New Year and Newish Games

Well silly season is done and dusted for another year and I can find time to write again. I hope you all had a good time and got what you wanted from jolly ole St Nick. I know I did!

This year was the first year my hobby was truly realised by my family and that is all because of my wonderful wife who organised what my family were getting me. Here is the run-down of my gaming related presents for Xmas and birthday:

Enslaved (birthday)

Dead Rising 2 (birthday)

WWE Smackdown S Raw (birthday)

Singularity (birthday)

Borderlands (birthday)

God of War 3 (Xmas)

Heavy Rain (Xmas)

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (Xmas)

Zone of The Enders: The Second Runner (Xmas)

A gaming chair with built in surround sound and rumble features

A £20 voucher for game

I now have more games then ever to play. I have so many games I don't know what to play! The other night it got so bad I almost decided to watch a film and got to bed early!

Talking of my games to play stack Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has been finished and all I can say is WTF! The ending is a massive cliffhanger and I cant wait for number 3. My score for AC:Brotherhood will be a 9/10.

Next I started on Enslaved: Odyssey to The West. For those of you who don't know about this game let me fill you in.

Enslaved is a reworking of Journey to The West, one of China's four great classical novels. Most of you will probably know Journey to The West as Monkey!

Enslaved puts a new twist on this tale by setting it in a post apocalyptic America. The story was written by Alex Garland of The Beach and 28 Days Later fame and Andy Serkis of Golem fame was on hand to Mo Cap the acting. These two elements make the cut scenes in Enslaved some of the best I've ever seen. The game wasn't long but was still enjoyable, the only real thing that let it down was the climbing. Having just finished AC:Brotherhood with it finely tuned running, jumping and climbing skills, Enslaved felt slow and clunky. But after awhile I got so engrossed in the story I didn't even notice it any more. My score for Enslaved is 8.5/10.

With Enslaved done I started trying out a couple of the other games I have.

I had a brief go on Singularity. Singularity was completely overlooked on release due to the fact that Activision didn't bother promoting it due to it not being COD! I only played it for about 10mins but I'm really looking forward to play it.

Next I started to flit between WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011 and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Hot Pursuit is very enjoyable and when I gave it my full attention I know its gonna suck me in. The new Autolog feature makes this game so competitive. Autolog reminds me a little bit of Facebook what with its speed wall and comments but instead of puerile gossip it shows you who out of your friends is better than you, making you want to smash their scores.

Smackdown has always been one of my favorite games. This new one is good but the magic is missing but thats not the games fault. The magic is missing because my friends are missing. Years ago back in the PS2 era when Smackdown was just Smackdown, no vs Raw, there were 3 of us who would play this game regualary. We had all made our own wrestlers and would carry our memory cards with us whenever we met up. There was always competition to make the best looking character with a good gimmick and brilliant moves. Then we would fight till the early hours of the morning. Nowadays I don't see those friends. I suppose there is always the online element of the game but it just doesn't have that sparkle. If anyone reading this (if there is anyone reading this) plays smackdown and would like a match or swap creations add me. My PSN name is whatever_man. Just let me know where you got my name.

Refurbishment OCD, Facebook Games and 2011

Well I think I have the writing bug! Since the last time I did this all I've done is think about doing it again. I was only going to write monthly but every time I see something to do with gaming I think to myself “I wanna write about that!”. If I had left it a month before writing again I think I would've forgotten most of what I wanted to put down.

Ezio doing a Christ pose

I'm still playing Assassin's Creed : Brotherhood, I probably could've completed it by now but for some unknown reason I feel compelled to refurbish every single shop, tunnel, stable and landmark. All that happens by doing this is I get more money to buy weapons, but if I wasn't bloody spending all my money on refurbishing Rome I could buy all of the sodding weapons! It not like I even get a trophy for getting Rome 100% renovated. It feels like I'm carrying out an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on renaissance Rome for no reason other than I must have OCD.

Da Vinci's Tank

The game is still holding up well and I have really enjoyed the Leonardo Da Vinci missions. I knew that Da Vinci had come up with ideas for flying machines and other contraptions before they're time, but I had never seen them. Now I've seen them, used them and blown them up! Getting to play with these wonderful toys has made a welcome change to the old face stabbing.

Recruiting and training up an army of assassins is a new addition to the game and it is an addition that works really well. There is nothing more satisfying then calling upon your hooded minions when your back is against the wall and watching them slaughter your enemies whilst you calmly walk away. I hope they keep this feature and improve upon it in the future games.

