So I'm back after a long hiatus, bunch of stuffs been happening but I've still been keeping up with the bombcast. If you remember the talk about Lego Rock Band, Hip to Be Square by Huey Lewis and the News was my submission for that lol.
Anyway I got my first 360 red ring last month. Was without the console for a week and a half while it was shipped to Frankfurt in Germany to be fixed. I recieved a replacement 360 so I don't know if that means its a refurb or a brand new unit. I got a good innings out of it though as I got 2 and half years out of mine before it RROD'd. The new one sounds like a jet engine taking off mind you so I had to install CoD:WaW to the Hard Drive which used up all of the rest of my 20GB of space.
Now that I've got my 360 back though I can get back into gaming on it. I've got 3 games from Christmas still sitting in the celophane unopened.
They are :-
Brothers in Arms : Hells Highway
Dead Space
Fallout 3
Can't wait to get into Fallout 3 as I loved Oblivion. Recently got myself a copy of the Game of the Year Edition of that so now I can go after those Shivering Isles achievements. Oblivion is, to date, still the only game I have completed to 1000 gamerscore, then Shivering Isles DLC came out and urinated all over that bonfire.
Been getting back into PC gaming recently. Been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 while my 360 was away on its German vacation. Played and completed Half-Life 2 as well for the first time. I've had the game for ages but never bothered going all the way through it.
Like I said I've been keeping up with the site. Been loving the Persona 4 videos and I hope they continue. Its like a mini soap opera so far, damn sight better than Coronation Street (which I hear is coming to the Nintendo DS 0_o).
Spent most of today beefing up the page for Formula 1. I got that game with my playstation when it was launched and loved that game to bits. I've been a big Formula 1 racing fan all my life and back then this was just totally amazing. Like covered in the awesome sauce. So I've put up the credits from the back of the manual, there are still a couple missing from the page, maybe like 3 people who don't have a page on here that I'll have to create but it got me something like 600 points so far.
Going to a mates house to watch the football (thats soccer to anyone in N.America). Old Firm Derby, Celtic F.C. vs Glasgow Rangers F.C. I hope Rangers win as my mates a Celtic fan and if we loose the gloating... shall be ENDLESS.
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So I'm in work right now on my lunch break itching for 6pm to hit so I can bust out of here and go play some more CoD:WaW Beta Multiplayer goodness.
I downloaded it last night after recieveing my beta key and went into it kinda thinking "oh this will probably be CoD4 but shit". Thing is... and I feel kind of bad saying this... but... I actually like this BETTER than CoD4.
I love the WWII era. The guns have more character to them, okay they don't sound or feel as satifying to shoot but you have to consider its WWII and that was like 60 years ago. I like the fact with this too that Prestige comes with an actual reward. By going through Prestige you unlock more "Create-a-Class" slots, which is awesome as I hated having to try and quickly switch in and out different weapon load outs I'd made for each specific map when I'm between rounds in the lobby.
The level design... isn't that great. I'll be honest. Its probably the thing that I think is letting it down the most. The maps just don't jump out at me in any kind of specific way like the ones in CoD4 do. I do like the fact though that night maps in CoD:WaW are bloody hard to stay alive in as there isn't any Night Vision in WWII.
One thing I DO love though is the 7-kill streak "Unleash the Dogs" perk. When you hear those dogs barking you know your toast. Your not safe ANYWHERE. It's not like the helicopter gunship in CoD4 where its like... Incomming... I'd better get the fuck inside now... and then your safe from it. There doesn't seem to be ANYWHERE you can go short of up on a roof you can only get to by ladder to get away from them. Its quite scary too as your see this pack of rabid dogs advancing on you, frantically trying to shoot them or knife them (which nets +3XP) to get them to leave you alone. I've heard a lot of complaints about the dogs and how people think they are annoying but they should be annoying. I mean the helicopter gunship was easy to dodge and wasn't much of a threat.
So I've played it for about 3 hours so far I think. I leveled up to 11 which is as far as you can go in the beta so far. In the full game you can rank up till you get to level 65, 10 more than CoD4. I'm enjoying it a lot, although your standard American douchebags who just flat out hate you because your from the UK are still a pain in the backside and have migrated to the beta from CoD4. Complaining how shit they think the game is because its from Treyarch and telling me to go eat my Lucky Charms because they think I'm Irish when in fact I'm from Scotland. Do they not teach Geography in the USA or something ?.
Having played it for a good while now I can say I'm really getting into it. I've got my A-class licence now and a garage of about 40 cars. The Road Rules, which are played online against your friends, are awesome fun to try and beat. Although being that I used to play Forza 2 a lot, I have a lot of racing clan guys on my friends list, one of which, H20 Zax, owns practially every road on my game.
