JordanH.net

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? (:

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…)

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! (:

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

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

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.

Call of Duty 4 – New Maps!

The new maps for Call of Duty 4 have been released! I downloaded these on Thursday evening when they were released, but I’ve been playing them non-stop and so have only got round to blogging about it now. There are four new maps – Broadcast, Creek, Chinatown, and Killhouse. I’ve only played three so far, as Killhouse hasn’t come up in the rotation yet for me. Let’s have a brief look through them…

Broadcast

This is a great map, mainly indoor, but has a huge parking lot and a few outdoor buildings. There’s a big newsroom in the centre, with intense gunfights across the computers. There’s corridors around the sides of the building and a large open area on the outside with multiple levels. There’s also a television studio and toilets to explore.

Creek

Creek is a big outdoor map, probably my favourite. There are many hills, a few buildings and a cave too. You’re lucky if you manage to walk around there without being snipered, people hide in barns, on roofs and up in the hills. Of course, there is also the ravine, quite fun to walk through as people can’t really see down there! As far as the scenery goes, there is a big waterfall around the middle of the map, although the water effects aren’t so good!

Chinatown

This is a packed town with many buildings. Definately a map for claymores! It’s fairly big, and there are some buildings with three levels. It’s quite fun to have building-to-building fights across the streets through windows, and then to drop frags onto unsuspecting wanderers below! Very Chinese themed, although many shop names are in English. There are a few mounted guns at windows. Playing Headquaters here is very fun!

Killhouse

Not played Killhouse yet, but by the looks of it, it’s a small map which uses a lot of the rooms from the training level. Looks a fast action-packed level to play, probably the only level based in the UK too.

I recommend getting these map packs! They’re £6.99 on the UK PlayStation Store, that’s $10 on the US i think. Let me know what you think about them too! Feel free to leave a comment.

>Jordan

My New Setup!

So this is my new setup. I’ve moved my PC out of the small office and now I’ve got all my games, consoles and computers in one place. I’ve also gained two double-cupboards and a tall bookcase (not visible in the pics).

Well, it’s one step towards getting the new bedroom…

>Jordan

New CoD4 Maps

As if Infinity Ward hadn’t already made a big fuss over them already (especially on the 360), we’re now going to end up rarely playing them, as according to many users, they hardly ever show up in the rotation.

Fourzerotwo is clearly an Xbox Fanboy, and he gives us no help in this recent blog post for the PS3.

Burnout Paradise DLC!

Wow. I never expected it. I never even realised till i was flicking through my PSN friends list and saw the words “BP Dust Storm coming” in the bubble above MRCMidnightRider’s name. I brought up Google, and soon found the best thing to hit my PS3 since Burnout Paradise was released – Downloadable Content!

If you don’t believe me (and i don’t blame you really), click here to see Criterion’s blog post on it. Then head on over to this forum post to see some speculation on what the new island might be.

Well, as far as I can gather, there’s some new cars – notably the Dust Storm dune buggy – and a new island. The new island could be an airport, I don’t know if you’ve heard Atomika on Crash FM mentioning the ‘sunken’ airport or not. Or it could be something else.

They’ve even teased us with two (yes, two) videos of the new content – here and here.

There’s even word on the street of more islands to come out. I can’t wait! Feel free to leave comments if you’re as fanatical about Burnout as I am