GAMER Expo 2010

So as it turns out, the year that I start a blog is the year of the first big gaming expo happening in Ireland. It’s called GAMER Expo and it’s looking  fantastic so far. It’s on from Friday the 29th to Sunday the 31st of October 2010 and I’m heading up for all 3 days. Just wanted to give a heads up that I’m going to be writing about everything that I see or do there, though I don’t know much of what’s going to be there. I plan to keep a daily journal aswell and I’ll also write that onto this so you can (hopefully) expect to see a lot of content that weekend.

If you want to check out the official site for the event it’s http://www.gamerexpo.com. They also have a twitter feed which is @GamerExpo.

UPDATE: Unfortunately due to reasons not yet specified, GAMER Expo has been postponed until a later date. The organisers have no intent to cancel the event and will be going ahead with it sometime in the future (possibly in the new year) and possibly at a different venue.

The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter Review.

So yesterday I posted a Halo: Reach review that I had to do for my English class at school. The day after that, I had to do another review so I chose the album “The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter” by Josh Ritter, hope you enjoy it

The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is the fifth studio album recorded by Josh Ritter, an American singer-songwriter. It was released on the 7th of September, 2007. The album’s songs range from what could be considered folk to alt-rock, this album – and Ritter himself – can never be pegged down to one genre.

At first glance, this album is very striking with a Roman officer’s helmet on a dark cream background (above), “The Historical Conquests of” in White and finally, “Josh Ritter” in black. The album has 14 tracks in total but early copies were made with 4 extra tracks included. Three singles were released from this album as digital downloads. These were “Mind’s Eye”, “Right Moves” and “Empty Hearts”.

When first listening to this album, you shouldn’t expect any certain motif or theme that goes throughout the album because there really aren’t any. There is one thing that runs throughout the whole album, though, and that’s quality. Each song is great, some more than just that. No two songs sound very similar, follow the same patterns and a lot are even different genres but the variety is the perfect thing about this album. And that’s what it really is; Perfect.

If you like music and know a thing or two about it then you’ll be able to see that Ritter is a fantastic songwriter. He has stated before – and it really shows that he spends time and effort on his lyrics. These would be most apparent on the tracks “To the Dogs or Whoever” and “The Temptation of Adam” among others.

This album would be suited for any person of any age that has a vast musical taste and that respects good writing. It’s definitely up there with my favourite albums of all time and is worth a listen by anyone at all into music.

The Conclusion

10/10

“Perfection for anyone of any musical taste.”

Halo: Reach review

I recently had to write a review of anything as homework for English class. I chose Halo: Reach as it was the last game I finished before writing it and decided I’d post it here. It was for school so excuse me if it’s sloppy, but still enjoy

Halo: Reach is a first person shooter for the XBox 360. It’s the 5th (and last) Halo game developed by the series’ core developer and creators, Bungie. It was released on the 14th of September, 2010and was published by Microsoft game studios.

You are a SPARTAN, part of an elite group of soldiers The game stars with your character joining “Noble Team” and with this, there are already many differences from past Halo games. Before, you were the only SPARTAN soldier in the games, but because of the setting (a prequel to the first game and based in a time before the scrapping of the SPARTAN project) you know have a team helping you along the way. The game takes place on Planet Reach, a place that was destroyed before the core Halo trilogy takes place. It shows Reach from the first enemy invasion right up to its last stand and eventual fall.

Being their first major franchise (and the one that cemented them as a good, respected developer), Halo holds a special in Bungie’s heart and they wanted to send it out the way they brought it in; With a bang. At some points in the game Bungie were literally sending Reach out the way that they brought it in by having things (like indirectly including an original trilogy character in the game) that only true fans would pick up on and feel special for noticing.

Having only played the original game in the series when going into Reach was in no way a bad thing – despite my hate for doing that – as it’s a prequel. Seeing as this ‘is’ a prequel and a set-up for the first game, you really don’t to know the plot of the other games which adds an element of accessibility to anyone without access to the original trilogy.

A strong point in Reach and something that the Halo franchise has always been known for is its multiplayer aspect and in Reach there’s no change. It took what Halo 3 had and made it better. It also took “Firefight” mode from its direct predecessor, Halo 3: ODST and added much more content. A personal favourite multiplayer feature of mine from Reach is the ability to run through the whole campaign on co-op with 4 people. If you have even one friend that’s willing to play with you, it can be incredibly fun!