I'm actually typing this update to here through the medium of the Opera browser. I started a job in a web design firm a week ago and seeing as that seems to be the browser of choice in there (god only knows why), I've taken the time to download it at home and have an arty-fart about with it. It has some nice features although it needs more DJ Atomika.
I just recently (like yesterday) went out and bought Burnout Paradise as I'd seen Jeff's video on here of the Burnout Bikes update and thought "Hey Sweet, This looks awesome"
Upon loading the game for the first time I was prompted to download the update as I wouldn't be able to play online without it. Everything worked fine. After playing it for a few hours I handed the controller over to my girlfriend who went back to the dashboard and logged in on her profile.
The problem now of course is that every time I load up the game it says "Your DLC is damaged and cannot be used" which basically means the game is now screwed for me. The only way I can get into the game with the DLC is to sign in as my girlfriends profile (which strangly always boots up first time) and then once the game has booted into Paradise City, sign out and back in as my profile. A lot of messing about when it should just load up first go in the first place.
I did go into my memory and delete the update and redownload it but it continues to throw and error EVERY time. So yeah... not a happy bunny. Had the game less that 24 hours and I'm pissed off and totally ready to chuck the game already.
I bought BioShock on like the day of release here in the UK and played it pretty much to the end, to the last boss to be exact, and then got stuck.
See I didn't realise once you go into the arena with the last boss you basically were stuck with whatever you had on you when you got there and couldn't go back and change anything. I took a knife to a gun fight pretty much and I just can't defeat this guy.
Thing is, with all the talk of the PS3 version and the comparison pics etc, I really fancy picking it up again and playing through it to the finish again but this time using a guide. That might be cheating but at least this way hopefully I'll have the right stuff to destroy this nutter at the end.
The only thing stopping me from giving it a second play through is that BioShock was a really heavily story driven game and once you know all the plot twists there isn't really much left to the game. I don't know if I would enjoy it so much on the second run and I'm scared it might feel more like a chore than anything else.
However I have heard that you can pretty much drop ANYTHING, Big Daddy's included, with the electro-bolt plasmid and the wrench. That might be fun to do. Go on like a wrench smacking run like I've seen people do with the crowbar in Half-Life.
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After hearing Ryan talking about playing some Neo Turf Masters golf now that its released on Wii Virtual Console, I decided to check it out as I've been playing golf games for years and I'd never heard of this one before. The only Neo-Geo golf game I'd heard of was Top Players Golf and I'd only heard of that because of an old gaming TV show in channel 4 here in the UK called GamesMaster.
Now I don't have a Wii. My brother does but its in his room and I'm never on it. So I had to do the bad thing and procure an emulated version of the game from the internets. Some configuration and other jiggery-pokery later I had myself some Neo Turf Masters to play.
This game came out in 1996, I would have been 13, and my golf game of choice would have been PGA Tour 96 on the Playstation. I used to play video golf with my grandfather, who really wasn't fit enough to manage 18 real holes of golf anymore, everyday after school. He would have loved this game as its very easy to pick up and play, which it should be seeing as it was released in the arcades, but it seems like it would take a LOT of practice to master.
The graphics are really good for a 2D golf game although the cheesy music that plays throughout can sometimes really grate on you. All the other sound effects though are pretty good. The sound of club meeting ball at an accelerated rate are very satisfying and although the announcers voice is that kinda pigeon Japanese-English getting a chorus of "ON THE GREEN !" whenever you get the ball there is pretty funny.
You know, I think I like this better than Tiger Woods 07 that I bought on the 360. I was actually really disappointed in Tiger 07 but then its EA Sports and I've grown to realize that EA don't really care about there sports titles anymore as they really don't have any competition for a lot of there sports games.
So anyway, the SNK Arcade Classics game which has Neo Turf in it hasn't been released on the PS2 here in the UK yet but if it ever comes out here I'd buy it just to play Neo Turf on my big TV. This is one of those games where if I had my own arcade cabinet I'd want this in it. This and Mille Miglia: Great 1000 Miles Rally. That arcade game was awesome.
Just wanted to post up the obligatory 1,000 Wiki Points celebration post. Made the jump into quadruple figures today when my Wiki Submission about the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games video game was approved.
Atlanta '96Recently I've been watching the Olympic Games coverage on TV. Being that I'm in the UK, live coverage of the Games doesn't start till 1 or 2am in the morning, which is perfect for a night-owl like me. It's been mostly the swimming events that I've seen coverage of on the TV which is mostly down to a certain Mr. Phelps cleaning house in water. The guy is superhuman. He's already broken the 9 Olympic Golds record previously held by 4 people, one of whom was Mark Spitz, and he's still gunning for Spitz' other record of 7 Golds in a single Olympics. Phenomenal achievement if he manages it, which I think he probably will.
