Rispon Avenue

I suppose that rainy day has already happened, but I wasn’t personally too affected by the whole thing, but I’m saving like a squirrel in Autumn just in case it does come closer to home.

It’s a good idea to have some sort of financial protection in place at the moment, because in spite of the initial onslaught of the financial crisis being past, the lingering effects will remain for quite some time. I’ve also made very, very sure that all my insurance premiums are up to date and the best that I can get in terms of cost and cover.

I hate investigating which premium would be best for my SO and I, but I did put in the effort whilst I was recovering from the swine flu – body was still weak but my mind was fine and very bored – to work it all out and I even picked up a mortgage life insurance cover plan, because being that sick just made me want to be safe rather than sorry if anything untoward should happen. Sure it’s morbid as hell, but I’d rather my SO not have to worry about losing our home should anything happen to me. Having what turned out to be a critical illness made me think heavily about all of this, and I’m glad it’s all taken care of now!

If you’re home insurance is coming up for renewal, it’s really not a bad idea to consider some reviews on the subject, because honestly the best way to figure out if any institution is a good one is to take it straight from the mouths who’ve bought from them/dealt with them, not who’ve worked for them! I found a good comparison site in the ‘money supermarket’ and though their name is quite silly, it’s nice to have that much information at hand on the same site.

I prefer to do all my financial planning myself, it seems somehow counter productive to have someone else do it, and pay them for it!

Tags: Finance, savings

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It’s amazing, but Tekken 6 really does suck. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn’t.

So, wow. Just wow. How hard can this game possibly lose? I’ve played the Tekken series for a long time now, I think I first began on Tekken 2, then owned 3, and 4, though I don’t think I played the fifth version. I really enjoyed those games, so very, very much. My SO and I bonded whilst playing Tekken 3 on the PS One; ahh, fond memories. That was a good decade ago, and now here we are with a sad, sad, version of a much loved series.

Tekken, for those who’ve managed to not hear of the game, is a fighting game which came out in ‘94 as an arcade game, but then was moved over the the Playstation for the next four iterations, and then finally was ported to the Xbox 360 for Tekken 6 as well as the Playstation 3. It’s been one of the best fighting games for the past fifteen years, and I was sure that it would continue to be so. However, the sixth sequel is just… just awful.

Okay so I played it for two days, on and off, so I gave it a fair chance. My SO and I happily placed the disc into the 360 and started the game up. We knew the music was going to be less than great because of the IGN review, and they also mentioned the lack-lustre sound effects. We said we could deal with that and away we went.

We picked some of our favourite characters straight up, and it was nice to see so many characters available for use straight away. I fought as Bryan Fury, and my SO fought as Ling Xiaoyu. Okay, here we were, and yeah, the music wasn’t great, but I could deal with that. My SO absolutely hated the poor fight sound effects, saying she never felt like she landed a proper attack because the sounds were so muted.

The controls of the game were poor to say the least. I’m a good fighter, but it felt like the only way to play this game was to button mash, and then we actually tried the single-player modes; up until this point, we’d only been fighting each other.

So I tried arcade mode, hoping to unlock more content. I got to the third fight and was then faced with ‘*Oops*’ the bear. A blue version of Kuma with gold wrist braces and paw-pads. This ridiculously difficult opponent took me thirteen attempts to beat, in spite of being able to get through every other arcade/single-player mode in a fighting game pretty straight forwardly in the past. There was no learning curve, the AI went from complete dunce that will allow you to throw them over and over, to nigh-on unstoppable knows every attack in the catalogue kind of opponent in only three rounds. I mean, what the hell’s with that?

Then we tried the ‘Scenario’ mode as a cursory glance online suggested this was the way to unlock content. It was terrible. A strange strolling along a path fight were you were stuck with an annoying android who’s trying to explain the abstract defunct story-line. I couldn’t stand this style, it was very unintuitive.

Combine all of this with some seriously ugly character models and the worst fractured storyline you could imagine, we ended up taking it back and trading it for Soul Calibur IV. Sheesh.

Tags: bad games, Epic Fail, Gaming, Tekken 6, Xbox 360

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My copy of Mass Effect 2 is sitting sealed and ready to go on my shelf there, neatly hidden amongst the other games – which I keep in alphabetical order – but there it shall stay until I’ve finished Mass Effect 1!