There is a part of me which is ashamed of what I'm about to tell you, but I have to get it off my chest. I hate facebook games like Farmville and Mafia wars. They bore the shit out of me! There is absolutely no skilled involved in these games whatsoever. Unless you count mouse clicking as a skill. So it surprise me I caught myself playing one every time I went on facebook. The only justification I have is that it was Assassin's Creed Project Legacy. This game is pretty much a carbon copy of Mafia Wars as in you click the mouse until your points run out and then wait a couple of hours and repeat. The only reason I'm playing it is because it unlocks rewards in Brotherhood and you can also earn extra exp points for your recruited assassins.

I haven't played much of Brotherhood online as I want to get the single player mode completed first. The only time I do play it is on a Tuesday night as that is when my brothers and my Dad come round for a night of gaming. This has been happening for about year now and its still a brilliant night. We have played many games but the game we have played the most is Tiger Woods 08.

This boy is Nike through and through

This game and all golf games are one of the few types of game that my Dad can actually play and play well! If you give him a controller and stick him on COD online he would be the guy in the corner looking at his whilst people were shooting him in the back. But give him Tiger Woods and he will give you a run for your money. So we played this game for 10 weeks on the trot. We set up a league and would record our scores every week. We all enjoyed playing this but for different reasons. My Dad enjoyed it because he could win and we (my brothers and me) enjoyed the challenge of beating him. At first my Dad won every game and sat proud at the top of the table. Then about 5 weeks into the Letchworth PGA league (yes we even named it) me and brothers started to improve. One brother in particular he seemed to get in to a zone and each week he ended with at least one hole in one! He ran away with the league in the end and that killed Tiger Woods for us.

My Dad stopped coming to our gaming nights for a bit as we started to play other games that he couldn't. Until last week when we decided to try out Fight Night Round 4. As I mentioned last time I've only just picked this up. We all sat there and took turns in going through the tutorial except my Dad as he couldn't be bothered and wanted to go outside a smoke a cigarette instead. Once the tutorial was done me and one of my brothers (we will call him by his psn name CS94 from now on) had a fight. I was Lennox Lewis and he was Muhammad Ali. We had a very ugly fight which I won. Next up my Dad took on CS94. Again CS94 was Ali and my Dad was Lewis. My Dad wiped the floor with my brother. Then he did the same to me! Me and CS94 were in shock. How could this be possible, we had been button mashed to death by our own father!

Now I'm going to go through some of my most anticipated games of 2011. They are in no particular order.

Bulletstorm

This game just looks like so much fun! The yearly doses of COD has killed FPS for me, but this looks like a breath of fresh air. Or should that be a breath of blood misted air? 

Mass Effect 2

After having Xbox fanboys go on about how they have access to one of the best games ever their mouths will be tightly shut come January. Its a shame that ME1 is an Xbox exclusive as it would be fun to build up your character and carry them across to the new game. Bioware have said they have added something to the game so to remedy this.

Batman Arkham City

This. Will. Be. Epic. If they build and improve on what they have already created then we will be in for a treat!.

Metal Gear Solid : Rising

Metal Gear with out Snake. But Metal Gear with Raiden in the ninja suit!

SSX: Deadly Descent

I loved SSX tricky and now 9 years later there is a new SSX game. Only thing is it looks a little bit too serious. As one of the writers on gamesradar.com said “it looks like a snowboarding mission from COD”

Right that's it for now. If I don't write before Christmas have a good one.

The First Blog

Right, I'm new to this, how should I start it... Hello, I'm whateverman. I'm new  to writing, so give me a break if it turns out to be poo.

My plan for this is to give you insight into my life through the games that I'm playing. I'll try to keep this up-to-date by writing a new blog/post every month or less if I have time. Time is probably a good place to start.

Nov. 1, 2010 - Dec. 7, 2010

Being the dad of a very active toddler doesn't give you a lot of time to play games. I find that all of the time that she is awake I'm having to get on the floor to play her games and run around with her. Then when she has a nap I have to spend quite a bit of time clearing up all the mess she has made. Also, I have a full time job to juggle and, as the PS3 is in the main room of the house, I have to share the HDTV with the wife.

This doesn't give me a lot of time to play my games so I have to steal the time where ever I can or try to introduce my one year old to games like Sonic 4. This kind of worked; she would pick up the controller and look at her mum and say, "Seeeeggaaaa," and I would say, "Oh look I better put the PS3 on she wants to play." Once the PS3 was on and Sonic 4 was playing, she would push the buttons a bit and then put the controller down. I would then step up and take over.



At the beginning of November, I didn't have to steal time as I was off work with a broken shoulder (don't worry, I could still pick up a controller as it was the first thing I checked). This gave me plenty of time to play, but my wife didn't like the game I was playing I had to do some hard negotiating with her.

"I'll take care of the sprog for the whole of the morning if you let me play PS3 in the afternoon," I'd say.

