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After five years in development (three of which were remarkably silent publicly from Remedy Entertainment), a change to a single platform and assorted trailers we finally have the game itself.  While I have always said that Resident Evil 2 is my favourite game of all time, I add a caveat that Silent Hill 2 is right up there with it, and on a purely story level alone it trumps Capcom’s slice of survival horror perfection.

From the first moment I saw Alan Wake I got the Silent Hill vibe from it (before Konami started farming the franchise out to anyone who would pitch an idea for a sequel) and became very excited.  Small American town, idyllic perfection which all goes to hell when the lights go out?  Count me in.

But I have to confess that when I finally started playing A.Wake I felt a little bit underwhelmed.  Why had what appeared to be a rather run of the mill third person action game been in development for five years?  Clearly Alan Wake has been a long time labour of love for the relatively small development team of 45, but where was the hook?

It didn’t take long for me to stop being such a nit picking moaner and start enjoying the game, because the real star of Alan Wake is the story, the characters and the setting.  One of the greatest criticisms of the game from the early reviews was that towards the end of the game the action got in the way of just wanting to learn more about the story.  This is a testament to the writing and storytelling from Sam Lake and the team at Remedy that the story is more engrossing than the action at times.

Let’s talk about the action for a moment, because I want to get my minor moans and niggles out of the way right up front here.  The action is very well crafted but it very quickly gets very dull and repetitive.  There are perhaps only five enemy types (The Taken, posessed by the darkness/black presence) so enemy variety is not so much on the menu.  A typical encounter will find you faced by between three and five enemies, two will attack you straight out and the other three will flank and try and, for want of a better phrase, take you from behind.
It’s alright for the first couple of chapters, but the action soon gets repetitive and while things do become more tricky when objects in the world become possessed (anything from barrels to diggers), the core mechanic never really changes.

As you would expect weapons change up as you progress from the standard hand gun to shotguns, a hunting rifle, and my favourite, the flare gun.  You also have supplemental secondary ammo such as flash bangs and flares (distress rather than the fashion variety).
Yes Alan Wake is all about light and dark.  In the light you are safe from the monsters, but in the dark you are in their playground.  Wake carries around one of three different lanters/torches/flashlights (pick one depending on where you live in the world), going from standard, heavy duty and then up to a lantern.  You use the light to burn off the darkness from enemies before you can use your firearms.  Flare guns, flashbangs and other light weapons can do this, or just outright kill your enemies.

As an action game, Alan Wake is solid but not outstanding.  Remedy have taken the unusual approach these days and have not included an easy game mode.  Normal, Hard and Nightmare are your three options and the difficulty level doesn’t bow down to inexperienced players.  I played through the game on Normal and save a couple of daft mistakes I never found the game to be too hard a challenge, but I can see that inexperienced players may put down the controller and walk away in frustration.  This would be a shame because they would be missing one of the finest narrative driven psychological adventure games in years.

For while the story in Alan Wake is pure pulp stock shlock Stephen King fayre, it is without a doubt in my mind the best game of this type that I have played since Silent Hill 2.
When you start to delve into the small town world of Bright Falls you see where the love for the game and its characters the creators at Remedy have, and why it has been in development for so long.

Wake himself is actually not the most likeable of characters in the early stages of the game, a sulky novelist suffering from writers block.  He swaggers and pouts around like a sullen teenager while his wife tries to make him cheer up and get back his creative spark.  When she pushes him a little too far that’s when the story kicks off properly and the mystery of Alan Wake starts to unfold.

I am deliberately not mentioning the story in any detail here because I feel that anything I say about the plot would spoiler it considerably.  But suffice to say as the chapters progress, and Wake meets more characters such as the town sherrif and the superb comic relief manager character Barry, things rapidly pick up from what feels a bit like a nature ramble through the woods (with killer light fearing enemies, naturally).

Alan Wake is broken up into TV show like episodes.  At the start of each episode you see a “Previously on Alan Wake” plot retread, and while this works far better than it did in Atari’s Alone in the Dark, the episodes are between two and three hours long each (depending on how much you are ambling around the game world looking for collectible thermos flasks and manuscript pages) as opposed to the 42 minutes of a standard US network TV show.  I ended up playing the first couple of episodes/chapters in one sitting and then taking the rest of the week to play through the game, usually taking two days to complete one section.

Alan Wake’s six episodes are split into multiple chapters, so there is a fairly lengthy game here (some may say a slightly too bloated one), albeit one with an ambiguous and rather rushed ending.  When the credits rolled I was taken completely by surprise with a “Is that it?” sensation as the achievement unlocked for completing the episode.
But this particular adventure for Alan Wake is being closed out properly by the free downloadable content episode that is coming in July.  So there’s a couple of months wait before discovering the final part of this particular mystery.

I am also extremely glad for once that I preordered the special limited edition version of the game, which comes with a soundtrack CD, a bonus disc containing lengthy documentaries, trailers (one unreleased), exclusive avatar items and dashboard themes as well as unlocking a special video commentary feature for the main game.  This is one thing I feel probably should have been included with the regular version as well, as after installing the commentary you can watch a DVD/Blu-ray style video window commentary from various members of the Remedy team at specific parts of the game.  But as it is laden with spoilers you certainly wouldn’t want to watch it on your first play through of the game, and they tell you this right up front.

I often feel a sense of apathy towards certain game genres when I play too many of them (especially first person shooters) but just recently I have become a third person action game junkie, and despite having spent over forty hours playing Splinter Cell Conviction, I had no qualms about playing through perhaps a dozen hours of Alan Wake.  Nor do I mind starting the game again and going back for the atmosphere, the characters and the collectibles.  Those damn fine cups of coffee thermos flasks aren’t going to find themselves…

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So gaming shock number two of the week has been just how much time I have sunk into Conviction in just seven days.  Here’s a shot from the Ubisoft website:

Now aside from the shameful fact that my last game was on Rookie difficulty (I have completed the game on Realistic, honest guv, check my last post and achievements) just have a look at that Time played stat.  Thirty seven hours in a week.  I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be shocked, appalled, ashamed or downright proud of that figure.

I use the gaming aggregation social network/web 37.0 site Raptr and one of my favourite features is the chart that tells you how many hours you have spent on your most played games.  My stats for this are all rather wrong, as when you play on Live in Appear Offline mode (as I quite often do) that time isn’t counted, which is why Fallout 3 is my most played game at 66 hours but in reality my save game shows a whopping 105 hours have been spent.  Oh and that’s just the Xbox 360 version, I also have a 60+ hour character on the PC as well for good measure.  I think my Forza 3 sessions over the past few weeks would have been scraping the charts as well if it weren’t for my privacy options.