I went and found it the day after release, all nicely sealed and ready to be played, but I want to go into the game with a full file intact. For most games that wouldn’t matter. I mean, if I hadn’t finished Gears of War 1 and just wanted to play the second game, that wouldn’t be an issue. I’d just read through the storyline on a website somewhere and set to.

But in Mass Effect 2 you can actually import your character from the first game. Now, you don’t go in at the same level, or even have to play as the same class, but what does go in is a record of all the choices you’ve made in the first game. Did you resolve this issue peacefully, or did you become violent, did you try to help these people, or ignore their problem. All these choices will affect how the characters in Mass Effect 2 react to you, which is an aspect of the game I’m highly anticipating.

So now I just have to really get stuck into the first game. I’m a moderate way in, gotten my specialization and running around the galaxy saving everyone’s ass. That’s always fun. Who doesn’t want to be the hero of the entire universe?

Still enjoying the game, and I have to say, it is a lot more enjoyable to play on the 360 than it was on the PC. The control system on the 360 is a lot more intuitive, and the game is so much less buggy. I’ve just realised that I’d not downloaded the two add-ons, so I’m currently getting those cracking.

More on Mass Effect once I’ve finished the first game and embarking on the second!

Tags: Gaming, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2

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None of the current gen consoles are perfect – though the 360 is the best of them – but the Wii is one that I won’t be buying.

Now, I know I’m going to anger quite a few Nintendo fans here, but I’m going ahead with this anyway. I’ve extremely fond memories of the SNES, which is still one of my all time favourite consoles, I mean, Super Mario Bros. 3 was one of the best games of all time, there’s no doubt about that! But the Wii, the latest console from Nintendo, just falls dramatically short from where the other current gen consoles are sitting.

Okay so let’s talk tech here, there’s no doubting that the Wii is by far the weakest system of the 7th generation in gaming. Both the 360 and the PS3 support far better graphics, processing, and memory capabilities, and whilst I can understand the Wii was aiming at a different audience, there’s still issues with charging that much for a console that is as limited as the Wii is.

I’ve used the console, and sure it’s fun for a while, but another thing that really, really, and is the clincher as to why I won’t purchase the Wii, is the complete lack of quality gaming on the console. You’ve got about four good games on the entire platform, and yet the game library for the Wii is enourmous, with around 600 titles, but just over 37% of those have been reviewed at or below 60… See where I’m going with this?

Nintendo should learn from what happened with Atari. Crappy games for the Atari flooded the market, and it sent the console under, yet for some reason, the unenlightened are still purchasing this shovelware for the Wii, and there’s tons and tons to be had. There are probably four good titles on this console, but I’ll not be paying the price of the console just to have a go at Mario Galaxy 2, and I don’t like party titles, so all the other Mario titles for the Wii hold absolutely no interest.

So please, Nintendo, please bring us a console in the next generation that’s worthy of the money we spend on it, don’t put out a whole heap of ultra crap games, and stop with the gimmick gaming!

Tags: Gaming, Miyamoto, Nintendo, Wii

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It’s not a happy bustling market, it’s more a desolate ghost town of a market at the moment.

Basically, I’m still noticing a lot of bad news regarding the housing market. Property prices in 2010 still expected to fall further, somewhere between 10 and 40 per cent for the year, and that the little rays of sunshine in the market will die out as quickly as they came on.

House prices seem to be something that prospective buyers should look into on a daily basis. Small fluctuations in the market can make a pretty big difference for the average house buyer, because if you find a slump week – which could be a blip on the national financial radar – you could save yourself thousands of pounds. I also recommend looking into blogs these days, I’m not talking any old blogs, but there are some really comprehensive economy blogs around that can help you predict when you’ll be able to buy, and what sort of price is fair for what you’re looking at.

The market may have a bit of hope with the recent interest from property investors due to the poor results in the stock market last year, but there’s always the ubiquitous property and home buyers, those eternally searching for just the right house or property, but who never seem to find it.

I still see a lot of homes up for sale in my area, but every time I hear what one of those properties went for I’m a little surprised at just how much value has been lost from the housing market here. Mortgage rates are okay I suppose, but I’m shocked and irritated to see banks offering 90% mortgages again, so soon after the financial collapse brought on by 100% mortgage loans… what are they thinking? It’s such a shockingly stupid lack of hindsight in my opinion… shouldn’t they actually learn from the lessons at hand? It’d be nice, wouldn’t it.