"No, there is something I want to watch on the telly," she says.

And then I add, "I'll do the washing up as well," and that's how it would go.

After that, I began playing Dragon Age: Origins. I had never read a review of this game and hadn't even heard of it until I saw it in a shop being sold for £15 (for the Americans reading this, that's about $24). I had heard of Bioware though and I knew about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so I felt slightly positive that it was a good game. My feelings were right.

I was Barkon, the caste-less dwarf working for the Dwarvern mob boss who was a bit of a *****. That's how one of the six different beginnings starts and, as I always say at the start of a game, I will do all of the other story versions, although I probably wont.

From the off, this game had a hold on me. It is such a good game with a good story to boot. There are so many quests to do that I knew this game would have me on it for months and, well, there lies the problem. It is November, the run up to Chrimbo has started, there are gonna be loads of games I want coming out soon, and if I stop to play these new games I worry that I will never go back to Dragon Age. But then I say to myself that it's okay and that I wont buy these games for myself, but instead family will buy them for me for my birthday (December 17) and Christmas.

My wanted list goes as follows:
1) Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
2) God of War 3 (I've only just done 1 & 2)
3) Vanquish
4) Dead Rising 2
5) Need For Speed Most Wanted
6) Heavy Rain
7) Enslaved

This list does the rounds and my wife tells me she thinks I'll get a lot of them, so I'm happy.

My wife is rubbish at this time of year since she either cant keep my presents as a surprise or she gives them to me early. And this time she has given them to me early. Why? Because she doesn't like Dragon Age. Apparently, it's boring to watch. 

The first present she gave me early is still in its packaging that it was delivered in. I've given it a feel before I open it and it feels too thick to be a PS3 game. So I open it up with mixed feelings. If it's not a game, it's okay, I'll be happy that I can carry on with Dragon Age. However, I reach into the packet and pull out two games.

The first game in the package, and one that makes me feel like I'll vomit, is Bayonetta. I had actually just finished Bayonetta a few months ago all-in-all and thought it was an okay game (the story could have been better, but the gameplay was fun). But for some unknown reason, the game makes me feel sick; I feel sick right now. I struggled to make myself finish the game and tried to sell it as quick as possible when I was done.

When selling it, I took it everywhere while trying to get a good price for it so I could get another game, but the best price I got for it was £3 ($5). In the end, I took the money and ran. So imagine my feeling when I pulled that game from the packet. My wife knew all about this game and I looked at her with hatred. But I then realized there was the game Vanquish behind it. My wife explained that the website she bought Vanquish from (play.com) was doing a deal where they threw Bayonetta in for free.

I had played the demo of Vanquish and loved it. I had also read reviews and they all said that it is a good game, albeit being just a little bit short. I thought, "perfect, I'll do this in a day or two and then head back to Dragon Age," which I ended up doing. My review on Vanquish is the same as what the reviews I read said. The title is good but short. I give it an 8/10. My hope is that it will get a sequel because I feel like it can improve to become an awesome game.







The same happened with Zone of the Enders; the first game was good but short and the second game was excellent. It's so good that it is being sold secondhand at the same price as a new PS3 game!

So, after quickly boosting around in a Guyver suit in Vanquish, it was back to my axe and armor in Dragon Age. Things were getting good, I was level 19, and I had given this game 40 hours of my life, and was prepared to give it more, much to the annoyance of my wife. But she still had one trick up her sleeve.

It's now November 12 and my wife says I can have another early birthday present, but it wont be here until the 19th as that's the day it's released. I knew instantly what it was; Assassin's Creed Brotherhood!

Assassin's Creed is another series where the first game was okay but the sequel was better. I couldn't wait; I kept reading everything I could about this game which got me even more excited about it. I had loved Assassin's Creed 2! It was the first game I got a platinum trophy on.

I was counting down the days while still playing Dragon Age. Then, the 19th came and went with no sign of the game. A week soon went by and still no game. So my wife got on the phone, complained, and got our money back. It was gonna take five working days for the money to clear, so I still had to wait another week for Brotherhood.

I was upset, but at least I still had Dragon Age still. Then, one of my brothers, who had gotten Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, said he didn't like it and gave it to me. Result! I started Brotherhood and I haven't stopped, but I know that I will definitely go back to Dragon Age as a part of me yearns to play it now. I will write more about Brotherhood when I've finished so I can give it a proper score.

Five working days later, we get the refund and I go out and get a load of cheap games so that I can get through most of next year.

The games I got are:
-Ninja Gaiden
-BioShock 2
-Fight Night Round 4
-Saints Row 2 
-Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Right, well that's my first month written about, hope you enjoyed it. Please leave comments as I'm open to criticism, as long as its constructive. If it is poo just let me know and I won't bother any more.