GGK's Blog

It has been brought to my attention (not that I wasn’t fully aware) that I haven’t been blogging for some time... well tough, nothing interesting has happened so I haven’t bothered, get used to it! 

While Im here however... might as well update some stuff.

Considering its still summer (not that you would know it), and summer is normally accompanied by drought, both water and vidya games, the past month or so has been an awesome time to be an Xbox owner. As shown in my last update the amazing Forza 2 has come out, and I have been playing that almost exclusively, so much so that I missed the release of Armoured Core 4, a game that I have fancied playing for some time, however its always been on Sony consoles. I played the demo and decided its probably worth £30 if your a fan of big mechs (which I am) some time ago. Ive also been eyeing up The Darkness, which is a FPS/horror game kind of like Condemned, and as mentioned before, Test Drive Unlimited.

So I wandered into Gamestation a few days ago, after seeing Armoured Core 4 on the website for a mere £25, and also Flatout: UC for £29.99 which I was also interested in. However for some reason they decided to make them £39.99 each in store! A hooge £25 difference, which is just crazy for a dedicated game store, I would have paid a fiver more each for the convenience for walking into a store and getting them, but not that much. I ended up walking out with TDU for £20 and King Kong on HDDVD for £15 however so I guess it was worth the trip.

So I wandered on down to blockbuster for a look about, and while they didn’t have AC4, they did have Flatout for £30, which I promptly bought. This game went completely under my radar until Dukes told me about it, and let me play his copy (thanks to him for making me spend money as usual). It would be a massive shame if this game goes under everyone’s radar because it really is brilliant, pulling just about everything good from the Burnout series and Destruction Derby, it’s also published by a UK company, so we get it 2 months before the Americans, and as they have seen fit to release it for £30 (well apart from in Gamestation) I think that’s something everyone can get behind, cheaper new games benefits us all, and it would be nice if this was proved in its sales.

The game itself is a conversion from a semi old PC game (Flatout 2) I believe, but its been upgraded in just about every way. Its a banger racing game at heart, with the emphasis on crashing rather than speed, however the racing part is very solid and the tracks are really good fun thanks to TONS of stuff to crash through (tire walls, fences, gas pumps, shop fronts, garden chairs) all of which have excellent physics, the tracks feel very open and real thanks to being able to crash through most of the edges and keep on going, this also makes for lots of cool shortcuts. The damage models are very cool, you can even cause the drivers to fly through the windshields if you crash hard enough, you can also perform the P.I.T (Precision Immobilisation Technique) to great effect, spinning people out perfectly, and apart from some slight "sticking" during crashes, and some rubber band A.I, the experience is massive fun.

There are also Destruction Derby modes (set in a "bowel" the object is just to smash the other cars) and stunt modes (drive a jet car, eject your driver out of it, into various basketball rings and what not). The Destruction Derby mode is excellent but the stunt mode is a little lacking, it’s a crazy, but not hugely collection of fun mini games. The only other bad bit is the music, which is pile of crappy no name shit-rock, luckily you can stream you own music from the Hard Drive or iTunes etc.

In short this game is loads of fun, and I’ve not even played it on Live yet! It’s well worth £30!

With both TDU and Flatout to play, I think I will leave AC4 and The Darkness until they are a little cheaper and I have less to play. Not that the Darkness isn’t a really cool game (also thanks to Dukes for letting me play).

I also went to see Die Hard 4.0 with the guys on Sunday, it was good, that’s all I will say as both Dave and James have written full reviews on it! Go see it.

Yeah so typically this page doesn’t work in the new version of Safari (beta)... still.

Anywhoo, not posted here for a good few days, mainly because Forza 2 came out, and it's awesome! Normally this happens when a Project Gotham game is released (there was a comic staring me once regarding this), but Forza is good enough to hook me and cause me to vanish from real life for about a week. Its the attention to detail I love in it, the cars handle spot on and i can customise every little gear ratio, tire pressure and paint speck (awesome for us OCDs). The game also has plenty of Ferrari's, and being a big, big Ferrari fan, this makes me very happy. I still have plenty of single player to do, not to mention the multiplayer side, so I shall be playing it for some time to come. I should mention I got the limited edition box version, with a free 156page (awesome) book and 3 free cars (one of which is the Ferrari Challenge Stradale, whoop!!), and thanks to trading Command & Conquer and a few old DVD's (that have been upgraded to HD) Blockbuster ended up paying me a tenner to take away! :)