Tags: house prices, housing market

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It was a nice surprise to find that the one game I’d not heard of in my 360 bundle was actually a very fun game to play.

Pure is an ATV racer, yep, those four wheel motorcycle things. Surprisingly, a game based on racing these things is actually very fun. You’ve got three different race types, Race, what it sounds like, which is three laps around a fairly long course. Sprint, five laps around a very short course, and then Freestyle, which is where you’ve got a full tank of fuel, and you race for as long as you can whilst performing tricks which will extend the fuel you have allowing you to pull off more tricks for even greater points.

You get to build your own ATV with parts provided, changing colour and other aesthetic options, and choosing parts based on which attributes they give bonuses to so you can build bikes for specific types of events. There is a heck of a lot of customisation here, especially as you play the game further and unlock more and more parts for you to use as well as level ups for specific types of parts.

I hadn’t heard of this game prior to looking up what the Elite was currently bundled with, but after watching the video review on IGN I thought it looked like fun, but playing it is more fun than I’d expected after seeing the review. It’s fast paced, the music is good and suits the game, and the over the top stunts are magnificent to watch. It’s a great pick up and play game, which gives you a good adrenaline boost.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the graphics for this game are really very good. You can get up to some roaring speeds around some of the race tracks, but there’s no screen tare or pop in or anything like that. It’s incredibly clear and the tracks are detailed and very pretty. I was surprised that so much effort had gone into things like trees on the sides of the tracks, or boats in the distance on water, which was rendered extremely well, by the way. If you’ve got the chance, this is a great game to have on hand for short to medium length of bursts of play.

Tags: Gaming, Pure, Xbox 360

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It’s got a lot of issues which cause a great amount of irritation, but I played it for at least three days before putting another game in the 360.

So I went and picked up the 360 Elite last Monday, and I’m really enjoying the console. When I had the original 360, I had a regular television and the AV cable hook-up, but since then I’ve picked up a great LCD TV and have the 360 hooked up with an HDMI cable, and it looks fabulous. So nice to see the console put out a quality HD visual.

I picked up the Elite with a bundle which included the games Pure and Lego Batman, and then your pick of two others. I chose Assassin’s Creed – knowing it’s not great but wanting to play it before playing the sequal – and Mass Effect as I’d never had a real chance to fully play it because it was too buggy to bother with on my PC when it first came out, and then it’d never install on my PC again afterwards and I’m very much looking forward to the sequel.

I played the first Fable, and it was alright, so I decided that along with the bundle, I’d pick up a copy of Fable 2 as well. This was actually a lot of running around as my local games store didn’t have a sealed copy so I had to run around and find it at a store that did, but not before I’d ordered it through that original store and two days had passed and then they told me that their warehouse wouldn’t let them get any more in as they already had stock in the store. Anyway, I got a hold of the game.

I played it a lot for the first three days of having it and I just had to get that bloody disk out of the 360 because I just could not stand the ridiculousness of Molyneux’s writing for one second longer. Let me just say oh. my. god. What the hell was that guy ‘thinking’!? First off, your sister dies in the opening act, which, alright, you can take that as part of good writing, if it were good writing. Next you’re running around doing what some strange woman who saved you tells you to do, without telling you why. Then you have to save another ‘hero’ like yourself, who also just happens to lose a family member and that’s how this hero joins your fight.

Next up you have to travel to this ridiculous spire where you’re stuck for the next TEN YEARS getting the next hero. After you’re back from that, gotten another hero who tries to have you killed – after stealing your youth – you finally get to have a go at the bastard who killed your sister – who was at the spire the entire time you were there but you never tried to kill whilst you where there – only to find that he’s now also gone and killed your wife and children and your dog – who’s at least twenty years old at this point but still spry – and after you kill that moron, you get to use the stupid spire to make a wish, you can wish to bring your own family back, but it’s not the most ‘pure or good’ option you can take, that’s bring back all the thousands of people who died trying to re-build the spire who never actually were a part of the game world, nor do they turn up in it after you make that wish.

Oh and if you do bring back your family, you do get your dog back, and your sister is revived as well, though you never get to see her again anyway.

Believe me when I say this, this game includes some of the worst writing I’ve ever read. Molyneax is actually trying to upset the player, he’s even said that he wanted to ‘make a game that would have gamers crying’ in interviews before the game came out. He’s obviously greatly in love with his own ideas, and the game is incredibly narrow, irritating, poorly written, and frustrating to play.

