Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
Posted on November 2, 2008 - by Jordan H
Far Cry 2
Well, it’s been a great week off for me, and what better way to end it than to get a fantastic new game! As usual, here’s a review…
Far Cry 2 is a game set in a fictional un-named African country, with a stunning varied landscape and a storyline which can go in many different ways. It comes from Ubisoft Montreal, the same guys who brought us Assassins Creed and Rainbow Six, both great games in their own right.
The open world is truly endless, original and varied. I’ve been through savannah, jungle and a whole lot more and that’s just the beginning. The realism of the game is much more than any other. For example, if you pick up an old gun off the floor and use it a lot, it’ll get jammed. You can unjam it and continue using it. However if you keep using it, you risk it blowing up in your hands.
You can also set off forest fires, which is pretty funny. Blow up a car, use a flamethrower or throw a molotov into trees and before long you’ll have a fire burning, and spreading rapidly too! (more…)
Posted on October 25, 2008 - by Jordan H
Xbox and Rails
Last night, I met up with Josh, Joseph, Mike, Francis and Sam and we had a great time playing Halo 3 together. Francis’ lack of experience was extremely funny - he only ended up killing people on his team - and we all had some Ice Tea. Considering I haven’t played Halo compulsively - in the time since I got my Xbox I’ve mainly played GTA IV and Battlefield: Bad Company - I did quite well. Our team won a lot of times and I got to the top of the scoreboard once.
Last night, I decided to get round to learning some Ruby on Rails. It’s been something I’ve planned for ages, and since I’ve got a week off now I thought I’d see about learning it. I got InstantRails and installed it on my computer and followed a myriad of tutorials to get “Hello, World!” up on my screen. Gonna see if I can make an app by the end of the week, so far I’ve got about 5 different “Test” apps with no apparrent way to delete them. Help? (:
Posted on October 5, 2008 - by Jordan H
Burnout Bikes!
Well, I promised I’d give a review on the latest and greatest in Paradise City, and here it is (:
Burnout Paradise has been a totally awesome game from the start. I’m an avid fan, I bought it on day one and I’ve loved every bit of it. I’ve already given a review of the game a few months back, but that was before Criterion announced the Year of Paradise, where they dedicated a year to transforming Paradise City through free updates.
They released updates Bogart and Cagney a while back, and about a week or so ago they released Davis, the most recent free update for Burnout which included bikes! And they sure haven’t disappointed. (more…)
Posted on September 7, 2008 - by Jordan H
Spore
If my calculations are correct, then Spore came out exactly 8 years and 7 months after The Sims took the world by storm. From what I’ve played so far today, then it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Spore did for the new generation of games, exactly what The Sims did to the previous generation - reinvent the game.
Spore is a combination of many things. In case you hadn’t realised yet, the man behind this epic is no other than Will Wright, the creator of the other epic I mentioned above (: The game has the personality, relationship and skill aspects of The Sims at its heart, but branches out to have the SimCity element of gameplay along with a great amount of customisation options.
In the game, you start off as a cell, swimming around in a very big ocean. You can be a herbivore or a carnivore, and as you eat more food (and other fish if you like), you earn more DNA ‘bits’ which can be used when mating to expand your character. Soon you end up on land, and your creature can be seen in its full 3D glory. Your creature develops land-life-like features like legs, hands, and even wings. Your task is to work your way up, by either creating alliances with other creatures, or killing them off and having them for supper. (The herbivores among us will be glad to know that there are fruit trees around too!)
The game moves on to the city-like aspects, with the “Tribal Phase”, “Civilization Phase” and lastly the “Space Phase”. The latter of these phases is like all Sim-games, never ending. There continues to be a wealth of things you can do when flying between planets.
The character customisation is amazing. You couldn’t create two characters the same if you tried. The way you can develop your character, and how your character can develop personality-wise too. There is just too much to mention to fit it in this article!
I bought the Galactic Edition from GAME for £39.99. It includes an Art book and two DVDs, plus a poster and an expanded manual. I also picked up the Prima Guide, which was £12.99. So far I’ve only managed to play the first two phases (mostly owing to the fact that my sister decided she wanted to play on it all evening), but the game seems so intuitive and new, pushing boundaries where games have never gone before.
There’s only one gripe that I have with the game - the gameplay can be a bit slow. There are times when you feel as if you’re repeating yourself a lot (mainly in the second phase), continuing to do the same things - alliance or kill - over and over.
However, I’m really looking forward to playing the further levels and creating buildings, vehicles and even spaceships too! (:
Posted on July 25, 2008 - by Jordan H
Two Months Later
So, it’s exactly two months tomorrow since I bought my Xbox 360, and contrary to Hilly Billy’s statements, I’ve had a great time with the Xbox 360 and never looked back. So far I’ve got GTA IV (story completed, working on 100%), Halo 3 (working on that one) and Battlefield: Bad Company (someway through story, playing multiplayer loads though).