So did Reach make a good swan song for Bungie? In my opinion, yes. Though the campaign isn’t an amazing feat of story-telling, it does well for a first person shooter. It’s a solid campaign experience that has great ability to (but doesn’t always successfully) suck you into the storyline. The multiplayer is exactly what people have come to expect from a Halo game, nothing short of fantastic and a hell of a lot of fun.

The Conclusion

8/10

“As a package, Reach is a solid, fun and well-made game.”

Batman: Arkham City announced for Autumn 2011

It may sometimes seem from this blog that the only things I care about are Batman games. While this isn’t true I sure as hell loved Arkham Asylum and was absolutely delighted when the teaser trailer was released for Arkham Asylum 2 or as it’s been officially named, “Arkham City”.

Earlier today the news hit the internet originally starting on the GameInformer website when they released details of their new issue. The cover story of the issue was Arkham City. The first thing that I did when I heard the news was go onto the game’s teaser site, http://www.arkhamhasmoved.com which is the same site as http://www.arkhamcity.com (one of the previously leaked domain names for this game). When you go onto the site you’re greeted with the logo for the new game (above). The first thing that caught my eye when I proceeded in was the colour. Arkham Asylum was a dark, gritty game and the teaser trailer for this confirmed that it would be the same. But if that’s true, then why is there so much white?

The next thing you’re likely to notice is Batman himself. Firstly, he has a blood nose. This must mean something because it was heavily pointed out in the pictures on the  GameInformer issue (which I’ll get to later). This could be why they chose the white, to emphasise the blood. I have 2 theories on the blood nose.

1. Seeing as the Joker is old and sick, this game could be set much later than the first and Bruce Wayne is old aswell so he can’t fight like he used to anymore. Keeping with the “old” theory, it could also be that since the last game, crime rates have gone down and Batman wasn’t needed so he hung up his cape and stopped fighting. He would be inexperienced if this were the case.
2. You may remember if you read my article on the leaked domain names of Arkham City that one of the domain names leaked was “http://wheresbrucewayne.com”. I speculated about it as best I could and came up with the idea that maybe who you play as in this game isn’t Bruce Wayne but is his side-kick Robin or Dick Grayson. In the comic book series when Bruce Wayne was presumed dead, Dick donned the mask and cape to become the Batman.

The second thing that you should notice about The Dark Knight is his suit. His suit is different and looks more high-tech or more armoured. Either way, this could also be something to support this not being Bruce Wayne. A new suit for a new Batman.

These are the images that were posted by GameInformer (click to enlarge):

In the first image you can see Batman and Catwoman (which obviously confirms her) but with Catwoman’s whip wrapped around Batman’s arm. Has she caught him or the other way around? The next image seems to think otherwise.

In the second image you can see Batman wiping his bloody nose with Catwoman hanging in chains in the background. These are the obvious things but look again between Bats and Catwoman. There you can see a poster of Harvey Dent (Two Face) in an uncle sam pose but instead with both of his hands extended, one of which has a gun. I think that this is exactly what the Uncle Sam posters were; Recruitment posters. I think that this is to recruit thugs and thieves for some sort of army that Joker is setting up.  There’s another not-so-hidden object behind Catwoman. It’s a water tower that reads something like “Gotham City Radio” and has a radio tower on it. “So?” I hear you ask? Well, go back to the teaser site and look around the rooftops at the water towers. It’s painted on most of them meaning that it’s going to have something to do with the game!

I’m so excited for this game! And seeing as it’s being released in Autumn of 2011 (at the earliest) my big fear of it being released too early and not being made right has disappeared!

Late to the Party: Skate 2

Courtesy of http://gamingpigeon.wordpress.com/

The Game

Skate 2 came out in March 2009 for the PS3, XBox 360. It’s the sequel to the 2007 game Skate and the 2008 spin-off game of the series Skate It. The game is developed by EA Black Box and published by EA. It’s the biggest challenger that the Tony Hawk franchise has ever had and at the best time: The decline of the Tony Hawk series. Not only is it the biggest challenger, I think it’s bett- You know what? I’ll just get to the review

Story

You are Unspecific Name-Man, a character of your own creation that is meant to be the same protagonist from the 1st game. At the start of the game, you’ve just been let out of jail and your “side-kick”, Reda, is filling you in on everything that has happened in the time that you’ve been gone.