If anything I’m not experiencing any of the above emotions regarding my achievement this past week with Conviction, I’m just grateful to have had the spare time to be able to play these games for that long.  And to have a partner who puts up with me while I spend hour after hour hurling obscenities at the television.
It also shows just how engrossed I have become with online multiplayer, and more specifically co-op modes.  It’s taken a long time for me to get out of the habit of playing single player only sections of games and avoiding online like the plague.  Anyone who has jumped into a random match with people in Halo, Modern Warfare or any other top tier shooter will know what I’m talking about.  Playing with strangers is never a good idea, especially on Live.

Which brings me pretty much to the end of my free time.  I won’t be cracking hours into Mass Effect 2 before I go back to work, I’ll be continuing to hone my Infiltration skills.  It would be a bonus if I could stop dreaming about stealth action and wanting to shoot out lights everywhere I go though.

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If certain web forum trends are to be believed then once every few years people who play videogames a lot (or have done for a long time) usually tend to go through an occasional “why do I do this?” phase.  Of course I’m no expert on this particular subject, or any other for that matter, but every time I read forum posts usually titled “Tired of gaming” or “Gaming apathy” they tend to let in an unmetered tide of responses from people who are either going through a similar experience, or have recently done so.

I’m not going through one of those particular mid-gaming life crisis episodes right now, far from it.  But as well as the “why do I do this?” question I like to hold up a counter point when a game reinforces my primary relaxation hobby (especially as the evenings are too bright at the moment for film and TV watching).  This tends to be a game that I wouldn’t normally have purchased, but have done so either on a whim or it has been reduced in price.  Fable II was at the top of the pile of games I never thought I would want to play, let alone enjoy.  Then I sunk over sixty hours into completing it multiple times.  But the game that has done it for me this time is Splinter Cell Conviction.

I’ve never been a fan of the previous Splinter Cell games.  When I tried them on the original Xbox they seemed a little overcomplicated (or I was just overly simple), but people who liked them really enjoyed them.  I was never really one for stealth action games, and after getting caught one too many times by guards I gave up and went onto something else.
I only bought Conviction really so I could play online co-op with Mr DXEndar, promising that if I was offered the contract I was going for them I would buy it.  I won the contract, and a promise is a promise.  What has happened since I got the game has been nothing short of a revelation for me.

Fans of the original games have voiced concerns over this particular title as the focus of the game has shifted more towards a straightforward third person cover based action shooter (along the lines of Gears of War) and the stealth emphasis has been somewhat toned down.
But in reality you can play the game as either type, you can go in guns blazing, make as much noise as possible and enjoy some very frantic and heated firefights, or you can take the stealthy approach.

I started by playing the game like I do with most action games if I’m perfectly honest, I play on the easiest difficulty level to get through the game and see the story to its conclusion.  Then if I have really enjoyed the experience (and if I’ve paid full price, I want to get the best value for money I possibly can) I will go back and play it again on a higher level, and then play some co-op or multiplayer if it is included.
Looking at the single player campaign first of all, much of the back story went straight over my head but the game moves along at a fast pace and is incredibly slick.  At times it feels very much like an even more stylised (and cliched for that matter) episode of 24.  But one of the ones with action obviously.

But instead of just throwing level after level of “infiltrate base/warehouse/mansion” rinse and repeat ad nauseum gameplay, the action (or lack of it depending on how you are playing) changes up enough that you don’t get bored.  I won’t give away any spoilers here, but every now and then everything changes so you are going through a definite third person shooter, some enforced stealth and an excellent free running sequence.
This is where the revelation happened for me with Conviction.  I enjoyed the single player campaign a lot, I got the game on Friday and started playing straight away before moving into some co-op (more on that in a moment) and then going back and completing the single player story on Sunday.

But after completing the game I took a break for a few minutes and started all over again on the next difficulty level (Normal).  When I did this I completely changed my play style, moving to a far more stealthy approach.  Climbing up drainpipes instead of just hiding behind cover, going for stealth kills and very much biding my time.  I played solidly again all through Monday, completed the game and started yet again on Realistic difficulty!  This is completely unheard of for me to do with a game of this type.  Usually by now I would have moved onto another game from the library, and Mass Effect 2 has been sat waiting for some love.

After an enforced break yesterday I have spent all morning today playing the game through to its completion yet again on Realistic and you know what?  I will gladly play it all over again!
So the single player probably takes around seven or eight hours to play through, and it is broken down into eleven chapters.  But for multiplayer there is a prequel co-op campaign which I would gustimate takes around three to four hours to play through.  I have yet to complete it at the time of writing, but we played for around three hours with the end still some way off.  It doesn’t change up the core mechanics of the game one bit, but as an extra added bonus with new characters and different environments it makes for great fun.

Then there’s the on and offline multiplayer that I haven’t even touched on yet.

So I take my non-existent hat off to the folks at Ubisoft for finally releasing this oft-delayed game, and can happily say they have made a convert out of me.
Next week: Alan Wake.

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But after Final Fantasy XIII and Just Cause 2 (from the purchase of Eidos) comes Nier, an action RPG that is clearly showing the veteran Japanese publisher trying to find a market that likes Japanese games, but would rather have more action than RPG.
The game is published by SE, but has been developed by Cavia, a studio probably best known for Dragon Ball Z and Drakengard titles along with some Resident Evil lightgun shooters.

The game focuses on the title character Nier, a man searching for a cure for the killer Black Scrawl virus that has infected his daughter Yonah.  During his search early in the game Nier encounters a magic book named Grimoire Weiss (voiced by a man doing what appears to be a very good James Mason impersonation) who has a semi-beige alignment as you are never quite sure whether his motives are good or evil.
You also soon team up with a fellow warrior named Kaine with a penchant for bad language and also happens to be a hermaphrodite.  So not exactly your typical bald space marine companion.

As with so many games these days, you begin with all of the games available magic powers, fighting off hordes of enemies known as Shades, only to have everything taken away from you as the action shifts to a completely different locale and you have to learn the basics of combat until you encounter the book with all the answers.

During these early stages you are introduced to the world of Nier through a thankfully short series of fetch quests as you run around your home town hub world, before heading out into the wide green yonder.  On the first quest I had to pause the game and actively think whether I have ever had to kill sheep to further my progress in a game before.

Once you pick up Weiss after a relatively linear dungeon crawl the world opens up, offering typical fetch or assassination side quests to build up gold and items to supplement the main storyline.