Tags: Fable 2, Gaming, Lionhead Studios, Xbox 360

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Stopped working. Bought recently and stopped working.

So the handsets are fine, except that they are running out of power because the base stopped working. Yep, the rather necessary base part which charges the hand set and does all the important stuff like actually being hooked up to my modem, well that part died on the weekend for no apparent reason, which is rather annoying. I’ll go and buy a new one, because I don’t want to wait the time it takes to send the phones back to the manufacturer, wait for them to get to them, then repair or replace them, then send them to me. I kind of need a phone now, and I’d already given my old one away.

So anyway, back to searching for telephones online. I suppose this is the only downside with not going through a company like BT who’d supply me with one, but at least I get better rates on everything with my non-phone supplying company. I really do like my UK ISP as the rates are good compared to many ISPs in other countries. There’s lot of places for business broadband and ADSL lease lines these days, but I like the one I already have.

The digital dect cordless phones look okay, but I’ll be reading a lot of user reviews on tech sites before I choose, to find one that’s not going to break down.

I’m always very thankful at this point that at least if I have to shop for new phone, I can check out online reviews and such before I do go and buy one. I don’t mind shopping for tech in person, but it’s much better to go armed with information. I wonder if there’s poor reviews for the phones I bought or if they are merely an exception to the general quality of the phones, because I really thought they were alright…

Tags: phone replacement

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Where do you stand?

Basically, a while back I saw this news article on the BBC News site for the ‘naked scanner’. Basically there’s a scanner that’s being tried in various airports here in the UK which takes a complete image of a person in an x-ray sort of format. The contentiousness rises out of the fact that it produces a clear image of the entire person, regardless of clothing, as if they were naked. Some people feel that this is an extreme invasion of their personal privacy, whilst others are happy to be scanned if it means safer air travel.

I personally feel that safer air travel is worth it, because the image will be destroyed afterwards – there’s no way to store them – and I don’t think the person viewing all these pictures is going to care one bit about seeing a hazy negative looking image of thousands of people a day. The airports using the scanners are implementing them in replacement of regular metal detectors and/or being patted down, so some people do prefer to be scanned rather than go through all of that. On the other hand, it is getting to be extremely invasive to go anywhere, anymore, and making it seem less worth it to travel.

Many Brits seem to find security invasive and offensive, with many being angered by CCTV camera systems, and to be fair, we do have more of them per capita than any other country in the world, and that’s pretty hefty. There’s both good and bad about all of these security measures, same with GPS vehicle tracking, but I tend to see the up side to those more than the down.

I heartily dislike this RFID tracking business that companies are trying to implement, as this is not a security measure but as a means for companies to track who’s buying what, and that I don’t agree with. It’s a viable option if it helps maintain safety for everyone, not if it only helps people to make money.

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Time now for the last of my gaming history pieces, which is good really because I’ve got other things to blog about!

Well right off the bat you’ve got the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. This was a huge deal, sold really well, and made DVDs more accessible than ever before for your average household, as the price was better than pretty much any good DVD player out at the time. ‘01 saw the release of both the GameCubeand the Xbox, with Xbox Live launching a year later. In the next few years there were major buy-outs and take over bids, with Microsoft buying Rare, and EA trying to buy out Ubisoft.

The seventh generation of gaming consoles was birthed with the release of the Xbox 360 in ‘05 whilst the Wii and Playstation 3 launched about a year later. The next two years saw dominance by Wii over the gaming market, outselling their rival consoles, but it seems apparent to me that that’s largely due to the reduced price of console and games from Nintendo because of it’s lesser technology.

IGN had the view point that the 00’s made the gaming industry, but it really seems to me that that had already happened in the 90’s, a view which many gamers agree with. The consoles in this seventh generation all seemed to have big issues, whereas the previous generation of the 90’s seemed to have less issues in spite of their lesser capabilities.

So, wrapping up my review of gamer history… It’s amazing to think that we’ve got high definition, motion sensors, and online capabilities, when we came from code being developed on mainframes the size of a room and 8-bit cartridges. I think that gaming is slowly finding it’s footing with entertainment mediums like film and television, and will continue to do so. I’m also hoping that with the visuals of games becoming more and more advanced, so too with story lines and plots development. I think the only thing lacking in gaming is high quality writing on a consistent basis.