A new company called “Mongocorp” has moved into San Vanelona and renamed it “New San Vanelona”. They’re an anti-skating company and have basically banned skating in most places in the city. The game focuses on your rise – through magazine shoots, videos and competitions – back to the top. It’s like starting out as an amateur skater since you’ve been in prison for so long.

Gameplay

If there’s one thing that Skate has got nailed down it’s gameplay. Remember Tony Hawk’s’ controls? Just button mashing until you ended up doing a good move? Well Skate 2 completely changes that in a way that Tony Hawk’s could only compare to if they stole the whole concept. Instead of button combinations for moves, ollies and flip tricks are mapped to the right analogue stick while grabs and inverts are on the trigger buttons on the back of the controller. This makes gameplay harder and more complicated which is a great thing, actually. We’ve had button-mapped controls for skating games since conception, it’s about time somebody changed it up and tried something different. After all, it payed off for them!

There is one aspect of the controls that could do with some work, though. Moving around without your board. Walking and running can be glitchy and get even worse when you try to call your board (if you’ve dropped it) or get back on your board near an object. Also, moving things in the environment is a great feature and can really help with challenges or just fun but this is the worst of the glitches. You will constantly – for absolutely no reason – fall over and bail or “glitch out” while moving an object, it’s inevitable.

Challenges and Missions

Alot of this game is filled with trial and error and if you won’t commit to this game and really try then you won’t get anywhere with it. I’m not going to lie, this game can get hard and with no difficulty setting to make the experience easier for you. You need patients. And if you’re prone to flipping out over things then you’re not going to like the pedestrians in this game. Ugh.

On the bright side the game provides a good mix of different types of challenges between competitions, races, pro challenges and even more variations within the bigger categories, you won’t get bored if you stick at it. One feature that I like in a game and that you see in Skate 2 is the ability to choose whatever you want to do i.e. you don’t have to do missions in an exact order, if you find one hard you can choose to do another one and come back later, which really helps without making it too easy.

Now, I’m not a big fan of side-missions, I don’t know why. But there’s just something about the side-missions (of which there are alot, so yay!) which made me want to play and beat them. Actually, I get the urge to want to completely 100% this game! And I’m never one to do that (trust me) but this game is just different… in a great way.

Free-roaming

This game is a free-roaming game and acts as such. The sandbox is pretty damn impressive. It mightn’t be a Just Cause or a Grand Theft Auto but it’s still impressive and the visuals in areas like the woods and… Everywhere actually, are very good!

A handy thing if you’re just looking to mess around are spawn points. You get the ability to use spawn points after you beat all of Danny Way’s challenges and then unlock extra ones for other specific achievements. They’re areas that you wouldn’t usually be able to get to and that are brilliant to skate and they’re integrated into your map so you can teleport to them whenever you want.

The fun aspect

If you want to mess around and have a laugh then you are reading the review for the right game. I’ve had Skate 2 for a long time and haven’t found it boring at any stage, there’s always something to do. The abundance of skateparks really helps and so do the side-missions. Then you also have own and kill the spot challenges, throwdown challenges and the Hall of Meat. Don’t want to do challenges? No problem! Just have a skate around, explore the city! Mess with cars or get chased by guards. This really is – and I’m taking everything into consideration – the most fun I’ve had in a game in years. And the soundtrack is great so no matter what you’re doing, you won’t be bored and have to listen to your MP3 player or something.

Hall of Meat

The Hall of Meat is a set of challenges that you have and all the challenges are things to do by bailing. When you bail, you have a little meter telling you how many points that bail you just did was worth. The more bone-crunchingly brutal, the more points you get! You can also get points by adding your own “formations” to your bails. While you’re in a mid-air bail you can point the right analogue stick in one of four directions to make your character do different formations and these get you extra points. And you don’t have to hit something to bail, you can bail on cue by pressing the two trigger buttons and the two analogue sticks down.

The Break-down

I could go on and on about this game for longer but I think I’ve said as much as I could without rambling about things you don’t really need to know or starting to make irrelevant points about things, so I’ll wrap it up now.

The Pros

• Challenging
• Variation of missions
• Fun
• Visually impressive
• Great soundtrack

The Cons

• Glitchy
• Infuriatingly annoying pedestrians
• You will need to repeat things over and over to get them right
• Not everyone will like the difficulty
• Easily forgettable multiplayer

The Conclusion

9/10

“A great game from every angle that won’t get boring very quickly!”

New Leaked Arkham Asylum 2 Domain Names May Hint Plot Lines.

