My life is over…..

Psymonkee    Gaming, Life    

All thanks to 2 games.

Anyone that has their hand in the gaming circle will know that Rock Band 2 came out this past Friday (21st). Considering how much time I have racked up Rock Band 1 single & multiplayer since the end of May alone I forsee very few other games getting a look in for sometime.

Except perhaps Mirrors Edge. The time trials and speed runs are addictive as hell and might make me stop rocking for 3 minutes.

Also the NXE came out this past Wednesday and quite honestly it’s lovely. Looks nice, runs very quickly (bar the marketplace) and of course allows installation of games to the hard drive. A feature which I now love (especially whilst playing Mirrors Edge….) despite the requirement for the disc to be in the drive.

Finally something that sort of slipped by quietly was a 5 year anniversary. Those 5 years are the 5 I have been working at Safeway/Morrisons. I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad though…..but I’ll leave that to another day….

Gaming Frenzy…..

Psymonkee    Gaming    

*****THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS*****

So this week I ended up with 3 days off having asked for the Friday off to make sure I could go and see Airbourne and apparently getting weekends off too. Excellent I thought – lets play some games! So much was this a good idea I finished 2 in 3 days!

So on Thursday night I sat down on my favourite chair and ignored all friend requests on the 360 and sat down to play Gears of War 2. I had a checkpoint from partway into Act 3 which gave me a decent start on the night. After feeling a bit tired from work I waited till about 1am to get started (obviously) and never stopped playing right until the credits rolled.

One hell of a ride though I must say. Plenty of shooting, fighting and caves big enough to use a mortar in! Plenty of nice twists and fresh ideas (I wanna ride a Brumak! ) and whilst the ending was fairly easy I think it fitted in nicely with the game.

A couple of things did bother me however – where the hell were the Beserkers!? They were brilliant and really changed the pacing of the first game and made you think a little abotu your actions. The game could also have used a little more variety in enemies as fighting what felt like my 100th Reaver in the same level got a little tiresome….Anyway enough moaning – I enjoyed the game throughly and fully look forward to trying to get better at the multiplayer.

The other game I finished this week was Mirrors Edge. Quite simply this is a phenominal game that I reckon everyone should play. For those who have no idea what I talking about this game is essentially free-running in first person. It can make some sequences fairly tricky to do but feels immensly rewarding when you do them right

On the the whole the game encourages you to use the enviroment to your advantage and generally discourages gunplay altogether. There’s even an achievement for finishing the whole game without killing anyone with a gun! However you can still use your fists and feet to perform some pretty brutal moves that can stun/knockout enemies extremely quickly. Combined with blasting past them, running up a wall turn round and jumping on their head this can quite a lethal skill set.

A definate plus point to this game is the intensity of it. From very early on in the game you get used to running away from the ‘blues’ (police) and trying to avoid not only snipers but regularly trying to lose helicopters! This obviously leads to some very exciting chase sequences where a single mistake can see you shredded by bullets.

Whilst the overall story mode is fairly short (I purchased Friday night, finished Sunday night) there is plenty of longeivety added not only via achievements but also the speedrun & timetrial modes. Whilst there is a guided way through the single player levels those with good eyes and balls of steel will see many alternate routes. Whilst their is no online mode you can download ghosts of other peoples times which will give you some sort of guide as to where your insultingly slow.

Tied to this is an amazing soundtrack which goes right from frantic up tempo when being chased by helicopters to chilled out ambient whilst climbing tall buildings and running along rooftops. Overall the whole package is amazingly well put together and a simply stunning use of the Unreal Engine to boot.

Sadly I have to go back to work on Monday (errr today 17/11/2008) but on a positive note this week see’s the sequel to one of my most played online games come out….Rock Band 2! Roll on Thursday….

What a disaster….

Psymonkee    Gaming, General News, Humour    

So as per my previous post I was away at a LAN over the weekend. Good fun for all involved with a chance to chill, chat, drink and play games. Only not for me this time

All the problems began when I got to the venue and realised I’d forgotten my booze Yeah I could buy some more but no one seems to carry my current favourite drink (Bacardi Berry fact fans ). Then came the worst bit ever.