Tags: 00’s, Gaming, history of gaming, IGN

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Getting ever closer to modern day gaming with this instalment; the 90’s

The 90’s is an era of growing up in my mind, as that was what I was doing throughout that decade, and so was gaming. At the dawn of the 90’s, gamers were still using 8-bit games with 16-bit pixels. Those graphics aren’t completely terrible, heck, I’d play Legend of Zelda right now if I could find an emulator that didn’t make a very annoying sound every time I moved Link. However the 90’s saw an amazing transition from the NES era of gaming through to the Nintendo 64, the Playstation, and SEGA’s Dreamcast. The 90’s ushered gamers from the cartridge era into the compact disc, and all the data that could be stored on it!

In ‘90 and ‘91 Super Mario Bros. 3 and Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past came out on the SNES respectively, two games which made the console what it was in my mind. Those are still games that I’d happily play today, though I may get bored after a short while and go play something else, but that’s largely because I’ve played both those games so much in the past.

‘95 saw the very first E3 in LA, which has helped enormously to establish gaming as a separate entity from ‘electronics’ at large. ‘95 was also the year which saw the Playstation hit North America, the very first gaming console to use CDs instead of cartridges. The next year the Nintendo 64 shipped with Super Mario 64, one of the best games of all time and a pure joy for gamers to try out with a brand new console. The Playstation was the first console to employ both the analogue and digital controls, however it’s widely acknowledged that Nintendo implemented it better with a more comfortable controller. I’m always amazed that Sony still uses the same damn controller, considering it’s not particularly comfortable.

In ‘98 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shipped, much to my happiness. That was a wonderful game, and also in the same year Half Life shipped for the PC, another fantastic game.

Whilst the debate still rages – mostly by idiots if you ask me – as to the validity of games as a worthy entertainment medium, and not something that will ‘make the children violent’ the 90’s was when this debate was most fierce. I think because there wasn’t the evidence that we have now that there’s no correlation, just a whole bunch of overreacting ninnies. However it was also the decade where gaming really did establish itself as more than ‘toys for children’, so it’s a very interesting decade in gaming.

Oh, and Superman 64 was the worst game of the entire decade.

Tags: 90's, Gaming, history of gaming, IGN

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The 80’s was a very awesome time for gaming, for many reasons, so now I’ll talk about those that stand out in my mind.

The 80’s saw a very mixed bag for the gaming industry. From the boom of the 70’s, the very beginning of the 80’s seemed set for gaming to remain a huge phenomenon. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are remembered very fondly today, and were gaming sensations, and the very first time we saw Mario!

However, in ‘83 and ‘84 the gaming industry in the US blew itself to pieces, because there were so many poor quality games being put out for too many different consoles that gamers just gave in and stopped buying. This was before there were serious hardcore gamers like there are today, and also before there was the kind of information or access to information that we have today. There wasn’t a dozen sites on the net to tell you what to expect with a game, or three different magazines for each console and the PC waiting near the supermarket check out to give you that same info. No, this was when gamers had to figure it out for themselves, mostly.

So, what happened to turn gaming ’round? NINTENDO!!! The Japanese company Nintendo took a chance in ‘85 and shipped the Nintendo Entertainment System – NES – to America with the first Super Mario Bros., and behold, the gaming industry took off again! Two years later saw the very first emergence of Link and Zelda, one of my all time favourite game series.

In ‘88 SEGA released the Master System, which whilst being pretty groovy and actually being more powerful than the NES, but even with a few really good games, it couldn’t compete with the runaway success of Nintendo’s console and handheld.

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’ve just read about Atari’s Swordquest contest, and I have to say, it would be pretty awesome to see something like that run today!

Tags: 80's, Gaming, history of gaming, IGN

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IGN put up a series of articles recently about gaming through the past few decades, so I thought I’d write about it here because I found it an educational read.

The first of the articles outlines the birth of modern video gaming. Most gamers are probably aware that gaming really kicked off in the 70’s with coin operated machines, primarily, with Pong which came out in 1972. Though Pong is often remembered as the original computer game, it was actually very similar to a game which had been released by Ralph Baer who created the Magnavox Odyssey home console, along with a Pong-like game only a few months before Pong hit the market.

In ‘71, Nolan Bushnell created the very first consumer video game, called Computer Space. Apparently the game was overly complex and somewhat abstract, which unfortunately meant that the game flopped, but hey, it was the first cab off the rank and that’s rather important.