Much like the recent Darksiders game from THQ, Nier takes a number of elements from different genres and presents a sort of mash up of action game, RPG, puzzler, and even top down/side scrolling shooter.  It results in a game that is slightly unsure of what it wants to be, trying to please different categories of gamer rather sticking to one or even two of them.
This also means that the game doesn’t particularly excel in any one particular area.  The combat is enjoyable but feels far looser than a game such as the sublime Bayonetta or God of War III.  Nier is something of a jack of all trades/master of none experience at times, but none of its elements can be described as being bad.

Navigating around the world will be frustrating for some, as the wide open spaces need to be backtracked several times during the course of the roughly thirty hour main game experience.  The game world isn’t exactly pretty either, it’s probably best described as functional.
But at least this means there isn’t any slowdown, and the game moves along a fair pace.  Functional is a word that can be used to describe a lot of things regarding Nier as a complete package.  It lacks the spit and polish of a truly flagship Square published title, and looks something like a title that was conceived and developed during the transition from the Xbox/PS2 generation to the 360 and PS3 versions that have been released.  Nier isn’t a particularly pretty game, but where is does truly shine is the soundtrack.

Nier contains some of the most memorable music I have heard in a game for a long time, and it seamlessly blends depending on which environment you are in.  Choirs sing and chant in the peaceful areas, string guitars play in the quiet library.  The score complements the action perfectly, and while you will hear it played over and over again (particularly some of the chants) it never grates to the point that you want to switch it off.

While the game isn’t what you would call a Triple A top tier developed title, that’s not to say that it’s a bad game.  Far from it, I’ve played far, far worse titles than this and Nier tries extremely hard to change things around while you are playing to keep you interested.  Walk into your house and the action flips from free roaming 3D to a side-on view.  During some of the combat sections the camera moves to a top down shot, then blending seamlessly back to regular action when you move onto the next section.

Ultimately I admire Square Enix for publishing a title like this, and stamping their name all over it.  It’s good to see what are typically such stanchly Japanese companies trying things out in an attempt to obtain a wider audience.  Nier tries hard to appeal to a broad range of people, but the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.
So as a third person action game is pales compared to its luminaries, and isn’t hardcore enough to be classed as a typical RPG.  Does it do enough to make me recommend it?  Yes, primarily because the game tries so very hard and the story is actually rather compelling.  It might not be the prettiest game around, but Nier sounds great, has decent voice acting and is a fun enough way to spend thirty hours.  Plus unlike Final Fantasy XIII, you don’t have to wait fifteen hours for the action to start.  Nier is worth taking a look at.

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Movies still rely on opening weekend figures to grab headlines, then go for the “long tail” with home release on DVD and Blu-ray, often followed by a special edition version a few months down the line.
In gaming terms the big opening weekend is just as important, and preorder bonuses are a great way of securing our money before you are able to get the shiny disc in your hopefully not too grubby palms.

Just recently I have embarked on another colossal bit of life laundry, the target in question this time was the loft (or attic for my friends outside of these shores).  Sally and I have now been together for almost fourteen years, and out loft contains a lot of years of…stuff.  I was going to say crap there, but most of it isn’t.
During that sort out the local charity shops did extremely well, especially with Xbox 360 games that rather than sell I donated to the Haiti fund and MIND (if you can have a favourite charity then MIND would be mine).
I was actually rather ashamed sorting through a lot of the stuff up there because I found scores and scores of DVDs that I didn’t even know I owned.
I regulary go through my disc inventory I keep downstairs and get rid of unwanted items, but in the loft I found boxed DVDs I had forgotten I had bought.  Yes some of them were even still sealed.  I’m positive that I’m not alone with this particular confession, but safety in numbers doesn’t even make up for the fact that I have spent hundreds (possibly even thousands) of pounds on stuff I don’t even remember buying.

Due to the fact that my shelves are heaving a sigh of relief actually having space on them again, and the ceiling isn’t in danger of collapsing under the weight of my twentysomething shopping binges, I have been extremely careful about what I’ve been buying lately.
Given that I will be out of regular contracted employment at the end of next week (as mentioned in my previous post) I have done something I should have done a long time ago, and cancelled preorders and reined in my spending.  Which brings me to the point of this post.

As I mentioned at the top of the screen, a new game comes out and I buy it so it is here for day one (usually the day before).  But then along came Bioshock 2 and things got interesting.
Just like thousands of other gamers I adored the original Bioshock, and I won’t bother droning on with a laundry list of things that made the game so enjoyable as far more talented writers have done so many times before me.  Nor will I mention the obligatory “didn’t need a sequel” argument.

The reviews came out and pretty much unanimously said that the game was a solid action titled, lacked the originality of the first but for a game that didn’t need a sequel it is well worth playing.  I knew that I wanted to play the game, but didn’t have to do so right at the second it was released.  After all, I still had other unfinished games to play.

But as soon as the game was released and friends were playing it online I was gripped with an overwhelming desire to play the game.  Did I really want to play it, or did I just want to conform and play it because my friends were doing so, and saying they enjoyed it?
A week passed, I didn’t buy it but kept an eye on Amazon where the price has now dropped to around £32.  By now I was starting to feel like some kind of immediacy junkie.  All throughout this weekend I have teetered on the verge of jumping in the car and driving to Tesco to buy it.  Even though it is £40 there, and I could have it on Tuesday for less.

This brings another of those “NOW!!!” points.  As someone who doesn’t particularly want disc based media any more (that is an article for another time) getting a copy of Bioshock 2 in my hands involves driving somewhere to buy it, or ordering it online.  But that’s so dull, isn’t it?  Having to actually (heaven forbid!) leave the house OR suffer the indignity of WAITING for it to be delivered the next day.  Probably by the same time tomorrow I wouldn’t want it anyway.

Which brings me to digital distribution.  Steam is a wonderful thing, and thanks to the ridiculous recent holiday sale bargains, a recipient of a large chunk of my money.  I love Steam, even though is does somewhat dangerously scratch the itch of “I want to play this right now”.  A couple of clicks, a download and then you are away.
And I would have been playing Bioshock 2 at launch if it wasn’t for one thing; the lack of support for the Xbox 360 controller for Windows.

Bioshock 2 is a Games For Windows Live game, but (like Fallout 3) is available on Steam.  Laughingly it is ten pounds cheaper than the GFW Live digital version too.  As my games PC is connected to a big screen TV it feels like a higher resolutioned version of the Xbox 360, and I could still get Achievements.  Except the controller isn’t supported, which seems like a major omission to me, but it makes my bank account a little healthier.  When I’m sat in a comfy chair in front of a big screen I want to game with a controller, not a keyboard rested on my lap and mouse to one side.