This being me though I quickly spent the money on Microsoft Points so I could get the Prince of Persia remake from Xbox Live Arcade. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be my cup of tea, as I remember the original (I played on a 128k spectrum no less) being very hard and very frustrating. After playing the demo my fears were put to rest, the game is still very hard but thanks to a checkpoint system, tight controls and awesome animation (helps you pick up when to jump etc), this became a must have. It's a perfect example of what a Live Arcade game should be, it remains faithful to the original while updating the graphics to 2.5d and in the style of the newer PoP games, allowing easy access for the first time player and fans of the original alike. I have great hope for Bomberman, due for release early June, and at some point in the future, Super Street Fighter 2, with all new 2d graphics (love me some Street Fighter!). The rest of my MS Points will be spent on either Guitar Hero songs (if they ever release anymore!!!) or car packs for Test Drive (when I actually pick up a copy of the game).

Lastly, Nexy got himself a Nintendo Wii, which I was lucky enough to steal for a good few hours (least he could do after I made him spend all the money he doesn't have on it) and just about my entire family had loads of fun playing Wii Sports on it untill he came to take it away (spoil sport). Although I don't really think I have the space for my own Wii, I really enjoyed the short time with it and would recommend it. With a few big name games (read: non Nintendo games, Ninty are never short of there own games) it could end up being a killer system.

Thanks to my lack of well-ness, Ive been awake for a rather unapropriate amount of time. Im currently in a slightly zombie-like state and should probably head to bed, but if I go now, I'll wake up some time late tonight/very early tomorow morning, which is no good. The aim of the game right now is to stay awake 'till about 7 - 8pm tonight in order to wake up at a decent hour tomorow. This proves rather difficult due to boredom, since wakeing up I've played Guitar Hero 2, gotton slightly closer to my complete 5* medium, but Ive hit a wall and so far I can't climb it. In desperation to make some progress I played some career on Hard, partially to take out my frustration by hitting the buttons as fast as possible, but as it happens I beat 9 songs, including a 5* on Possum Kingdom by Toadies (fun song to play), alas I hit another wall on Woman (by Wolfmother), I can't get over 74%, the hammer on/pull offs just kill me. I feel Im reaching my full potential on that game... so roll on Guitar Hero 3!

 

I played a fair wack of the Test Drive: Unlimited demo, which is from way back and I never used to like it, but my Forza 2 demo keeps dieing and Im fed up of re-downloading it. I think back when I first played it I was still in awe of PGR3, thus my not getting on with TDU, now however as I chomp at the bit for a new car game (Forza out on Friday, I have a pre-order in but I think my credit card is maxxxd) Im having alot of fun driving the Ferrari F430 Spyder around Hawai, Im pretty sure Ill pick this up when I have some spare cash, it defintatly seems like the type of game you can just play for a half hour or so every day to de-stress, or play when you get stuck at another game.

 

Sunday night (I think) I played some GRAW2 Co-op with Welshie for the first time in a while, and had alot of fun shooting dudes and generally getting grenaded by Mexicans while shouting Predator quotes. We played the new maps for the first time together and overall they where very good, some good old maps, plus some strange choices from GRAW1 (OGRAW?), Jungle Mines? Pfft. I cant help but feel we need to inject some freshness into the routine though, its a pity Dave cant join us in the slaughter, I think it would add some new angles to the game, or at least we could shoot him in the back! Thats not to say Im bored of the game however, I cant wait to get another game going, and am of the opinion that every possible game should have a co-op mode of this quality.

 

Lastly it has been mentioned that I am not observing proper blogging conduct because I dont make every godamn word a link to its home website, wiki article or dictionary.com. Well screw that :P if you can't use Google thats your problem, lets face it, even shitty browsers (IE7) have a search box, every other program includes Google toolbar installer, decent browsers even allow you to highlight a word and search and to be honest, if you dont know about the things Im talking about then you should probably dont want to be reading this blog anyway, and anyone or anything deserving a link has a perminat one around this page anyway.

Besides Im far to lazy to be adding links all over the shop :)