Gaming Week 11: God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
God of War has long held a special place in my heart. It was about 3 years ago that I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about, upon which I went out of my way to buy a PS3 off ebay. I bought the original so I could still play PS2 games, as I had never touched any GoW game (to the point I believed GoW stood for Gears of War). I always knew they were gory and violent, but looked on them as a DMC clone, how wrong I was. The first game took me about a week of on/off gaming to complete, the second took me 2 days, the third: 1 day. I became obsessed with the fantastic story and fiction, and the graphical improvements of each game kept me hooked. Unfortunately there wasn’t much more out there, and I haven’t touched a GoW game…
Gaming Week 10: Hotline Miami (PC)
Hotline Miami is a psychedelic tribute to many retro games of yester-year. It makes killing in a pixel world fun, and makes the challenge of who to kill and when a huge part of it’s appeal. You start out with a little bit of background, but after a few lines of dialogue you’re straight into the game, controlling your man as he goes around in his car, meeting friends at retail stores, and getting a bunch of free stuff. Every day you get a voicemail, telling you to go out to collect a delivery, or there’s a cleaning job for you at the telephone exchange. Each request sounds strange until you start to realise it’s actually all code talk for exterminating a gang in a certain location. Once you get to that location, you can don a mask, which will give you certain perks throughout that coming level. The beginning…
Gaming Week 9: The Room (iOS)
The Room started off as a interest at first for me. After hearing Brad Shoemaker talk about it on the Giant Bombcast, I thought I’d give the iPhone game a go. I’m a firm believer that iPhone/portable games should be centred around challenges, and not be a cinematic experience that you can get on consoles. (Something I even researched and presented at my final year of uni.) The Room doesn’t break any ground in my thinking, but does offer a very entertaining experience for people of all backgrounds. The Room is a puzzle game for iOS devices. For iPhone you get the first chapter for free (then have to pay £1.49 to continue) and for the iPad you have to pay £1.49 up front. For a game of it’s length (about 2 hours) this is a fair price, but from the sounds of things, there’ll be more content in coming…
Gaming Week 8: Proteus (PC/Mac)
Proteus starts out how it means to go on, by giving you an island which is free to explore, and doesn’t tell you a thing. You make the story here, the game just merely gives you the tools to make it. You start off Proteus in the middle of the sea, and what lies before you is a island. This island, we are told, is randomly generated, similar to Minecraft. But somethings different, note quite right. We’re told it’s random, but the island seems too perfect to be random. Statues appear on top of a mountain, as if they were placed there by an artist; paths and trees envelop the island, but it all seems to be laid out so right that it can’t be random, can it? Turns out it is random. Multiple playthroughs show that the island is always different, always random, but the art assets are always placed in…
Gaming Week 7: Gravity Rush (PS Vita)
Gravity Rush started off as a somewhat interest of mine. I’ve always been into Anime, and the style of Gravity Rush certainly helped in my decision to play it. What I didn’t know was how attached I would become to the quirky little world and it’s inhabitants, and most importantly, the clever mechanic of controlling gravity itself. You begin the game as with a lot of games in this generation: you awake not knowing who you are or where you came from. You’re definitely a blonde girl called Kat, and you’re definitely in a strange city. Walking around you discover a cat, which allows you to manipulate gravity. For a start it was pretty straightforward and not too interesting. Where the charm and strengths are shown though is in the city, and the imagining of the whole world. The city is fantastic, in fact, the whole world of Gravity Rush…
Gaming Week 6: FTL: Faster than Light (PC/Mac)
Having played FTL for over 15 hours, I’d say I’ve had my fill of this very charming and addictive game. I know the game can potentially be played a lot longer (I have some friends who have played it 40+ hours) but for me, I’ve completed it and will give myself a rest for a bit. “Now what is this FTL?” I hear you all cry, and I shall deliver. FTL is a top down space flight simulator where you have to manage all of the ship and it’s staff, in a way you could think of this as a theme hospital. You control each aspect of the ship, delivering power to each system as and when it’s needed. Fighting a pirate ship? Push power into the shields and weapons. Fighting on board your ship? Provide power to your medic bay to make sure your staff can be healed as…
Gaming Week 5: Dead Space 2 (360)
Dead Space 2 gave me a mixed bag of emotions from start to finish. I loved the first game, playing through it twice to get all the achievements, and even loving the fiction to the point of downloading both downloadable games, as well as watching both of the animated films. I felt the church of unitology was a perfect reflection of the christian church of today, and the fiction behind humans having to destroy planets for resources a great view of what may one day happen. So as you can imagine I was looking forward to putting Dead Space 2 in finally and pushing on with Isaacs story, turns out my excitement would turn to disappointment. Now don’t get me wrong, Dead Space 2 isn’t a bad game by any means, it’s just a game that shows the first signs of EA getting their grubby little paws into a fairly original…
Gaming Week 4: Haunt the House (Playstation Mobile)