I have resisted the urge to buy Bioshock 2 this weekend by finally completing games that have been sitting around for a while.  I don’t want to start to play anything new until I have cleared the decks and can therefore say “Yes, I need to play this game now, as I have no others”.  That argument is inherently flawed anyway, but it makes me feel better.
I played Blue Toad Murder Files on the PlayStation 3 that I purchased at the end of 2009 (surprisingly good Whodunnit fun from the makers of Buzz, although the Announcer takes a lot of getting used to) and Shadow Complex on the Xbox 360.  I tried to get into Halo 3 ODST again but once again just couldn’t be bothered with it.
I have cleared out my Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games now.  But there are still a good ten or more unplayed games on Steam, and the Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles for the Wii that Sally bought me for Christmas hasn’t even been looked at yet.

At some point I will play Bioshock 2.  And Mass Effect 2 for that matter.  But for now I almost feel like an addict fresh out of rehab who is starting to see the error of their ways.  I’ll get to it, but not at full price and certainly not in the next couple of weeks.
Now if you could buy brand new releases digitally from the Xbox 360 dashboard then this could be a wholly different story…

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For the past few years there have been numerous articles written in countless magazines, on gaming web sites and blogs about the state of the Japanese gaming industry.  Where once Japanese companies, games and studios ruled the roost, now we find some of the largest players in the electronic entertainment business are from the US with behemoth publishers such as Activision and EA.

Even the Japanese companies themselves can see that games designed for a Western audience will guarantee better sales than a purely Japan focussed one.  Just look at Capcom designing Dead Rising for the ranks of zombie lovers.  Even they have now taken things one step further by farming out development of the sequel to a Canadian studio.  So a Japanese gaming that apes Western ideals now just being straight up developed in the West.

I am a big fan of these big budget Western developed titles, but there is something special and in many cases utterly insane about a Japanese developed game.  Especially one that provides a look into how the Japanese interpret Westerns tastes.
This is one of the reasons why I love the Resident Evil series so much.  The games are intrinsically Japanese, but are set in the US with over the top characters and storylines.  And frankly, there is nothing more utterly insane than Bayonetta.

While the box may say Sega, this is essentially a Capcom title with some Sega influences.  With developer Platinum Games being made up of former Capcom employees who were once Clover Studios.  Clover brought some critically adored games such as Viewtiful Joe and God Hand to the world, which fans worshipped but the general populous steered clear of in droves.

When the widely respected EDGE magazine here in the UK gave Bayonetta a 10 out of 10 score even I raised a quizzical eyebrow.  How could what looked like an evolved version of Devil May Cry earn such a coveted score?

I played Bayonetta on and off for all of last weekend, only stopping for family duties.  When I stopped playing on Friday night I dreamed about the game.  Any chance I got I was firing up the Xbox 360 and sneaking in some extra playtime.  For me to be so consumed by a game in this way is an extremely rare occurance these days.

The fact of the matter is this: Bayonetta is one of the finest action games I have ever played.  It takes the Devil May Cry style formula, updates it and makes it more accessible to novice players while not taking away a challenge for experienced ones.
The game looks and sounds stunning, and is littered with references to both Capcom and Sega games (you collect gold rings straight out of Sonic, and the music on the car radio in one cut scene is Magical Sound Shower from Outrun).

What playing Bayonetta for around ten hours these past few days has reminded me why I love Japanese games so much.  Because they can be intense, funny, utterly ridiculous and completely non-PC and on top of everything else the most important thing of all; FUN!

Bayonetta takes the best bits of my favourite gaming genres, twists them together, adds a pinch of genius and delivers a game that should be universally adored by anyone who has ever held a joypad.
I really hope that Bayonetta sells well, but it does seem to be a game from an almost dying breed.  You don’t get games like this from anywhere outside of Japan, but people need to keep buying them so the developers can keep making them.  This has the feel of God Hand with all of its ridiculous craziness but amped up even higher.

In fact…oh to heck with it.  Bayonetta is one of the best games I have ever played, and it is even getting close to nipping at the heels of Resident Evil 2 to become my favourite game of all time.  I have played a ton of identikit first person shooters, third person action and role playing games over the past few years that I can hardly remember the plot of.  It may be fresh in my mind, but Bayonetta is a game I will go back and play again and again.  Pure, inspired, insane genius.

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Thanks to the excessively cold temperatures this past week we went without any post until yesterday when this bumper crop arrived.  To be honest I’m amazed it all came at once

Planet Terror and Crank 2 were from the Play.com sale (£9.99 each, the only non-digital sale items I bought this..no wait..last year) and Bayonetta was released yesterday.  I need to reiterate what all of the gaming sites are saying which is that the PS3 version is incredibly broken.  360 version for anyone who wants to play it (and has both consoles, of course).

It is something of a rarity to actually have physical media these days.  As I mentioned in my Life Laundry post at the end of 2009, the idea of having a physical disc containing anything be it a movie, game or bit of computer software is starting to seem somewhat alien to me.

This was further enhanced by the incredible Steam sale that took place over the Christmas and new year period.  I have just recently started to get back into PC gaming mainly through the addition of an Xbox 360 wireless controller kit.  Buying action titles such as Silent Hill: Homecoming that can be played with a controller was a no brainer especially as the entertainment PC I use in my office is still relatively beefy despite being behind the times a little with graphics power.  Plus it is still quieter than the Xbox 360.

Like many others I’m sure, I did get a little bit click-happy with my Steam purchases with the £1.50 “gateway” bargains leading to some slightly pricier impulse purchases.  But as I have already struck Dark Void and Army of Two: The Fortieth Day from my console purchase list after underwhelming demos, I have plenty to keep me entertained for a good long while.

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After my last post where I ruminated on the slightly uneasy feeling I had playing Call of Duty: World at War, I did make it through to the end.
Having made it through to the spectacular set piece ending and the message it delivers overall I did enjoy the game, and if it was designed to make an impression as well as make a land fill of money for Activision then it’s mission accomplished for Treyarch.

It reminded me of THAT scene in Modern Warfare where one of your characters dies from radiation poisoning and his injuries.  That was a truly shocking moment that to my mind hadn’t been done before in a game.  There is nothing particularly subtle about a Call of Duty game, but Infinity Ward managed to turn out a scene that was remarkably well handled.  Modern Warfare puts across its message in a slightly more heavy handed way.  Both equally effective in their own ways.

I also tried out the inFamous demo over the weekend, very much like Crackdown.  An open world+super powers always = goodness.  It is released in the US today and here on Friday.  I’m trying desperately hard not to preorder it at the moment and be swept up in the tidal wave of positive reviews and forum comments.  As I currently have a handful of Wii titles that are still unplayed it would be rather excessive of me to add another game to the pile.  Give it six weeks and there will be at least ten pounds off it anyway, or I will just add it to my rental queue.

