Friday 15 February 2008

I've moved

Right, seeing as i'm such a fucking god at all things netty, i'm sacking blogspot off and moving the whole thing. Lock stock, the fucking lot over to my shiny new bloggy type site: http://www.jimbeeer.com so i'll see you there. It's in bare bones at the moment but it will grow, i assure you guys and gals, it will grow...

Dark Muppets of Micky Macky Moo: Elements

Procured Dark Monkeys of Milk and Madness: Elements last night so i gave it an hours go. And as requested by Cheesy-Chair-Bottom-Boy he wants to know my thoughts.

First off the bads (as always):

YOU CAN'T INVERT THE Y AXIS. Now that just makes me want to push my tongue over the top my lower teeth and go 'MMMNNNNNYYYYYEEEEEEEHHHHHH'. Stupid fucking tosspot bellend dickhead spakkas. This is even more stupid than the lack of 'restart race' in Burnout. I was just about to press eject and throw the disk at my twat of a neighbour when i read on the net that you can go into your gamerscore and invert it there (it's under action or something like that), but i mean come on... You spend a year or two making a game these days at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars and you don't spend half an hour putting in an option to invert the y on the right stick. Fucking fucktards.

It uses the Source engine from Half Life 2, which was great 3 years ago when it came out but it's looking a bit dated these days. Nothing is particularly impressive, when you want to pick up a corpse you stretch your hands out and the corpse actually gets sucked into your arms. It's looks so much more gay than it sounds. Even does the same when you pick up a cup or plate from a table.

The running is stiff, the voice acting contains as much emotion as a bag of crisps, the storyline is yawntastic (You have to fire a mounted crossbow at a cyclops running around in the courtyard during the 2nd mission , woooooo!).

Walking backwards is about half the speed of walking forward so you can't do the old trick of rushing forward, stabbing them, then stepping back before they hit you so i'm a bit screwed during melee as that was the only tactic i ever used. Well that and shoot them before they get to me.

I read one thing about it saying that if Oblivion is an rpg with action elements then this is an action game with rpg elements and it certainly does seem that way.

The playability of the game isn't too bad, i can't comment too much at the moment as i've only literally played it for an hour and it normally takes me a good few days worth of playing before i can truly make my mind up. Don't know if it's going to be a game that i'll complete but i'll probably play it for a bit and see what happens.

I was expecting something similar to Oblivion and it's really not, it's a lot more of a linear affair and just not as polished as Oblivion. But after Mass Effect I've been hankering for a really decent rpg/fps and this isn't too bad, i've had worse, but not much.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Actually played my Wii last night for the first time in months (yes, i'm STILL bored) and put on Elebits which is a game i haven't played in well over a year.

I have to say it was actually a lot of fun and seems to be one of the few games that works with the wii controllers perfectly. I think i may even finish off the game this evening.

Well it's either play that or continue reading Secret Wars which is rather painful to read as it was written in the mid 80's. Consequently it still contains the golden age of Marvel style writing, so you have lines like 'See how I, DOCTOR OCTOPUS, can evade your blows with ease!', 'Ah but I, the MOLECULE MAN, can shape the very molecules around you and stop you in your path!', 'Desist!, you both should cower before DOCTOR DOOM, for you are like mere insects to me!', etc...

Having a quick scout on gamespot the only game i'm really looking forward to is Condemned 2: Bloodshot and that's not out until March 14th. Guess it'll have to be Dark Messiah which comes out tomorrow, hopefully that'll keep me amused for a week or so.

10 reasons why Burnout Paradise is wank

1. Plays Paradise City every damn time you turn on the game, normally i'm skinning up while the game boots up so i end up listening to the whole sodding song over and over again.

2. There's too many races and not enough of other events

3. They got rid of the junction crashes, which were, without a doubt, the best thing ever about Burnout 3. What's more they've replaced it with that bouncing around thingy that can go on for 20+ minutes and gets REALLY boooooooring, but you can't stop coz you have to get that ubiquitous high score on every street.

4. The biggest annoyance by far is you can't restart an event if you're doing badly. What kind of fucking retarded twat decided it would be a good idea to to remove the restart race option.

5. It keeps making me play it, coz it looks cool and the gfx are great, so i play it, for about 10 minutes, then i switch it off in disgust.

6. Even Marked Man, which is a great premise, is a bit rubbish after a while coz you just take the journey slowly and they don't get you.

7. I get constantly lost doing the races as i keep taking the wrong turning. The signs flash to take the correct street at the top of the screen but they're so small they're too easy to miss, especially when you're burning up the street.