Great Britain of course performing there usual god awful selfs. The Murry Bros' ( no relation to the Mario Bros' ) getting knocked out of the Doubles Tennis, the Badminton pair being knocked out of a medal spot for the first time in 12 years and the young kid who was pairing up in the Men's Synchronized Diving that we heard so much about finished dead last. Of course being the Great Britain team our shoe-in gold medals usually come in the "toff" sports like Sailing and Rowing. Stiff upper lip and all that chaps, What What ?.
So being that Summer Olympic fever has gripped me I thought I'd delve into my back catalogue of games and play the few Olympic Games tie-in's that I've collected over the years. Olympic Summer Games: Atlanta '96 on the SNES, Sydney 2000 on the Playstation and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games on the Wii.
Sydney '00
The Olympic Summer Games: Atlanta '96 was at one point one of my favorite games. I had it on the SNES and the Game Boy and I remember I used to be pretty good at it winning Gold in more or less every event except Skeet Shooting. Going back to it 12 years later though, I now SUCK at this game ESPECIALLY Skeet Shooting. I think I finished dead last in every event ( which would be accurate considering I was playing as Team GB ) and ground my fingers down to the bone in the process. It's funny how sometimes when you go back to a game you used to play years ago that you sit down to it fully expecting to relive those memories and usually come away from the experience thinking "How the hell did I used to sit here and play this for hours ?".
Sydney 2000 on the Playstation didn't fair much better. The only obvious difference between the two games being the jump to 3D graphics and that I didn't finish dead last. If anything the one on the playstation seemed a lot easier right up untill the skeet shooting event. Now this game was released before analog controllers came out on the Playstation and trying to do skeet shooting with a D-pad is hopeless. I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. One other thing I will mention. The 3D graphics, Oh My God!. How did we ever look at graphics like that and think "Wow, it looks like your watching TV" ?. They are so square and blocky compared to what we get today.
Beijing '08
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games however is awesome. I love this game. Okay, I'll conceded that I do find Mario and Sonic in the same game on the same console completely sacrilege but I think that stems from the console mascot war which I grew up in the middle of. I think the thing I love about this game more than any other though is the total lack of button mashing as everything is done using wii-mote gestures. The clapping before you start your triple jump is also a nice touch which I love doing and I can actually win at events in it without wearing my fingers down to nubs. Although. I still suck at Skeet Shooting.
I recently downloaded Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 from the XBLA. I've been playing it quite a bit especially since my girlfriends been over the past few days as she really likes Geo Wars, just because of how crazy it is. Oooo the pretty colours.
So yeah downloaded it for 800 MS Points. Its really good. You start off with just the one game mode but after about maybe an hour or 2 of playing you can easily work your way though each mode and unlock the other 5 so you have the full complement of 6 modes to choose from. My favourite is the mode you start with called Deadline, where you basically have a time limit to score as many points as you can. My girlfriend, Hazel, likes the Evolved mode though which is pretty similar to the first Geo Wars but with a little bit of Waves thrown in for good measure. 4 Player MAYHEM The multiplayer is where it's at though. I've been playing it with my girl most of the time now that I've unlocked all 6 modes. It's SO much more fun with two people. We've been playing Co-op mostly just because I'm a lot better than her so versus mode is like a one horse race. Thing is it gets so mental on screen that sometimes you just can't see what the hell is going on and in two player games at least I can never see what my opponant is doing as you need to harness ever screed of concentration just to make sure you'll be okay.
The music in the game is really awesome too. If they had it on a soundtrack I'd buy it and stick it on my iPod. It rocks. It fits the game perfectly. This is saying a lot coming from me as I'm more of a rock and oldies guy than techno.
I'd highly recomend this to people. Geo Wars is THE dual stick shooter. The extra game modes and the local multiplayer make this a must, I think. The original Geo Wars was awesome. This is just a logical progression of the original. Same great formula, new levels and enemies, buy now, 'nuff said. 2 Comments
I was hoping I wouldn't need this banner but I woke up this morning to a rejection notice in my e-mail inbox.
My wiki submission for Limbo of the Lost which had been sitting in the mod queue for what was approaching 5 days has been rejected in favour of the current article which went up after I made my submission. To be fair the one that's there now IS better than mine but I have no idea how long he had been waiting in the mod queue for his to be seen.
Still, it sucks but such is life here at the Bomb. On the up side though one of my other 4 day old submissions was approved netting me 168 wiki points. w00t. 2 Comments
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