A LAN is primarliy my chance to play games, lots of games completely uninterrupted on any format I can get my hands on. However after sitting around on the floor neatly wiring up my PC (no idea why :p) I pushed the power button and got…..nothing. Well actually that’s not true – the on-board speaker let out a single long beep.

No problem I thought! I’m in a room full of computers and computer enthusiats, surely someone will be able to help diagnose this. Answers came back thick and fast that it was GFX adapter or memory. Not a real problem then as I had changed the GFX card before heading out to the LAN (7800GT -> 9800GT). Quick reseat later and turn the power back on.

*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*

****!

In the end I gave up and played on the 360 instead. Then a little shopping picking up Fable 2 (£30 @ Sainsburys ) and Farcry 2. However with both games having a single player story I proceeded to play Rock Band with anyone who I could convice into playing.

Come Saturday I had another go at fixing the PC. Even went as far as removing the CPU and rebuilding everything. Still no joy. Then a fellow LAN attendee (Ultra_Extreme) tried dropping his GFX card in which was a less powerful nVidia 6250. BAM! It boots. The celebration ends when windows decides to install updates, determines a hardware change and then undoes everything.

After that debacle I just decided to leave it till I got home and keep playing the 360. Luckily that worked ok all weekend

Sunday saw me travelling home and dropping Nokkon off on the way. 3.5 hours to his place and 4 back to mine. Heck of a drive but the weekend was worth it. That is until I get approximaely 100 miles from where Nokkon lives and notice my phone is lit up. That’s odd I thought and took a closer look. Nokkon had called me 3 times.

Bluetooth headset on and I called him back. Then the 3rd bit of bad news struck. Whilst I had dropped him off at home OK (and probably in slightly better health than when he left ) I still had his monitor in the back of my car. Over 100 miles away….

Never good. A quick chat and we decided we’d both cocked up and we’d sort out shipping it back to him ASAP. Only problem being that every man and his dog will happily pick up a package and deliver it elsewhere for under a tenner with one small snag. They refuse to offer compensation on computer monitors. That meant the cheapest insured way to send it was via Parcelforce at some £31!!!

Luckily a cheaper option prevailed. Although not next day I have found an alternative carrier that still offers no insurance but only charges in pints of beer Turns out my parents are heading to roughly the right area for a weekend away (Peace at last! ) and have offered to take the monitor back with them!

SHORT VERSION FOR LAZY GITS:

Went to a LAN, No booze, broken PC, stole someone’s monitor…

Not the best weekend on record….but there’s always next time

LAN Time!

Psymonkee    Gaming, General News    

That’s right That crazy time of year again where I make trips in the order of 700 miles plus to play computer games in another part of the country. With strangers. I’m wierd me

I’ll be online at the LAN and no doubt be uploading photos and chatting rubbish. Anyone else thats going and is reading this then I’ll see you at GT14!

**** YEAH! I AM A ROCK GOD!

Psymonkee    Gaming    

Well sort of….

For the last 2 months (at least) I have been trying to finish off Rock Bands Expert guitar career. Only a small stumbling block of Green Grass & High Tides (GG&HT) to get past. A 10 minute long southern rock track. With 2 solos with a combined length of around 8 mins. Always fun. First ever go and I failed at about 34%. Not very good but it was anew song. Then as time went on the failing happened further into the song. Then I hit a point where I could fail at exactly 85% each time. Anyone reading who has played this song knows EXACTLY where I mean.

Getting easily frustrated with it I gave up until this week. Really hammered this one song since Monday (in excess of 50 attempts) and started failing at a crushing 96%

Thought I’d have afew goes post work and failed at 85% again 3 times in a row. Then it happened….

10/10/2008 – A Glorious Day! (P.S – Davey I beat you! :p)

Music Madness!

Psymonkee    Gaming    

Another update so soon after the last? Accidentally left the last post unpublished so it got delayed a tiny bit. How silly of me.

Anyhoo – Music Madness!