Haunt the House is a charming little game made for the playstation Mobile store. I thought I’d give it a crack since it looked quite original and well thought out. Little did I know that I’d be hooked for an hour playing non-stop to scare all the people in these four houses and unlocking other ghosts along the way. It’s a Playstation Mobile game, so not a long game by any means, but it’s the charm of the game that see’s it through to the end, ensuring you’re constantly put in awe at the little set pieces that make this game a pleasure to play. Players start as a ghost, which they then are asked to control to move around the world. No context is given for this ghost, but you’re given freedom to explore and do as you like, which works to the games favor. You will eventually come…
Gaming Week 3: Saints Row the Third
This week I completed Saints the Third (after a year of owning it), and I must say, as much as the first half impressed me, the second half felt like a drag. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, not by any stretch. I just felt the originality run thin just past the half way point. The constant randomness, although refreshing and a laugh at times, goes on a bit too much, and ends up being boring rather then exciting. And to be honest, that’s all I have to say about the game. I’m glad I played it, I’ve played every other game so it was a must play, but I’m not gonna say much on how it plays due to there being loads of reviews out there. 3/5
Media Week 2: Halo Book: The fall of Reach
This week I decided to read the prequel to the Halo series: Halo The Fall of Reach. Being a massive Halo fan, I’ve always been interested in the extended halo universe, and I wanted to start from scratch with the books. There’s something about the immense detail and realism that goes into making all the fiction of Halo seem so real, like it really is our future as a species. Anyway, enough of my Geekery, I feel this book is a fantastic way for anyone to expand their knowledge of the Halo Universe, teaching you about how the Spartan II project was conceived and acted out, as well as going into graphic detail as to how space battles played out. A must read for any fan of halo, but maybe not too great for others. 3/5
Gaming Week 1: The Walking Dead
This week I played and finished The walking Dead Season 1, and I must say, I’m really glad I did. The game from start to finish made me question decisions and made me shriek with horror everytime I had to make one. Gameplay was slow and at times annoying, especially with a controller. To put it in perspective, your thumb controls the cursor on screen using the right analogue stick, yet that same thumb is meant to press the correlated button to make a action. It means at times you have to move your thumb between places (losing valuable time in quick decisions), which is never a good design choice for any genre of game. Gameplay being slow is to be expected though, especially when the concentration is on the characters and story rather than the action. At the end of the day, we should be grateful there’s action at…
New Years Resolution
This coming year, my new years resolution was to play/complete at least 1 game or book a week. The reason for this has been a long time coming; I have a collection of 200+ games, 90% of which I haven’t even touched or completed. This will be a challenge, some games will be easy, but some will be extremely hard. This is more of a commitment to myself rather than a chore, so I’m hoping I’ll succeed in this trail. I’ll update this blog with my progress, giving opinions on the games that I play. I’m not gonna make a job of making a full review of every game or book I play/read, but I wouldn’t mind summarizing how I felt about that particular product that week. Shall keep you all updated!
First thoughts: New Super Mario Bros 2 (3DS)
I’ve only played NSMB2 for about 2 hours, and it hasn’t exactly rubbed me off the right way. See, Super Mario 3D Land was fantastic, I played it so much and didn’t wanna stop until I had collected everything. I played through the game twice, both as Mario and Luigi, got every star coin, and made sure I touched the top of every flag, all to unlock a super secret level; that’s how much I loved that game. I felt the short levels were perfect for our mobile age where people don’t have the time to concentrate for hours on end on one level. It felt right, and each level was uniquely designed to ensure a different experience. So far on NSMB2 I just really haven’t felt any inkling of love for it. I would say this is my own fault with how busy my life’s become recently, but NSMB2…
First thoughts: Modnation Racers PSVita
Before buying Modnation racers on sale for £11.99 from the PSN store, I had low expectations, to say it’s another Mario Kart clone is an understatement. So far my expectations have been met, making Modnation Racers one of the most underwhelming purchases of my year so far. One of my biggest gripes has to be the way the menu is navigated. It’s all so inconsistent. Some menu buttons have to be pressed with the X button, whilst being navigated using the D-Pad, whilst over menu items HAVE to be touched. It makes for an annoying experience, and one I hope never gets repeated on any other game. The game started up with no help or indication of what to do. You could navigate the menu screen, scrolling left and right to choose a specific option, (make a car, make a modnation racer, spend tokens, championship race etc.) but there was…
Just a quick update
Just thought I’d update the site about what’s currently being played, so here it goes: Bought Modnation Racers for the Playstation Vita as it was on sale in the PSN Store for only £11.99, so I’ll be posting my first thoughts about it soon this week. So far I really don’t know how I feel about it, so time will tell. Dragons Dogma was released on Friday (25th of May) and initially whilst I was serving all day it seemed to outsell Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, surprising and highly welcome. I can’t say sales will continue in this pattern, as knowing GAME they’ll stop stocking Dragons Dogma well before Ghost Recon, even when people still want it. (Exactly what happened with Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning) I bought it on day of release, and so far I know I’ll love the game, but I can’t seem to get hooked.…