Finally, my Wii related fitness charge continues apace.  After a couple of false starts yesterday (trying to exercise when you are angry is always a recipe for disaster) I managed a full half hour on Wii Fit, and even managed to complete the ten minute free jog mode without stopping to catch my breath.

The new EA Sports Active which arrived today will no doubt be a very different beast altogether.

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Still, it’s not exactly a race to watch it all, the media isn’t going to self destruct if unwatched for a few months (or even years).
I have mentioned in previous posts that I have recently subscribed to the GAME rentals service, and am now three games in and extremely happy with the service.

But here’s something of an oddity, my first two games were 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (well documented here in an earlier post) and Wanted: Weapons of Fate.  Both are definitely B-tier shooters but the one thing they did have going for them was that they were fun, and I quite happily sat around for hours playing them through to completion in a single day.

But then Call of Duty: World at War arrived on Friday and despite it being a very competant shooter that does set pieces like no other franchise, I just can’t bring myself to complete it at the moment.  Even when I am playing it I’m hoping the level will soon be over so I can turn it off and go and do something else.

I have to give developer Treyarch credit for the game though, despite being the Infinity Ward B-Team, it is a great improvement on their last CoD title which benefits enormously from running the latest version of the Modern Warfare engine.
There is something about World at War that makes me feel…uneasy.  You are warned at the start of the game that it contains disturbing imagery, which is primarily old newsreel footage from the war which brings everything home and makes the game all the more shocking.  When you are fighting aliens or space marines you know that the creatures have been designed by a group of people purely for ones amusement.  But with a game that is based on actual events when you are carrying out the self same acts that are displayed in the archive footage it almost feels wrong in some way.

One thing is for sure, WaW is a very visceral title, but one where you spray Japanese soldiers with a flamethrower, then hear the bodies cracking from the heat afterwards… I don’t know, perhaps I am just feeling a little more sensitive than usual.  It’s playing too many happy, smiley Wii games that’s to blame.

Speaking of which, I increased my Wii library with Animal Crossing, Madworld and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.  Not that I have played any yet, the long pre-summer evenings of late have meant that by the time the sun goes down I’m too exhausted to do anything other than vegetate in front of Buffy (two episodes to go until the end of season 2).

But rounding things up for today, I hope all of my friends in the US are having a good Memorial Day weekend, and be sure to celebrate those who gave their lives so we can enjoy living ours.

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While I was impatiently waiting for Windows Easy Transfer to copy 2Gb of family information over to an external USB drive (which took an awfully long time thanks to the old machine having USB 1 ports) I watched my cousins Annabel and Mollie playing on their Wii.

Like tens of thousands of families across the UK (and the world for that matter) they got a Wii for Christmas. They love it too, playing Wii Sports and Harry Potter. It was at that point I realised that the likes of me, the so called “hardcore” gaming set can be mind numbingly small minded at times.

The Wii is the console we thumb our noses at. Two Gamecubes stuck together, Instant Waggle, mini-game collections. Rubbish third party support, blah blah blah de blah.
But you know what? The games may not look like the finest that the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 can produce, but they really don’t have to. Nor should they for that matter.

Call it a fad, or a toy or whatever you want but the Wii succeeds in doing exactly what it was designed for. It’s cheap, is compatible with everyone’s TV, and it’s easy to play. Dear lord, people even have FUN playing on it, can you imagine? There are no forum wars between ten year old girls and grandparents over who has the madder skillz in Wii Bowling, just folks having a good time.

Which brings me to the point of this post. We bought a Wii again last weekend. I say again because we bought one when they first launched a couple of years ago, but after it sat gathering dust under the TV for six months it went. Fortunately the stock shortages were still in full effect back then, and I sold the machine for what I paid for it.

Just recently I have been listening to John Davison’s What They Play podcast, and it’s heartening to hear about so many families who are getting into videogames and having fun playing together.
I spent nearly six and a half hours playing through Wanted: Weapons of Fate on Saturday afternoon, and while it wasn’t a completely unpleasant experience I couldn’t help feeling being locked away in my home office probably wasn’t the best use of my time. After two weekends of third person action games it would be nice to play something fun and daft for a few hours. I have also been looking for an activity that both of us can enjoy together, as the time Sally and I have spent together over the last few weeks has been rather scant due to my business expansion endeavours.

It was Wii Fit that really sealed the deal. A couple of Sally’s friends have it, and given that I keep losing and then gaining weight with distressing regularity we thought at least I would exercise if I was playing a videogame!
Fortunately Game is currently selling a Wii and Wii Fit bundle, so I struggled back to the West Quay car park on Sunday morning laden down with an assortment of goodies. I have to say that I really love it.

There is no way in this world or the next that I would ever go jogging, but I will quite happily jog on the spot in Wii Fit as various Mii’s wave and run past. Twee perhaps, but anything that makes me laugh and gets me moving must be doing something right.
I was spared the indignity of being told I was obese, just, when I first weighed myself on the Balance Board. The bar stopped just below obese, and my Mii suddenly grew something of a pot belly. This coming just after Sally had been told she was perfect just as she is (which is something I don’t need a games console to tell me) I felt rather ashamed.

Pete & Sally Cullen, yesterday

But after three days I’m still going, only fifteen minutes a day so far this week but at least its fifteen minutes that I haven’t been sat on my backside eating chocolate. I even managed to do the jogging without keeling over today, and got a 100% in the abs workout.

But it’s not time to call me Casual Cullen just yet, I spent my birthday money ordering Animal Crossing (yes I know it’s the same game again but I’m not keeping my Gamecube wired up just to play one game any more) and Madworld today. Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles will be next, and no doubt Super Mario Galaxy will also appear on the GAME rentals queue.

Next up from the rental service should be X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so I can keep a good balance of happy fun and mindless slaughter. It’s what every thirty three year old needs.

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So clearly it makes more sense to rent titles I will only want to play once (whereas serious multiplayer titles such as Gears 2 or Left 4 Dead will always be in my collection), and then get rid of.
It is also a good way of playing games that I would never want to buy knowing full well that they are either of dubious quality, or just may not be the game for me.  And £40 is a lot of money to spend to find that out, and you can only do that so many times before finally learning the hard way.

So for £10 a month I can have as many games as I like, one at a time.  I filled up my list with stuff such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wanted: Weapons of Fate (there’s a large use of colons in game titles these days) and Riddick.
Oh and the game I’ve been wanting to try out because pretty much everyone who has played it has said “You know what, it should be terrible but it is actually a lot of fun.”, and that is 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

Rather unfortunately I have succumed to a cold bug that Sally has had all week, so my plans for going out and enjoying the sun today have been put on hold.  Instead I’ve taken to being wrapped up warm, dosing myself up with cold medicine and warming up my gaming glands before the Fable II DLC is released tomorrow.
The game arrived this morning, and in a move that I can only described as unprecedented I have already completed it!  I sat down and played the game through in one sitting, stopping only to make cups of tea.