8. Take one wrong turn and you've lost the race, which you then have to complete coz you CAN'T FUCKING RESTART!

9. I have to constantly stick with a stunt car as the race cars are too hard to control and the muscle cars are too weak in acceleration.

10. You WANT it to be so much better than it is coz it's Burnout and Burnout's cool, innit? So you play it, and you overlook everything i've just written here coz it's Burnout, then after about 30 minutes you pause the game to do something or other and you're really not in a rush to get back into the game.

11. When you go up in your license it resets all the races and stuff you've already done so you do everything again. THEN WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT?! There's nothing to complete, it should make you scout around and do each of the races, etc. That would make it more challenging, at least give you a sense of acomplishment when you do a particularly difficult race.

Monday 11 February 2008

Quicker! No, quicker than that, please...

Well, after a terrible start to the year, the release of games are starting to pick up steadily. So far this month we've had Devil May Cry 4, The Club and Conflict: Denied Ops.

What are they like though?

Well, Conflict Denied Ops is a America vs. Middle East type of game where you're a lone gunman (or in this case, 2 lone gunmen) and you have to fight through waves of terrorists all shouting incomprehensible crap before moving onto the next location. Sound familiar? That's because it's the same old bollox that we've all played a million times before. There's a lovely twist that allows you to play as co-op with someone else through the missions, one guys a tough up-front blast the shit out of them type of person, the other's a sniper. But as i have no friends and no xbox live, then it's just the same old routine cack.

The Club is a totally original 3rd person shooter where you have to run around and kill everyone and get to the exit. That's pretty much about it. I guess it might be interesting to have this big old online leaderboard for the highest score but this isn't 1987 any more and 99% of the population over 30 doesn't give a shit about score, they just want to complete a game and move onto the next one. So that's makes for a wank and incredibly short lived game.

Devil May Cry 4, ah now here's a game worth playing. Superb gfx, amazing cutscenes, fast and intuitive gameplay and not to forget a bucket load of fun button mashing. Never really got into any of the other games, but then i did start with DMC 3, which was officially the hardest game in the world ever made and like everyone else i couldn't get past the 3rd level. But the 4th one is cool and tons o' fun. Good level design, great bosses, an enjoyable storyline, all that gubbins. It's not too short either, i've been playing it for about 8 hours and i'm halfway through so far so the game is certainly long enough.

If you're looking for a new game for Feb then i'd definitely get DMC4, it's an uber cool experience and it actually improves your sexual performance and virility the more you play it*.

*= May not improve sexual performance and virility.

Thursday 31 January 2008

quick news

They're doing a Tekken movie by the way, and Andy Serkis is going to be in it. It's due out some point next year.

You'll also be pleased to hear it's been done in Japan in Japanese. So there might be a god after all...

More info here

Scratch that, it's been written by 2 guys, one of them has written episodes of Bones, Prison Break and 24 and the other wrote Ecks vs Sever, Spawn and The Marine.

So it'll be high-contane, low quality shite as usual

It's a slow news month

Hey Jimbeeer, i hear you cry, why are there fewer witty insightful thoughts and musings this month than normal? Are you getting bored or something?

Well the main reason is there's absolutely buggery flip out this month, what being the backlash of exmas. So far we've had Burnout Paradise which holds your attention for about the same amount of time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

I sincerely believe i've had the game on pause longer than i've actually been playing it, so i just sit there blankly, listening to the serene classical music and let the auto camera pan up and down the empty highway while i skin up and smoke a spliff. As i sit there i think precisely nothing, i do wonder why i'm not playing it. Then i play it in between spliffs and I realise why. It's just that teeny bit boring. Not to mention frustrating when I've taken that tiny wrong turn in the race, then i watch my position drop from first to last in the time it takes to cough.

So i turn it off and play Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but i'm stuck on the second mission in the JBA headquarters, you know the one where you have to get the blueprints and get the voice commands. Spent 20 minutes running around, scratching my arse and watching the seconds tick down, then i turn it off and see if i can get some entertainment from the XBox console, like messing with the resolution, brightness, that kind of crap.

What's coming up in the next couple of weeks then eh?

We've got Devil May Cry 4, Mercenaries 2, The Club and Conflict: Denied Ops.

Or in other words: absolutely fuck all.

At least nothing interesting. I'll probably get the above games but i can't see me actually playing any of them to completion. They might just hold a bit of interest until something decent comes out.

I'm so fucking sick of fps where you're military/ex-military/lone gunner/world war 2 serviceman/modern war/biochem meltdown apocalypse survivor and you gun down wave after wave after wave then boss, then repeat until completion.