Image from Collider.com

Recently, Warner Brothers registered several domain names for the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. They were found and published by superannuation. When you go through the names of these some of them seem to reveal plot lines that may appear in Arkham Asylum 2, some of them pretty interesting. If these are true, Rocksteady are definitely detaching themselves from the first Arkham Asylum. Let’s take a look at the different names. Here’s a list of them:

http://whois.domaintools.com/arkhamcity.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmanarkhamcity.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmanashesofgotham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmanbrokenground.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmannewarkham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmangranddelusion.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmanriseofarkham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmansiegeofgotham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/batmanstateofvillainy.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/cityofarkham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/closearkhamcity.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/peopleforgotham.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/stopmayorsharp.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/waringothamcity.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/wheresbrucewayne.com

Arkham City, Batman Arkham City, Batman Ashes of Gotham, Batman New Arkham, Batman Rise of Arkham, Batman Siege of Gotham, Batman State of Villainy, City of Arkham, Close Arkham City, Stop Mayor Sharp, War in Gotham City and Where’s Bruce Wayne.

All of these names coupled with the teaser trailer released a while back point to many things. First of all, the most obvious one, Arkham has taken over the Gotham and it’s in their control completely. This would make for a fantastic plotline! Just like they took over Arkham island and you had to beat them from the inside-out, you’re doing it again but on a much bigger scale. The whole city of Gotham! Or perhaps, “City of Arkham”.

“Stop Mayor Sharp”, now there’s a title! Anyone who’s played the first game will know of one character, Quincey Sharp. He was the warden in Arkham Asylum and (SPOILERS) later found to be the “Spirit of Arkham”. The spirit of Amadeus Arkham, the founder of the asylum. In the first game Quincey was running for mayor and apparently, he won. But being the spirit of Amadeus (who throughout the game you hear some pretty… Interesting things from) he may be corrupt, insane or even evil!

“Where’s Bruce Wayne” is a bit obvious. Bruce Wayne, Batman, hasn’t been seen for a bit and nobody knows where he is. At the moment in the Batman comics, Bruce Wayne is presumed dead and Dick Grayson (formally Robin) has taken the role of Batman with Damian Wayne (Bruce Wayne’s son) now helping him as Robin. The game may be taking inspiration from the comics but if not then we’ll have to wait and see where Bruce Wayne is!

Broken Ground, Grand Delusion and People For Gotham

To be honest, I have no idea what the first two of these mean. I can’t think of anything related to The Joker or Arkham that they may referring to. If you have any ideas please let me know in the comments, I’d like to hear any ideas of what the next game could be about.

“People for Gotham” is once again related to Gotham changing and being taken over by The Joker and Arkham. Perhaps people on the outside of the city want to change it and bring it back to the city it once was. Or it could be a revolution group on the inside working in the place of Batman due to his absence to rid Gotham of the thugs. A strange thing about this name, though, is that it’s listed as “People Forgot Ham”. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but that strikes me as Warner Brothers trying to cover up “People for Gotham” which could mean that this name is an important one. Or it could mean that Bruce Wayne left Gotham to pursue a career as a butcher, I’m not sure.

I think that we can all agree, though, Rocksteady did something absolutely amazing with the first Arkham Asylum and regardless of the storyline they choose I can see this one turning out just as good. I love the mystery around the sequel. I don’t want to see a rushed game and it seems that they’re taking they’re time.

I’ve Discovered Something Amazing

This is called Don’t worry, I’m Yours. It’s a 9 minute mix of three songs. Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin, I’m Yours by Jason Mraz and Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. 3 happy upbeat songs mixed to make an insanely happy piece of pure excellence. Really, it’s just amazing. I came across is on StumbleUpon and needed to get it out there in one way or another. This mix is done by DJ Dain who I now see as an utter genius.  His blog can be found here: http://perfectlyadjusted.blogspot.com/

Have fun with it!

Modern Warfare 2: How’s it holding up?

Where were you on the night of November 9th 2009? Me? I was in line for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the biggest entertainment launch in history. I went into town with my brother, his friend and his friend’s brother at midnight to get it. We waited outside GameStop in November for this game. I got the day off school the next day so that I could play it! And for what? A carbon copy of CoD 4 with new guns, maps and story? No. I did all that for a great game!

Back in November I thought that MW2 was a great game! And it was. It was a completely different game, playing it first. When I went onto the online first time, seeing as I was level 1, I had to use the preset classes and the first one I used had a shotgun as its sidearm which was different. I got my ass handed to me, we were absolutely man-handled! It was still nice to play, though.