There were games that kicked off entire genres in the 70’s, such as simulator games with Lemonade Stand in ‘73. There were also some of the most important advances in computer gaming in this decade. Gaming consoles for the home were first introduced in the 70’s, the Magnavox Odyssey, then a few years later the Fairchild F, and then the one that really made an imprint, the Atari Video Computer System was released in ‘77 for a hefty $US200.

During the 70’s there was at least one arcade game in every pub or gaming room, though towards the end of the decade they weren’t finding the popularity that they had once had.

What amazes me is that from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s, the advances in home gaming were astronomical. The earliest computer games were built on mainframes the size of a room, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. To look at that mainframe, and then the Atari 2600 in ‘77 which just plugged right on in to your television… well that’s just awesome in the eyes of this avid gamer.

Tags: 70's, Gaming, history of gaming, IGN

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Odd story, no doubt about that, but one that bares reading by all gamers, in my opinion.

So, I’ll give a brief run down of what is in this news story here that I found via a link on the Penny Arcade news section. Basically, there was once a little drug dealer from America, who was arrested on dealing many types of drugs. This little drug dealer decided that, when the arrest warrant went out for him in 2007, he’d rather not go to court and maybe prison, so decided to skip the country.

This little drug dealer had had friends in his home town, somewhere in Howard County, and he had told them that he liked to play WoW. When the sheriff from that good ol’ county started asking those friends about the little drug dealer, they informed him of his predilection for that stupid game, well, they thought why not send a missive from the king – read, a subpoena – to the caretakers of the land of Warcraft. The sheriff waited and waited, for three or four months, before a wad of scrolls was sent back to him. A package of information about that little drug dealer, what his billing address was, his favourite server, and his character’s names. Funnily enough, he played as a Shaman, not terribly dissimilar from is apothecarish tendencies in real life.

Okay now I’ll drop that pathetically fractured story-teller style and deal with the rest of it. So, after they got all this information from Blizzard, sheriffs at the Howard County used the information to figure out that their quarry had gone to Canada and then enlisted the aid of the Canadian Mounted Police, who picked up the dealer and shipped him back to the states.

This is something that’s not been done before, but it’s very interesting. Personally, I think that everything that was done was completely above board, completely reasonable, and if some scum bag drug dealer get to go to prison as a result, then booyah!

Tags: Blizzard, drug dealer, Gaming, law enforcement, WoW

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Save yourself and those around you much grief by shopping from home instead of hitting the pavement in the last few days before Christmas.

It’s so much better shopping online, so long as you know what you’re looking for and the good sites to buy from. Obviously it’s getting awfully close to Christmas now, so you’d have to make sure you can get express postage on anything you order, but this is good advice for any holiday season.

Most of us have a fairly good idea what to buy for the people we get gifts for, and don’t just head into a department store with no idea, but if you are a little stumped there are always lists online of what are considered good presents for men, women, and children.

Lets start then. If you want to get a man something you’ll know he’ll love, make it active! I’m a geek, but pretty much all of the gifts on Into the Blue appeal to me, and probably men in general as well as many women, making it a really great gift and time out together sharing in something really fun. Seriously, they’ll let you drive a tank… a tank! You can also go jetskiing, bungee jumping, and some old school falconry is available too!

Okay lets see now, often you’ll find yourself somewhat stumped as to what to get as a gift for your mother or such, and that can be annoying, but I like to check lists like this for gifts for women, because they’ll let you know what’s considered a good gift for a lady without you having to watch one jot of day-time TV.

If you’re not a parent, you can really have the same issue when trying to find gifts for any children you’ve got to buy for. I always look up gifts for my nephews, it’s best to when buying Christmas presents for kids.

If you’ve no idea, then you can always drop by Amazon, they’ll have something that’s apt for nearly anyone! It’s saved my bacon a couple of times in the past with gifts for my family.

So there’s my shopping round-up, and don’t expect me to do anything like that again! :D

Tags: Christmas, Christmas shopping, gifts, online shopping

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It’s hard to say if the game is not so good, or just massively over hyped, but either way, I’m less than thrilled with the game.

It took quite a while before I actually bought and played the game after it was released back in October, in fact, I’d only played it from around mid November, so there was quite a lot of reviews out there at that point, though I didn’t really take much of a look at them, because I was still down with H1N1 and game reviews didn’t seem very important right then.

