It’s been a quiet couple of weeks on this blog, for which I apologise for. I’ve been quite busy as well as lacking in motivation which isn’t a great combination for this blog, nor for a budding writer such as myself! Writing wise, I’ve just finshed up a review of Codename Panzers Cold War, the white sliced bread of the PC RTS world. It’s my first paid review and my first review to soon be featured on playboy.co.uk so I’m rather happy with that. Pity it was such a mediocre game and so terrible to review. Terrible, not because it was a bad game, but because it felt like there was so little to say. It was a real challenge as it was just so middle of the road, nothing positive or negative stood out! I’ve just finished writing up the review for Lord of the Rings:Conquest which I was rather disappointed with. I generally love a good hack n slasher. Despite their repetive nature, they are my guilty pleasure. However LoTR:Conquest just doesn’t cut it for me, it’s just too slow compared to the likes of Dynasty Warriors amongst many other things. Review will be up here in the next few days as well as a link for Codename Panzers.

Back to gaming for fun, I’ve been busy with a few games.

I finished off Prince of Persia at last. I never did figure out if I enjoyed it or not. I assume I must have as I played it to the end but it had a lot wrong with it. A lot of the time it felt like an on the rails platformer, if such a thing could exist, where I just had to press a, b or y from time to time to progress further. I didn’t particularly like the two main characters, and certainly didn’t like having to stop every few minutes to listen to a conversation that I couldn’t skip. As well as that, the combat was very tedious. Yet I still played it, and I’m still not 100% sure why. I guess it was because it was easy so it was a nice stressfree simple game. So yeah I guess I enjoyed it. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though.

Next up in the pile was Sega Mega Drive Collection, otherwise known as a nice walk down memory lane. I know Nintendo never will, but I would kill for a similar collection of Super Nintendo games rather than be restricted to the Wii’s Virtual Console. Anyway, back to the Mega Drive. I’ve enjoyed replaying the various Streets of Rages, especially 3 as I never played that originally. Also enjoyed playing the Sonics again. When I have some time I’m going to play through the Phantasy Stars and Shining Forces as I also missed those when they first came along. I guess that’s the problem with being a kid in those days, I couldn’t afford many games so I missed out on so many classics! I used to love playing The Story of Thor but I never actually owned it. Instead I rented it as often as I could in my local Blockbuster. Of course the problem there was it had a battery back up save system on its cartridge. There were two copies of The Story of Thor in the store so it all depended on if I got the right copy as to whether I could progress much further in my game. Plus on a few occassions some git had deleted or overwritten the save anyhow. As you can guess, I played through the opening stages of the game a lot, and never actually completed it! One day I started it the other day and was surprised how much harder it was than I remember. Maybe I’ve actually got worse at games with age?! That’d suck. It certainly reminded me of how much easier games are now, and so did a few other Mega Drive games. I don’t know what I’d do without a save function now.

I’m finally starting to get into Fallout 3 after erm about 3 months of just not getting into it. I’m about 15hrs in and I’m finally starting to enjoy it. I still don’t think it’ll be in my Top 10 games of all time or anything like that but it’s certainly gone up the list of all games I’ve ever played. I love it sometimes, then sometimes I hate it. It is immensely satisfying to headshot a raider with the very nice VATS system, and then it goes and pisses me off. Usually by my getting lost in a tunnel because it all looks too samey, or when an NPC gets stuck walking to somewhere that I have to follow them to. I have no doubt that I’m probably being excessively critical (there are more irritants, I’ve just managed to have a blank moment and forgotten them all!) and yes it is the definitive first person RPG, but you have to remember: I don’t tend to like Western RPGs, I much prefer JRPGs. I really enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, but I found Mass Effect disappointing and lacking soul, and Oblivion was alright but not the be all and end all that others found it to be at the time. On the other hand, I loved Enchanted Arms and Eternal Sonata both of which suffered a few mixed reviews. So ultimately, I guess, like everything else, it all comes down to personal opinion! Mind you if everyone accepted that, I’d be out of an aspiring career so don’t listen to me

Finally, I picked up Tomb Raider:Underworld for £10 (after using a voucher from Christmas). Only played the prologue and the start of the first level. First impressions were not as I hoped. I found the first proper level a bit vague and open for my liking. I like being in a Tomb, I don’t want to be in the middle of an ocean. But ah well, I’ll crack on with it when I have the time.

As my final comment tonight, my iPhone is unfortunately a bit unwell and off for repair at the moment. I had no idea how useful I found it to be until now that I’m without it. When I bought it last year I was worried I’d be lured into the ‘ooh shiny gimmicky gadget’ bug, which I had been. However it’s very useful too. The mp3 facilities, the video playback facilities, being able to twitter on the move, facebook on the move, email, wi-fi, train times etc. I miss it. I hope it comes back soon It’s been about 10 days now.