Rock Band has had some fine additional content released for it thus far (Boston Track Pack/Judas Priest Album etc.) but over the last 2 weeks something awesome has happenend. First we got a Megadeth Album (Peace Sells….But Who’s Buying) less the title track (it’s on the RB2 disc) then the following week we got some filler.

However yesterday after a delay of 1 month an awesome album was finally released! That album of course was Moving Pictures by Rush – simply a fantastic album by all accounts which brings us not only the original version of Tom Sawyer (on disc song was a cover) but also one of my favourite instrumental tracks ever: YYZ!

So awesome are those songs I’ve yet to play any of the others….

Also released were individual songs from Bad Religion, Kasabian, The Cult and The Stone Roses. Now I have what I hope is enough points for the rumoured Offspring track pack and thats me out of points again

Anyway – off to jam

Oh also head over to Nokkonwud.com and buried in the comments of the Fankoo post is a generous offer from Zico!

Bargain-tastic!

Psymonkee    Gaming    

Hmmm sort of stopped short on posting about the Too Human & Castle Crashers demo’s. Too bad.

Anyway last time I posted to this here blog I was on a weeks holiday from work. Sadly this now means I’m back at work and still hating it However there is an upside!

This week there has been a special offer in place in the Home & Leisure section of the company I work for (Morrisons.) Special offer in the fact that they were offering all PS3 & X360 chart titles at £25 – a decent £15 saving on the standard price. The only catch being that staff discount is no longer deductable from the bill. Mind at 10% the special offer in place exceeds the staff discount by a large amount.

So for the princely sum of £50 I purchased 2 games: Tiger Woods 2009 & Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Both still holding their full price in nearly all shops. I wasn’t going to buy them until they had dropped in price but I never expected that so soon!

As the games go both are great fun and a worthwhile distraction from playing Rock Band. Expect reviews soon.

Also having made it official this past week by paying up I shall be attending the GT14 LAN (details can be found at www.gametribe.net) this October. A long drive but a cracking weekend of gaming and generally being a slob!

Until next time….

Demo’s Galore

Psymonkee    Gaming    

Yep I’m probably a few days/weeks behind everyone else but I really don’t care. I’ve just been a on little demo downloading spree and grabbed the following:

• Pure – Quad bike racing
• Too Human – Action/RPG
• Castle Crashers – XBLA Title
• Braid – XBLA Title

People seem to be generally raving about these titles and in the case of the XBLA ones advocating purchase at a massive 1200 MS Points…So I figured I’d give those 4 games a go and see if I can find a game to drag me away from Rock Band.

So far I’ve only tried one of the demos I downloaded. That demo was Pure. In one word I would have say:

AWESOME!

If you ever played Motorcross Madness on the PC way back in the late 90′s then you will be familiar with the general ideal. Infact if you added 2 wheels and changed the background music to Women by Wolfmother then there you have it – Pure.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m on about – Off Road Racing on quad bikes. Drive fast jump high and far and try to hold onto your lunch as you go off the edges of cliffs! The demo itself is quite short with just a training track and a single race event on offer but should show you enough of what the full game will be about.

The full game seems to be set to be a cracker offering 7 enviroments with 48 tracks and a fantastic 16 player online mode.  There is also a freestyle mode available where you can rack up points by performing some of the most ridiculous stunts known to man – all good.

Best bit of news? Brand new for £30!

More posts to come as I try the other games

Braid

Psymonkee    Gaming    

More ramblings from me as promised. Incase the title of this post wasn’t obvious I’ve just had a play through of the Braid Demo.

First impressions are good with an addictive side scrolling platform/puzzle game presented. Obvious nods to Mario (jumping on enemies heads, princess at another castle…) which at least made me laugh.

Of the few levels available in the trial version there is enough to keep you playing for around 30 mins and get a good taster for the game. It’s certainly addictive and has a few neat ideas. It also seems to neatly steal from Prince of Persia’s most recent trilogy with a handy rewind function.

Bizarrely this funtion allows you to pick up keys, rewind time but still retain possesion of the key which suddenly made a tricky level a piece of cake.

I’d definately purchase this if it was perhaps 800 points but at 1,200 points I’m finding it hard to justify with lots of good Rock Band DLC on the horizon (Rush and Offspring!)