Anyway, IGN US gave the game 8.7 whilst IGN AU gave it 8.5 but the metacritic score was actually 80, so in terms of IGN that would be an 8.0. I have to say, though, that even that score is, I think, somewhat overrated. Some sites rated the game as low as 50 (5.0) even though they did have good things to say about it.

The game’s controls are more than a little irritating, no, they are completely frustrating. There is no room for fine movements, you’re either running that little fellow full tilt across the screen, or jumping over the exact spot you want the little blighter to stand on, over and freaking over. It’s really annoying. Also, the range of items in the game is dramatically less than I had thought there was going to be with what developers had said about the game prior to release.

It’s also VERY annoying to type something in, and only have the last part of the word count. For instance, I wanted sleeping gas, so I input it, and rather than telling me that this item too wasn’t available, they gave me a little bit of gas. Hmmm, lame 5th Cell, lame.

Another thing that really bothered me about this game was that it was just way too easy. Ridiculously so in most cases. The only thing that made this game difficult was the poor controls, and that’s not a good thing, that’s a very bad thing.

Scribblenauts was touted as visionary, an extremely new and creative game, however as I played it I felt like I’d done it before. It’s like Crayon Delux but with cartoon visuals and pre-made items instead of being able to draw your own. So if you’ve thought about getting Scribblenauts, save your money and buy Crayon Delux for your PC. You’ll have more fun, more money in your pocket, and won’t want to snarl in frustration at the horrible controls.

Tags: DS, overhyped, scribblenauts

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Nah, this isn’t a post on ghost hunting, but rather on the new Zelda game, Spirit Tracks, which I’ve been playing for the last week or so.

I know, I know, I’ve got at least one rant around here somewhere about being annoyed with the upcoming Zelda game, that a train felt very limited compared to the boat seen in previous games, and yeah, I’d still prefer something else, but I’m actually enjoying the game nonetheless.

Okay so lets see, where to start… I know that some are frustrated that the controls remained the same and that you still have to control Link via the stylus, and I can see why, but apart from the occasional time where you only want to move a very small amount, I don’t mind the stylus controls. I like being able to tap items rather than have to run up to them and press ‘A’ and also like the sword control, so it doesn’t bother me really.

The story line is good old Zelda style; it’s nice to see that even though their ideas might not be my favourite, they still have the ‘Zelda’ knack of making the game enjoyable. Running around with Princess Zelda makes for a nice change from seeing her for a total of five minutes in the entire game, though she is a ghost the company is still refreshing. It’s a little reminiscent of Twilight Princess in that regard, I suppose. The dungeons are good but they are a little easy. I’d not needed to use either a potion or the ‘Song of Healing’ until the boss fight in the Snow Temple, so I do feel like the difficulty could stand to go up a bit.

The train rides are… well… irritating at times. They can be very tedious, unless you decide you’re going to treat it like the journey is as worthy as getting to the destination. Perhaps that’s an English thing, I’m not sure, but I do find that I have to have a certain mental approach to getting from place to place, lest I find myself becoming frustrated very quickly.

I like that Beedle is running around in a hot air balloon in this iteration, I’d thought he’d be on a train as well, though I can see that being a problem. I can’t stand the stupid ‘bad’ trains that run around in certain areas, purely because you never get the chance to fully blow them up with your cannon. All you can do is slow them down, and if they hit you, you go back to where you began your journey, and VERY irritating occurrence!

All in all it’s still a fun Zelda game, however I think the IGN rating on the gameis a tad fanboyish , it’s a really fun game, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure if it deserves a 9.3 rating, perhaps a 9.0 would be more fitting? It’s hard to decide because the game really is extremely fun! I mean sure, it’s not that challenging, but it’s no slouch, either. It’s a super fun game and I’m going to stop blabbing about it here and go play the damn thing!

Oh, and I’m going to just say it here and now, I’m hoping there will be a third instalment in this DS series of Zelda games in which we get to travel around in a hot air balloon like Beedle, or perhaps an air ship.

Tags: DS, Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Link, Train

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There was a salesman knocking at my door today, and upon going through all that is entailed in getting rid of said salesman, in the future I just won’t open the door!

I’ll set the scene. I’m working away quietly, slowly catching up on missed work due to being ill, and I hear a knock at the door. My SO was out, so off I go to see who it is. I check the peep hole in the door, and don’t recognise this person in a suit, but I thought I better open it.