On that note, feel free to add me on Twitter if you like my random musings: JenjeaHaly is the name on there

Forza 2 has certainly been my surprise hit of late. I’ve put off purchasing it for a long time. I’ve never been very good at racing games, I get by usually, but I don’t tend to have the patience to hone my skills at them so generally I just don’t bother. The last racing game I played was probably PGR3, again I kept meaning to buy PGR4 but never got round to it. So as the Forza 2:Collector’s Edition was available at the same time as I was purchasing SW2:Empires in the 2 for £20 range, I thought it was worth a go. I’m very glad I did, I’m hooked! Nokkon sent me a ridiculous number of cars to get me started and I’ve been having a great time, it’s probably not quite the correct way of doing it as I’ve got so many good cars to start with but I’m enjoying it which has to be the main thing. Looks like it’ll last me a good long while too

Both Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Infinite Undiscovery come out Friday and I really wish I could buy one or both. But unless money magically appears in front of me, it won’t be happening I’m going on holiday Monday-Friday to Center Parcs with friends (arranged before my Dad died and when I was still working so could afford it) and it’s going to cost me a fortune so no chance. I’d trade something in but there’s nothing I’ve completed that I can trade in, which means that really I have plenty of games to play anyhow so I should get on with that first!

Hoping to have more chance to write while I’m away so fingers crossed for some more interesting discussion soon. Oh and a Space Siege review for the PC has just been uploaded, feel free to read, just don’t buy the game! A STALKER:Clear Sky review will be up in the next week or so too as my copy’s arriving tomorrow hopefully.

Today, I’m planning an afternoon of Jericho on hard. Should be fun hopefully. If not maybe Lost Odyssey now I have the official guide to help me along the way. I was going to go through it without but I changed my mind. I’d rather do it that way now.

Also I’ve been playing the review copy of Age of Conan that arrived last week. It’s not bad at all. Technically very good for an MMORPG although I think my interest in MMOs is waning a bit now. It should get a good write up but I’ll make sure to link to the full thing when I’ve finished writing it.

Finally, in this patchy entry: Can anyone name a game where you kill innocent women just because? I don’t mean female ninjas or whatever, i.e. people that are ‘kill or be killed’ types. I mean totally innocent ones.
Just something that I was discussing the other day in a tirade about how gory slasher films can get away without criticism but not violent games despite the fact they always seem to involve some poor young, attractive woman get tortured and murdered by some random nutter. Which personally I find much more disturbing than anything I’ve seen in a game. I’m certainly not saying they should be banned (I don’t really agree with banning of anything fictional), it just seems daft that they are fine but games aren’t. I’m guessing it’s because games are a new media that the conservatives of the world (that’s conservative with a small c) just don’t understand yet.
Anyway if someone can name a game, let me know!

Not sure what my next goal is really. 60k seems pretty far off. Half trying for completionistness (inventing new words is fun), mainly with Football Manager 2008 initially and then Football Manager 2006 I think. Just because they’re not hugely common 1ks because they take a while to do. I think I’ll just keep slowly chipping away at Creature’s gamerscore and work my way up the ranks, got rentals on the way which is always useful.

Rest of life is messy so least said the better!

Been quite hectic here. I had some health problems through December that kept my mind very occupied with various worries. All fine now though. Also in that time, I managed to get a new job! So I’ll be starting that February 11th, it’s full time so I may have less time to update but I am still 100% determined to continue with my writing for other sites as I love doing it.
Leading onto that, I haven’t written a huge deal for play.tm since the last update. But there is a review and an article.

The review is for Bladestorm, a fantastic little game courtesy of Koei. If you like Dynasty Warriors, you should definitely enjoy this. Yeah it’s a bit samey but I’ve really enjoyed it. Enough so that I haven’t yet ebayed it as I’m still playing it through, and believe me, it’ll take a long while to complete! Really glad I got the opportunity to review this as I’d never have picked it up otherwise as it’s not usually my type of game.

The article was entitled Gaming and the so-called ‘mainstream’, basically a bit of a ramble on how the face of gaming is somewhat changing now. Made a change writing an article instead of a review although it was harder to write.

Also I now have a high definition TV so I can finally enjoy my 360 in the way it is intended. I’ve been surviving with a 19″ TFT for the 360 and a 20″ CRT TV for far too long. Thanks to the future new job, I could afford a new TV.
So I plumped for a Samsung 32″ R88, and I’m very happy with it!
Here’s a crap camera phone photo or two:

The cables need sorting out but I’m waiting for an HDMI cable to hook up my 360 to it instead of through VGA, so I’ll tidy up the cables then.

Oh yeah my 360 RRODed just after Christmas, luckily I had some money for once so I went out the same day and bought a X-Box 360 Arcade for £150. My old 360 is on the way to Microsoft as we speak. It’ll be sold off once it comes back. At least the new one has the newer chipset, an HDMI port and does sound quieter. I don’t like the faceplate though, I’m sure it’s flimsier than my old Premium.

I’ve hit 40k in gamerscore too, although my interest has now waned slightly thanks to CoD4 multiplayer!

Anyways, sweet and sour chicken with egg fried rice awaits me.