Of course we've got Smash Bros for the Wii coming out soon but anyone who's played the other 2 on the N64 and Gamecube knows that Smash Bros is only good when played in very small doses, if you've got a whole bunch of mates to come round and play 4 player it gets pretty good fun and quite manic. If you're like me, you have very few friends, even less that'll come round to your house, then you play the single player game on easy, complete it in half an hour and then only play it every now and then over the next 6 months.

Ah well, at least S04E01 of Lost is on tonight, but due to the sodding WGA strike there's only 8 episodes instead of 16 like there's supposed to be.

Let me be the first to say:

FFS!!!!!!!

Friday 25 January 2008

Fuck them in their stupid asses

You know i got banned from XBL in November right? Well, what you didn't know was they've kept my account going all this time. Me neither!

And what you also may not know is you can't delete your account through the website. You can have to call them up and speak to a person to delete your account.

Lame eh? Well, i haven't told you the rest of it.

Basically the conversation went like this:

Riiiiiiiinng, Riiiiiiiiiing (oh christ it's got put through to a foreign call center, you can tell by the single tone rather than the double you get in Britain)

Indian guy answers.
Hello, welcome to XBox Support, my name is (insert unpronouncable Indian name here), can i take your name please.

So i give him my name and then spend another minute spelling out my surname phonetically.

Me: Yes, i'd like to cancel my Xbox Live account please.
Him: Certainly sir, can i ask the reason behind this please?
Me: I just don't play it any more (what the fuck am i going to say? Microsoft banned me for having a modified console)
Him: Is there a reason you don't play it any more?
Me: No, I just don't play online any more, i just want to cancel my account.
Him: Is it the games you're not liking?
Me: No, i just don't play it very often.
Him: Are you connected to Live at the moment
Me: No, it's not plugged in, i haven't played it for a while (pick one story, stick to it, that's what i learned)
Him: Are you not liking the Xbox 360 any more, is there a reason for this?
Me: No, no reason, i don't play it, i want to cancel it now please
Him: Have you had a bad experience playing online?
Me: No
Him: Do you know how to connect to online games and get the most out of your Xbox Live account, i could show you how if you like
Me: Yes i do and no i don't like
Him: Are you sure you wouldn't like to think about it for a little while?
Me: What? No, i rang up to cancel it. That's what i'd like to do now please.

So it starts to dawn on him that i won't be budged so he spends the next 7 or 8 minutes getting my gamertag and confirming every detail about my account even down to my favourite pets name (wish i'd have written 'Fuckhugh' in the pets name box now). It didn't help that when i found out i couldn't cancel my acc. online that i went into my billing information and changed my entire billing details to a's and 1's.

All this time he's giving me the usual crap:
Him: Have you considered transferring your account to another member of your family, i could do that for you right now

At this point i just get annoyed

Me: Nooo, please, please, please, just cancel my account.
Him: Ok sir, don't worry, I was just...
Me: I know EXACTLY what you're doing, i get it, i really do. But i want to cancel my account, i 'won't worry' when you do what i'm asking you to do and cancel my account.

So he puts me on hold for about 2 minutes while my account 'cancels' (Fuck knows).

And then he comes back and tells me it's cancelled. By this time i'm sick of him and can't be bothered with his false platitudes so while he's giving me the 'That has been done, is there anything else i can help you with today' I'm just talking over him with 'No, it's fine'. Then the obligatory 'Ok sir, you have a nice day now' (It was 9.30pm, there wasn't much day left to have a nice one) I just butted in with 'Yeah, thanks, bye' and put the phone down

Total call time 15min 38sec.

I don't know what it is about Indian call centers but they drive me up the fucking wall.

Maybe it's just because the whole deal stinks of a company trying to cut costs and save money. That's the only thing it says to me.

So that's it, my trials and tribulations of quitting my XBL account. And one day, ONE DAY, you'll all go through exactly the same thing as i just did...

Thursday 24 January 2008

Lost: Via Domus

It means 'The Way Home' in Latin, but you knew that already.

"Only six characters (Desmond, Ben, Mikhail, Mr. Friendly, Claire and Sun) are authentic. The rest are voice-a-likes."

Who the fuck is Mr. Friendly? I've watched every singly episode of Lost and I haven't a sodding clue who this Friendly character is.

Anyway it doesn't actually look to suck as much as a tv/movie tie-in normally does. Though it'll probably suck a little bit coz it's a tv tie-in innit?

Pure unadulterated wank material

This looks so good i'm getting a semi here. I'm mean, fuck me, he brings down a frigging Star Destroyerjust using the force. How mental is that!

http://uk.media.ps3.ign.com/media/823/823668/vids_1.html

(I tried embedding it into here but it didn't want to know)