No sooner had I opened the door when this man launched into a very generic speech about certain telecoms deals the company he was representing were offering to those in my area…

First off, to those in my area? Do you think I believe that crap? No, that’s just something companies do to lure people in by thinking they’ve got a special deal, that not everyone can have this deal, no, you have to be special. Gag. I told this guy that I was happy with the voip phone system I’ve already got, that I don’t need any of their numerous telephones, and that business SDSL availability was a pretty crappy selling point considering this was a residential area.

Then he did something that made him stand out as really annoying. He started in on asking which company I went through for my phone system, why I didn’t think I needed SDSL, and where I bought my telephones.

For a person who’s had very limited social contact for about a month, this was a little more than I could take, and I told the guy flat out that this was ridiculous, that his interrogative questions were presumptuousness and rude, and that he and his company where absolute shysters if they were going to try and come into this area and start telling people they need SDSL. The salesman looked so shocked and bewildered I thought he might faint, then he said he hoped I had a nice afternoon, and then left. Ahhhh. Still, next time I’m not answering the door!

Tags: door to door salesmen

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It’s been quite a relief to find two okay sources for downloadable movies and TV series whilst I’ve been sick, though of course there are always issues with such things.

So, during my illness I found myself watching three different TV series that I had downloaded from iTunes, and bought a couple of movies whilst I was at it too. iTunes actually allows you to rent films for a cheaper fee and you’ve got 30 days to watch it, though once you’ve started watching it, it will delete itself 48hours. In a fit of wanting to watch something ‘old school’ and fun, I hired Die Hard. The only downside to all of this is managed-bloody-downloads, which meant that that film took five hours to download.

Ridiculous! Anyway, I found another site that allows you to buy films and has a broader range than iTunes, so I bought Up and Moon from there. Both very good, very different, films. The female bird named Kevin in Up was quite amusing, and Dug the dog was just awesome! I’m a bit of a softie for dogs, they are just such great companion animals.

Back to iTunes, I also bought the first two seasons of Little Britain and a season of Family Guy, and for something completely different, the first and second seasons of Mad Men. I’m pretty happy with the iTunes TV downloads, as they are much, much faster, however, they don’t have subtitles, which is annoying, and the sound quality on three or four of the Mad Men was rather poor. A very tinny, high-treble sound that occurred whenever certain ‘clicky’ types of sounds were in the show, so doors closing, footsteps, and anything like that. It was rather distracting and rather annoying, but at the time the convenience was worth it!

Tags: Family Guy, iTunes, iwatchfilm.com, Little Britain, Up

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In a manner of speaking, anyway. I’m referring to a new piece of technology which allows people to interface with a computer or game via headset.

Okay, okay, so the whole thing seems like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky pipe-dream, but it’s interesting as a future possibility. Basically, a company called Emotiv has created something called the EPOC, which is a headset with sensors that pick up facial movements, emotions, and thoughts, and allows you to control certain applications without the use of a keyboard or mouse. Pretty impressive, eh? They’ve got their own software to help you use the EPOC in lieu of a keyboard, by translating movements or thoughts into certain key-commands or combinations.

Basically, this seems like a very expensive, and largely useless, toy. It’s hard to imagine this being used for gaming, or even general computer use. Whilst it would be awesome to have certain abilities in games triggered by thought, eliminating issues like not enough hot-bar space – yes I’m referring to you, Dragon Age – this gadget seems to… how do I put this… be sold as a lot more than it really is.

During one of the demos, they show that emotion can effect colour and music… I’m sorry, but if I’m upset by my game, frustrated at a particularly difficult encounter for instance, the last bloody thing I want is my gamma brought so far down that not only am I fighting for my life, I’m fighting to see. Of course, this would make me angry, which would probably cause a grand crescendo in the music, just the thing a frustrated, gamma blinded, angry gamer needs! See my dripping sarcasm there? That’s inhibited by my choice to keep this blog profanity free; keep that in mind.

Another demo showed someone using blinks and smiles set up to turn a little side-module, a laser. What if you just wanted to blink, or something made you smile? This who apparatus seems fraught with issue after issue, and apart from a few neat tricks, seems completely useless, and most assuredly not worth the US$299 that it’s retailing at, though of course you have to buy online from the Emotiv sight, too.

Tags: controller, Emotiv EPOC, headset

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