By all rights the game SHOULD be appalling.  Take the Unreal Engine, crank out a Gears of War knock off starring 50 Cent and one of three members of the G-Unit.  It sounds bad right?  But it’s actually a lot of fun.
BotS is something of a guilty pleasure game, almost like a straight to DVD action movie.  Actually, think of a Jason Statham movie and you sort of get the idea.  People love them because they are what they are: daft action movies that are tremendous fun.

The storyline is so ridiculous it can’t really be called a story.  50 Cent and the aforementioned G-Unit play a show in “Unnamed Middle Eastern Country” but don’t get paid.  The promoter offers a diamond encrusted skull (still with me?) as collateral until he can cough up the ten million dollars you are owed (suspend reality now, I’m sure there is no way that 50 Cent could summon that kind of money for a show as his music career does seem to be somewhat on the wane).

Sadly the skull gets stolen and Mr Cent and his homeys need to retrieve said skull.  What this leads to is a fairly generic action game across a series of missions (nine in total).
What continues to astound me now even as I’m typing this is that it is a very solid shooter!  The level of polish is by no means up to a Gears level, but the game looks good.  The combat is fine, the weapons selection solid and the whole thing feels very satisfying.  There are a couple of vehicle sections where you drive and your homey does the shooting, and one on-rails helicopter shooter which is fantastically satisfying.  Ironically, sales have been miniscule.

This is definitely a three out of five star title, maybe even a four.  What really makes it a cheesy action movie guilty pleasure is the dialogue spouted between “Fiddy” and his G-Unit compadre.  F-bombs drop in literally every sentence, making this a game that earns its 18 rating before the first five minutes are up.

Action game fans searching for something decent to play during the current leaner gaming months could do far, far worse than check out 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.  I’m going to have to check my temperature again, I can’t believe I just typed that.  Nor can I believe that I am seriously considering playing through it again before sending it back.

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The unofficial, but sort of official PlayStation blog for the UK, Three Speech is shuttering its doors and saying farewell today.  This is to make way for a new, more shiny, and 100% official this time version of the US PlayStation Blog for us Euro types.

While it comes as no surprise that this is finally happening, I can’t help but feel slightly sad after all the help in the early days I received from the TS camp.  Through them I got to see the PS3 before release, bask in the glow of the then Sony Worldwide Studios head honcho Phil Harrison (and his enormous hands), met almost all of the Red Rant (RIP) boys (sorry Tom, I know you were there, we just didn’t meet up) and of course the single most important thing: Free food and beer.
There was also THAT podcast as well, which always brings a smile whenever I think of it.  Sadly, never got asked to do a second (although we did record one)

Having a link from Three Speech to this blog also helped enormously with my numbers, helping to grow initial first month stats of around 30 unique visitors a day, to over 200 and then eventually up to the roughly 2000 who now pass through.
So farewell Three Speech, and thanks for all your assistance over the last few years.  I would wear my “Semi Official” TS t-shirt as a tribute, if only it still fit.

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Since my last post which came just after I had completed the game for the first time, I’ve been ploughing through it again to enjoy the sheer volume of unlockable items.
If you are a gaming podcast listener and listen to the excellent Giant Bombcast this week then you will have already heard the tip I’m going to give here from Vinny, but I’ll go through it again anyway.

One of the things the Resident Evil games has always been good at is replay value and unlockables.  Gamers with long memories will know that this goes way back to the very first game, where upon completion you could unlock various weapons with unlimited ammo.  The great grand Daddy of them all being the unlimited ammo rocket launcher (awarded if you completed the game in under three hours).  The rocket launcher has always been a staple of the franchise, and RE2 added extra missions for Hunk and Tofu, new costumes for the characters and RE4 gave us the incredible Mercenaries mode.

Take all of those goodies that have been building up in the thirteen years these games have been released and you have Resident Evil 5 being the pinnacle of the series for giving you reasons to go back through again and again.
As the series has moved away from its survival horror roots to the action title with horror elements we have today, the game is of course now broken down into six separate chapters, most of which are further split into three acts.

Upon completion of the game the first time around you are able to go back through and play each level in whichever order you choose.  Statistics from the previous game are displayed and the emphasis is on getting through the levels as quickly as possible, and achieving the ultimate S ranking for each.  The better you do in a level, the most points you are awarded.  What do points make?  Yes, prizes.  You can exchange your hard earned points for costume unlocks and in particular, infinite ammo for weapons.

So this is my tip (bringing it back to Vinny and the Bombcast), the magnum is the most powerful weapon in the game.  It always is, save for the rocket launcher of course.  When you have a magnum, upgrade it straight away.  Spend all of your gold on maxxing out its stats, and when this is done you will also unlock an even better magnum for your killing pleasure (this also applies to many of the weapons, maxx them out and you get a special new one).

With the original magnum fully “tricked out”, you can then go into the Bonus Features menu and exchange your points for the infinite ammo option.  Infinite ammo is unlocked for each weapon individually, so choose wisely!  Then when you have purchased this upgrade you are pretty much an unstoppable killing machine.  Levels can be whipped thorugh, giving you even more points and unlockables to play with.

Last night I completed the game for a second time, and further unlocked more goodies.  As you play through each level over and over again the entire game completion time will go down rapidly.  Get that down to below five hours total completion and you unlock the infinite ammo rocket launcher.  This turns the game into a knock around barrel of fun as you lay waste to everything in your path.  You are nigh on invincible with this and the magnum.

During my second game I spent all my money upgrading the ultimate special magnum, and at the time of this writing am around 500 points shy of being able to unlock the infinite ammo option for that weapon, leading to one shot boss kills.
I swore blind to myself that when I finished the game for the second time that I would move on and finally start playing Killzone 2.  You know what?  When I finish work today I will go home, switch on the 360 and start RE5 again.

Resident Evil 5 is a fantastic game, and one that has reminded me just why I love this series so much and herald the second game as my favourite of all time.  And I’ve been around for a long time.

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In my extremely slim defence, the demo really was rather…underwhelming. If I was a big ponce I may even say it was a little bit difficult and frustrating, but that was the old me. The pre-holiday whinger if you like.

I will ignore the whole RE5/racism debate (ever been to Africa? Not a great deal of white folks there, that’s all I’m going to say. The natives on the island level was a bit harsh, mind) and address the whole issue of the controls. As we have all become used to conventional third person action game controls in titles such as Gears of War and Dead Space, it does feel a little antiquated returning to the Resident Evil school of not being able to move while shooting.

