Right, so it has been couple of weeks since my last blog. I was on holiday in Germany few weeks ago. Germany is known for their fine beer which I am of course fond of. I've discovered Kellerbier, which directly translated stands for basement beer and can be described as the most pure beer you can get. Although I had only the store version which is fermented. The real kellerbier is not even fermented and naturally doesn't have long shelf life. Got to also taste some nice crystal Weiss bier. Which as the name implies is a form of wheat beer. I like my wheat beer cloudy but this was a interesting experience with more traditional ale like colour and taste. Wheat beer lite if you like. Anyway really looking forward to the day when I will be living in Germany. The German beers is just > any UK or even Belgian (with exception to few) beer's.

Regarding gaming and Germany. PC gaming is still huge in Europe and especially in Germany. I did visit quite few different stores and got reminded of this. Sure they got the recent console games as well. Of course more of the European and German made games (RPGs). The PC selection is double the size on most of the stores. Strange thing is that they had lot's of games that we haven't ever seen a boxed copy. Like boxed copy of World of Goo or Puzzle Agents. And it is no dodgy stuff either. Just a completely different market. Didn't dare to buy any because was afraid that that language would have been German only. Which again would have probably been good for my German studies. 

Anyway enough rambling, on with the games..

Final Fantasy 4  

While back I decided to play through all Final Fantasy games in horological order. Made it to the 4th one now. Started the DS version on my holidays. I can fully understand why some would consider this to be one the best FF games. What I didn't except it to be so hard. I've played plenty of JPRGs before and can't really remember of having so many deaths as in here. Despite being grossly over-levelled in many places. The experience with the last dungeon kind of ruined the game for me. I beat the final boss quite easily in the end, but faced way too many encounters prior to that where I got killed on the first round. Granted I might not had the best gear but I was always was bit over-levelled. Of these four FF games I would still rate the 3rd to be the best.

Picross 3D

Another holiday game. Been playing this on and off for months. Seem to play more when I am travelling. Slowly progressing to get a perfect on all levels. Few hard levels left still.

Pacman Championship Edition DX

Picked this up for 400MS points and it really is as good as everyone says. Bit similar to Afterburner Climax I afraid. After the s-rank and playing all the levels won't probably play this again. Just too big backlog. At least I am on top of my friend leaderboard.

Rock Band: Beatles

Good game except that I don't like Beatles. Finished with Hard level very easily. Got the game for my wife, which she categorized to be boring. One Beatles song a year is perhaps enough. Got this for mere £5 @Play.com, so no big deal.

Wheelman

Played the PS3 version. Finished it on two days and this is very mediocre game no doubt. Still enjoyable play through thanks to the car battle mechanism. The original score was decent as well. Barcelona looks nice, shame that it is not really 1 to 1. Would have been nice to check Nou Camp. The last line from Jeff's review sums up this nicely: 

   "It's certainly mechanically sound, but you should probably attempt to find it at a slight discount."
  I paid £3.99 (+ same for shipping) and it was definitely worth it. If only for the kick ass end boss finish.

Sonic Adventure

Sonic 2 was the first console game I've ever played and no doubt one of my all time favourite platformers. I remember playing Sonic Adventure in the DC days, but don't think I ever finished. So when they released this on XBLA I wanted to correct that error and go and finish this game. After finishing the first level it became clear that I've never played this game past that level. Remember looking for the second level but never got to it. Had some problems finding this time as well because of the camera. Anyway not really a good game in todays standards, even though I liked it. The camera movement almost made the game unplayable. And no doubt this was the number one thing that killed me. It must have been Sonic Adventures 2 then which I never finished. Just remember a big boss in a round room where Sonic is running on different platforms and levels. Anyway I think I'll give Sonic Colours a try next, which should be the best 3D Sonic Game. Hopefully it doesn't have this adventure bologny.

Only Indie game this time:

SpaceChem

Which I got review coming soon. In short, strange but a great game.

Random youtube video is a strange cover by Dimmu Borgir. Symphonic black metal act doing a classic Purple track. Qe? Only recently got around listening to this album(Dimmu). Not my favourite band, but it goes in small doses. The Hammond organ on first beat gives this song away. Reason why I post it is because it is unexpected and pretty decent actually