questionable. Among them is a Pool game (that is supposedly quite good), Puyo Pop 2 and Columns 2. It’s not that the games are bad, just not the sought after import titles you’d hope for.

We do however get a couple of games of note, to …

Days 6 & 7:- 4-STAR BABY!!!

So I didn’t update yesterday,t heres a good reason for that, I only got to play one mission. I did however make some more progress last night, and had a bit of old-skool GTA fun too.

The game still continues to impress and entertain, but I do still notice the same problems cropping up again and again, how anyone can think this game deserves a straight out 10/10 is beyond me because of these problems, but thats another debate for another time. I have heard some of the problems I’m having with the game might be fixed via me clearing the 360’s cache as some of the layer pop-up has begun to get really bad the more I play, so I’ll …

Day 5:- Stand-Off

Didn’t really play a whole lot last night, Charly wanted to play on the 360 so I spent alot of the night playing Team Fortress 2 (which is also a fantastic game).

I did however, spend most of my time just having fun. I found a bridge that was supposedly being constructed in the Bohan region of the city, whilst driving along, segments were missing but some had platforms bridging the gaps and others had ramps, I decided to go for it in the sedan I was driving, cleared the first jump but landed wrong to carry my speed through the second jump, I’m thinking I might have to get a PCJ-600 and give it another try tonight, see if it …

Day 4:- Dagnabbit

Wow, is it Day 4 already? Didn’t play as much yesterday as I had Wednesday and Thursday, purely because my daughter wasn’t at pre-school so wasn’t able to get that session in during the day. Got some time in in the evening though, although not quite as much as I’d of liked. But most of what I did was the story driven stuff, and boy have things changed since the events that took place on Thursday. I’ll go into those in a little while though.

I’ve had a couple of problems begin to crop up with the game, the most worrying of which were 2 Disc Read Errors, one on Thursday night the other last night, although I kind of saw …

Day 3:- Wha’gwan?

Last night met a couple of new characters, both of which have small jobs you can do at any ppoint that don’t seem to be story driven. First off was Little Jacob’s mate Madman. Like Jacob, he’s a drug dealing, fast slang talking black man, who is even more difficult to understand than Jacob is. In fact you have to use Jacob to translate what Madman’s saying, leading to Niko often looking a liltte lost and confused, which is actually very funny. The other new guy is Brucie, a body building, steroid pumping car mechanic, I’ve not really spoken with him enough to get an impression of him, but I do know Madman and Jacob are my favourite characters so …