This whole disorientation lasts for ten minutes at the most, and seasoned RE4 veterans will have no problems dropping back into the RE control mindset. Initially it is a little confusing and disorientating, but then you realise that Resident Evil just wouldn’t work so well with Gears-style controls. If you could run around the environment firing like a madman it would kill the tension and atmosphere of the whole game. Some may say they should design a better game, well perhaps you should head back to Gears then.

As for the game itself, it looks gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful, regardless of the fact that Chris looks like he’s been overdosing on Weight Gain 4000 (BEEFCAAAKE!) and takes up a large amount of screen real estate. The story is typically daft with your usual mix of over the top pantomime villains, and in some ways feels like a Resident Evil greatest hits.

For yes, Resident Evil 5 does finally wrap up pretty much everything in the entire series so far. 4 was a side step, with the G and T viruses a thing of the past. There was a little bit of Umbrella with Wesker and Ada, but it was pretty much “This is an action game with a hint of Resident Evil”.

Five returns to the original “bad pharmaceutical company does bad things to folks” storyline and by the time the credits roll a neat bow is placed on the franchise to date. All thirteen years of it.
Capcom is known for wrapping up its games extremely quickly, with the final cut scene being over almost before it began and leaving the player with the feeling of “I played all those hours for THAT?”. Get ready to experience that feeling again.

Five is most definitely an evolution of Four. The controls have been tweaked slightly, and I found them to be perfectly adequate after getting to grips with them once again.
The early levels definitely feel like a slightly generic third person action title, but after a while you hit more familiar Resident Evil territory. You can’t have one of these games without some form of experimental labs and some former enemies for good measure thrown into the mix.

Resident Evil 4 was such a massive departure for the franchise that there was no way Capcom could make its sequel completely different again. Its four year development has been a heck of a long wait, but ultimately it’s worth it even if RE5 is a little bit “more of the same”.

One final note, the co-op gameplay is fantastic. I’ve only played through the campaign (a rather scant feeling eight hours, after the seemingly never-ending RE4 this did feel rather short in comparison) with the AI controlled Sheva, and that can be an exercise in frustration. Sometimes she will just stand there occasionally firing the hand gun even though there is a more powerful weapon in her inventory. But on the whole the AI is pretty decent. I’m looking forward to playing through the game again over Live with a proper living, breathing human. It’ll do for now until the Nexus 6 eventually comes along.

In short. It’s Resident Evil. In HD. That’s good enough for me.

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When I first started playing I couldn’t help wondering just why I spent seventy hours playing through GTA IV twice because it just wasn’t gelling for me.  These new biker characters didn’t seem particularly interesting, a dude gets out of prison and you’re riding with your posse and away you go.  Then I dove into the options, turned off the grain filter that Rockstar implemented for Lost and Damned to make it look more grungey and got rid of the sepia tones so that Liberty City looks like it should and THEN it clicked.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s your usual GTA formula and to be honest I really am starting to get a little tired of the whole “Go to place, have something go bad, kill a bunch of people, repeat to fade” mission structure.  But L&D redeems itself by adding in the whole team biker mechanic.  Right from the first mission you can call up your brothers and have them come and help you out.  This also brings in a slight RPG level up element to the procedings as with each fight they join you on their toughness improves so they can do more damage to enemies.

Before you know it there are multiple characters you can perform missions for as well as the usual side quests such as races, turf warfare and calling characters up to help them out for extra cash.
If you go through the main story quest, do a couple of races and help out Stubbs the congressman you are looking at a playtime of just over eight hours.  I’m sure that if you do everything you can possibly do in the game you must be looking at over ten hours, which is bang in line with what Rockstar said about the game being a third of the size of GTA IV.

What Rockstar does so well with GTA is its characters, and right from the opening cut scene you get a real sense of who these people are just from the flawless dialogue.  As you would expect from an 18 rated game, yes the dialogue is absolutely riddled with f-bombs and other assorted curse words.  If you’re offended by that sort of thing…well you wouldn’t be playing GTA in the first place but I guess that’s my small “buyer beware” comment.

I hated riding the bikes in IV, the handling was always so twitchy and you came off so easily.  Flip that around here, and most of the game HAS to be played sat on the back of a bike, and Rockstar have tweaked the controls so the whole feel of the bikes is different.  In many ways it plays like driving a car in IV, and what would you know, as Johnny is a biker he doesn’t have such a good grasp of the car driving.

I had a blast with the main storyline in L&D, but don’t expect a happy happy, joy joy finale and anyone who has completed GTA IV knows that you finish that game off possibly even worse off than you did at the start, albeit with deeper pockets.  When you go around causing mayhem and murdering at will you’re probably not going to go on a gang outing to Disneyland.

The games storyline interweaves nicely with IV, and you will see Nico again and this time you will do missions such as the museum escape from Johnny’s perspective.  It’s just another nice little touch in a game that is littered with nods and winks to its predecessor.  You will also encounter characters like Ray and Elizabetha from IV, as well as a former girlfriend whose drug addiction will cause nothing but problems.

It is the characterisation and dialogue that makes GTA stand head and shoulders above pretenders such as Saints Row.  I recently completed Saints Row 2 but more out of some sort of obsessive compulsive duty that I must get value for money and finish my games, rather than actually wanting to see how the story panned out.  There were times that I almost felt sick to my stomach during Saints Row 2, as that game has its moral compass set so far South, you can’t empathize with the protagonist at all.  He (or she) has no interesting back story, or hopes or dreams.  He is just a wanton psychopath who will take down anything and anyone who stands in his way.

Here you care more about Johnny and particularly his relationship with his girl Ashley.  Not so much as you did for Nico, but this is a character who is already living the life as opposed to being forced into it.  That you are already an established character makes for a much tighter story experience that keeps alive the “one more try” element.

Ultimately The Lost and Damned will be a joy for the millions of 360 gamers who loved the original, and will no doubt make a ton of money for Rockstar and Microsoft (who have to recoup their significant $50 million exclusivity bounty).  It won’t win any new fans to the franchise, but it certainly shouldn’t lose any either.  1600 points for ten hours of gameplay?  It’s a steal.

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Over the years Europe has been something of a disfigured stepchild to gaming companies.  Waiting months or even years for console launches, game releases et al was par for the course to us.  Worldwide PS3 launch?  Yeah sorry Europe we can’t make enough, see you in four to five months.
It’s not that bad nowadays though.  Big game releases tend to hit the same week, or at worst a fortnight later.  We’ve probably never had it so good.  Yesterday (Thursday) we had demos of Halo Wars on Xbox 360 and Killzone 2 on PS3.