Talking to PS3 owners, they’re still having awful problems getting online in a lot of games. Notably, the other day PS3 released (and re-released) their 2.4 firmware update and 2 years of work didn’t really show. In my opinion, the in-game XMB wasn’t well thought through - people don’t want to view their photos whilst playing a game, they just want to send their messages! Still no game invites on the PS3 either.
Now - back to Xbox. Microsoft have announced some HUGE changes to the Xbox interface and I think they look pretty cool. Yeah, maybe they copied off Nintendo a bit in the avatar design, but it’s still gonna be great to play for real prizes in 1vs100 and have eight-player parties before going into games.
I did play my PS3 today though, only for Burnout Paradise since I haven’t got that for Xbox 360 yet. Criterion have just released their Cagney update and I tried out lots of new features. It did take a few hours to download though.
Now, I’m going to sit here and wait until Hilly Billy leaves a comment, which I guess won’t be long 
>Jordan
Posted on July 1, 2008 - by Jordan H
Battlefield: Bad Company
This game is absolutely amazing. I’ve not put another disc in my Xbox 360 since I bought it on Friday. It’s very fun to play, and it’s got a great story too.
You play as Preston Marlowe, a soldier in the US Army. He’s put in Bad Company, the unit of the army where all the idiots are put, “so they can put all their bad eggs in one basket”. They’re used when the privates and corporals are too expensive to waste. As you can probably expect, the result is very funny.
The story follows the unit as they discover Mercenaries and their greed for gold ensues. Bad Company ends up invading a neutral country and causing major chaos as they attempt to steal the Mercenaries’ gold. Great gameplay, not extremely hard but very fun to play.
And then there’s the online multiplayer. This takes the game to a completely new level. Almost (90%) fully-destructable environments can turn strategies on their head, nothing says chaos like being in a building one second, then being fully exposed to the enemies the next after someone blows the whole wall apart in front of you! The main game mode is Gold Rush, where you are either an Attacker or a Defender. The attackers need to blow up the metal cases where the gold is stored to steal it, and the defenders have to stop them. The attackers have limited respawns, and the defenders have unlimited. Think of it as CoD4‘’s Search And Destroy mode, but on a bigger scale and more destructive!
This game is fantastic, and one of the best I’ve ever played. The destruction factor adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay, and underneath it all is an amazing game engine. It’s called Frostbite and was developed by DICE. Bad Company is the first game that utilises it.
If you’re looking to get an awesome game this summer, this is the one to buy! You’ll have hours of fun playing the single player and then double the fun playing online. I thought it was impossible, but this game beats Call of Duty in all areas!
Let me know what you think!
>Jordan
Posted on May 25, 2008 - by Jordan H
Xbox 360 Tomorrow!
After tomorrow, any 360 fans will be able to play me on the console! That’s right, I’m buying an Xbox 360! Add me, I’ve pre-registered my gamertag: JordanH21
Posted on May 10, 2008 - by Jordan H
A Tale of Two Consoles…
You may recall last Christmas, when I got my PS3. All was well. I despised the Xbox 360 and everything to do with it, despite being told many times by friends to get one. I was a devoted Sony fan, won over by everything the PS3 had to offer - free online play, great games, Blu-ray support. All was well.
Then I got a few more games - Burnout and Assassins Creed - and enjoyed the gameplay of both, and the amazing online of Burnout. I made new friends on the PS3, and was persuaded to buy Call of Duty 4. All was well.
Then I got CoD4. I was plagued by the constant errors - “Cannot connect to host” - and much to my dismay, those gamers on the 360 had none of this. Our complaints to the game developers were ignored. Then I joined a clan, and found the lack of an in-game messaging system pretty annoying. Still, I put up with it, hoping for this much-requested feature in the next update.
The next update came, and went. So did the next one. They redesigned the store, but still no game invites, no in-game messaging, no sign of PlayStation Home, their big selling point, in sight. By this time it was getting to the point of insanity. Why can’t we have some basic features that the users of the 360 have had since launch?
Then GTA IV was released. I loved the single player, and me and my mate (who has a 360) had a night playing it. He brought his 360, I played on my PlayStation. He was playing away online, joining games full of players. I couldn’t get into a single game. Even when I hosted one, I hardly gathered 6 players, never mind 16, and kept getting disconnected from my own games.
Now my other friend is getting a next-gen console. When he asked for my advice on which console to buy, he seemed surprised when I said the 360. Unfortunately, I’ve put my money and trust in Sony and they’ve let me down. I’m now seriously considering jumping the band-wagon over to Microsoft and the Xbox 360.
Sure, I don’t mind paying £40 a year to play online. If you can get into games and have fun with your friends, it’s worth whatever money you’re paying. It seems that developers favour the 360, and so do the players. Sony released figures a few days ago saying that ‘the PS3 is outselling the 360 in Europe’. What’s the use in that if they can’t run an online gaming service?
The world of gaming is moving more and more onto online play, and consumers won’t put up with delays and excuses no longer.