The first time I played the single-player I thought that everything was different (I was still blinded by the sensation of actually playing it after all the hype). The first thing that was brought to my attention was the grenade. The physics were stepped up and it actually rolled.

As I got further into the story (finished in 1 day) and leveled up in the online I found myself in the same position as I was with the past two installments in the series. I was hooked. It was a very good game and I loved some of the new maps and guns. They were different. But then I started to realised that they were about the only things that were changed. No gameplay changes and the same graphics to my eye. That wasn’t really a bad thing, though, because I still liked it. It was like CoD 4 and I still liked CoD 4 so I liked MW2!

Today I find myself only playing it when some school friends ask me to but I still enjoy it. The gameplay’s repetitive and the online has it’s flaws like lag, noob-toobers and campers (But that’s what Call of Duty is like) but it’s a simple move and shoot game. It’s simple and keeps you occupied. It may not be my favourite game but at the same time, I suppose I have to give it credit.

Late to the Party: My new feature.

Lately, I haven’t been writing much. Anything, in fact, due to exams in school. But now for you (anyone still coming to this baron wasteland) I will make amends! I am planning to start regular updates with my new feature, “Late to the Party”

I’m not the type of guy who goes out and buys games on day one. I don’t get many games when they first come out and because of that, I can’t write reviews of games that are in the news or the centre of attention. That’s where this new idea comes in.

“Late to the Party” is – in a nutshell – me writing reviews of old games or just games that aren’t particularly new. I get to write more (which I love) and I don’t have to fork out fortunes on brand new games! I may change the name but this was just the first thing that came to my head and I wanted to have a label on it if I was going to announce it.

I can’t wait to get started and hope that you enjoy the reviews I’ll have upcoming in the next few weeks and months

Why Crash Bandicoot deserves the God of War Collection treatment

Intro

Recently we’ve witnessed the success of the God of War Collection which was God of War 1 and 2 re-made in HD for the PS3. This was made to mark the release of God of War 3 and gave fans a bit of a reminder of what happened before they played the third installment. Now, I’ve never played any of the God of War games because they never really appealed to me so I didn’t bother with the GoW Collection. So since I didn’t get it, I began to think about games from the PSOne and PS2 that I’d like to see again, re-made and touched up for the PS3 and I’ve chosen my candidate. Crash Bandicoot.

What game?

The original Crash Bandicoot game came out in 1996 for the PSOne. It received good ratings and now averages an 80.40% on metacritic.com. It’s sold 6.8 million copies (November 2003) which makes it the 7th best-selling PlayStation game of all time! It was developed by Naughty Dog (creators of Uncharted) and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was re-released for download off the PlayStation Store in 2006.

Why does it deserve a HD remake?

Look at how smooth those polygons are!

God of War 1 and 2 were on the PS2 and looked much better than Crash Bandicoot did and yet they were re-made in HD with better graphics before Crash. With the success of Uncharted 2, it’s strange that Naughty Dog haven’t looked into this publicly and it’s a shame, really. Imagine Crash Bandicoot re-made using the Uncharted 2 engine! It would be fantastic in visuals and in gameplay. I’m not saying that Crash should be completely re-made because it has bad graphics, that’s just one of the reasons another being that it was a great game!

Crash Bandicoot is available to buy on the PSN Store right now. You can purchase and download it onto your PS3 or PSP and play it at any time. It’s brilliant to play on both platforms and really – it its own words – makes you “take a spin down memory lane”. It plays brilliantly. The credit to this, in my opinion, is the fact that the PlayStation controller has barely changed since conception (bar the introduction of the analogue sticks). So it’s great to play and great to remember playing all those years ago, but it still has a major fault. It looks like utter arse. And how can this be fixed, I hear you ask? Well, Naughty Dog would first have to get permission to re-make their game from whoever owns the rights. I’m guessing that it’s Radical Entertainment who own the rights as they have made the 2 latest games of the series, Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind over Mutant.

But don’t you think there are better games?

I know that people will argue that there are more deserving games out there that should be made before Crash Bandicoot but this is my argument for a game that holds a special place in my heart to be re-imagined into something amazing. The same game that I used to play over and over again would feel new and refreshing.

Final thoughts

With Uncharted 3 rumoured to be in development, Naughty Dog mightn’t have time to make this happen but think, Santa Monica Studios got Bluepoint Games to port GoW 1 and 2 to the PS3, why couldn’t they do the same with Crash?