A demo for a big game released before it hits the shelves isn’t anything new of course.  But what is strange, is that here in Europe everybody has gotten it.  Live in the US?  Yeah sorry you need to preorder the game from Game Stop and get a code.  But then give it a while and then the demo will be made available to everyone.  So wait a moment.  You have to preorder and part purchase a game so that you can try it out and see whether you might want to buy it?  For once, I’m happy to be living in the self proclaimed “sceptred isle”.

As for the demo itself, it’s big.  Or more specifically it is a big download, 1.2Gb to you soldier.  For around ten minutes of gameplay.  Yes that’s right, this is not a long demo.  You get to fight roughly three waves of enemies, but it’s an enjoyable three waves.
Killzone 2 doesn’t do anything different with the shooter genre, it’s still the same thing: Go here, shoot these guys.  Move, open a door, shoot some more guys.  Enter a room…shoot guys.  Your partner needs time to work on a door lock.  What do you do?  That’s correct, YOU SHOOT SOME MORE GUYS!  But what it does with tried and tested mechanics it does very well.

First up, the game looks gorgeous.  Absolutely stunning, hands down one of the best looking shooter I have ever played.  It also gets a major win pass for having DTS audio that is incredibly aggressive.  It’s right up there with Dead Space and Metal Gear Solid 4 in the “audio to disturb you and your neighbours” stakes.
After completing the demo for the first time I did feel a little underwhelmed with it though.  It’s generic FPS 101 with pretty graphics and incredible sound (the dialogue is presented in Swear-O-Vision).  But when I played it a second time it really clicked into place.

The controls are a little unconventional for starters.  The Dualshock 3/Sixaxis controller really isn’t that well suited to shooters, and it’s a case of really re-learning how to play games like this after spending so much time with the 360 pad.  The guns feel quite different from most shooters, you are better off taking single shots rather than holding down the fire button.  Here you have recoil, and the reticle will jump and skip around the screen making the game more of a challenge.

I already have Killzone 2 on a preorder, and am now looking forward to the final release.  I know it will be yet another shooter to play through, but as it looks and sounds so great I don’t particularly mind.

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2008 was no different, but having a month off work I managed to plough through the mini mountain of titles that sat on my desk, with the thought that some of the larger games I would play during the leaner times in early 2009.

But it would appear that the publishers didn’t get that memo, and there are a host of titles due for release in February (mainly shifted from Q4 so as not to get trampled in the Christmas rush). I’m sure there are plenty more but these are the releases that I’m most interested in (NOTE: These are the UK release dates).

13^th – F.E.A.R. 2
17^th – GTA IV: The Lost and Damned
20^th – Street Fighter IV
26^th – Prince of Persia DLC
27^th – Killzone 2

That’s going to be pricey. Top of the list for me there are the two DLC packs for GTA and Prince of Persia. Regular readers and followers of my Twitter feed will know that I spent a LOT of time playing it last year, but the ending was decidedly…underwhelming. A typical “to be continued…” ending and given that Ubisoft grumbled about the games sales recently (apparently 2.2 million copies worldwide is a “slow burner” these days) I feared we may not get a conclusion to the story.

But IGN is reporting that an Epilogue DLC pack will be coming on the 26^th of February that adds a new location, ramps up the difficulty, gives a new attack for the Prince and a power for Elika as well as another couple of unlockable character skins. Prince of Persia was something of a palette cleanser for me after a procession of shooters I warmed to the rather more pedestrian and considerably easier gameplay. I just wish it wasn’t being released a day before I go away on holiday! At least I’ll have something to play when I get back to try and kill the jetlag.

As for current gaming, I have just completed Fable II for a second time with my evil character, who is now attempting to make amends and return to the light side. It’s fascinating to watch as you slowly become a more popular person around Albion again, the scars are going, the devil horns have finished and the eyes have changed from green, to red and back to blue.

I love Fable II, it’s the game that most surprised me last year and I can’t wait for more DLC, which must surely be on the way.
My next sojourn could be on the PC, I bought Sam & Max Season One which was a special offer on Steam one weekend. It’ll be a change of pace, which right now I could definitely do with.

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It feels like I’m chasing my tail a little at the moment.  Last year I had so much free time after work that I could laze around for hours watching movies, TV shows and playing games.  But right now my calendar seems to be full with appointments to do this and that, leaving very little free time.  Not that I should be complaining, it’s good to be busy.
I will do my best to redress the balance this weekend by doing as little as possible.  Just not having to fall out of bed at some ungodly hour to drive 30 miles in the pouring rain will be a bonus.

But the spare time I have had this week has been mainly spent playing yet more Fable II.  I just can’t quit that game.  The Knothole Island expansion that was released last week sucked me back in, and now I’m playing all the way through the game again with my new, evil lady character.

Speaking of games that destroy hours of time, it’s almost time to rekindle my obsession with Grand Theft Auto IV as the first DLC pack “The Lost and Damned” will be released on February 17th for a pocket troubling 1600 Microsoft Points (according to the Microsoft Points Converter web site, that’s around £14).  Word on the street is that the expansion is supposed to be around a third of the size of the original game.  Xbox Live has been pretty rock solid over the last few months, but if there’s one thing that can bring the service to its knees then it could possibly be this.  I hope not of course, I want to “get my game on” as soon as possible.

I also tried out the demo for F.E.A.R. 2 last night.  The game that was Project Origin because they couldn’t use the original F.E.A.R. name, but then everyone had a big hug, made up and it then became F.E.A.R.2 – Project Origin.  It’s another shooter.  You shoot dudes and they die, and you can do it in slow motion.  That’s about it.
Actually no it’s not, the game is actually a lot of fun and is positively dripping in creepy atmosphere.  The whole “evil child” thing is a little played out these days, but there are some great jump scare moments, the combat is solid and there’s a great section at the end where you get to ride around in a big mech suit destroying all and sundry.  What may put some people off is the fact that this is very much a shooter that was designed for the PC that has been adapted to the consoles.  By which I mean if you are used to console FPS’ like Halo, Resistance, etc then this may feel a little twitchy and floaty.  My advice, turn down the sensitivity for the right analog stick if you are playing on 360.  There is also a demo for the PC on Steam if that is your weapon of choice.  I’m going to give that demo a try when I get a chance.

So for games February is looking like a rather packed month, you have Killzone 2 on PS3, the GTA DLC on 360, F.E.A.R. 2 and then a couple of weeks later while I’m cruising around tropical islands Resident Evil 5 will be here.

Two cups of Rocket Fuel down, the rain has stopped and there’s blue sky outside.  Best get cracking…

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Oh, and my Steam username is petecullen (all lower case).

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