Halycopter » Personal

Gaming Round Up

Haly — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:41:31 +0000

I’ve been distinctly lacking in inspiration lately. Various things have come up in my personal life that’s made things a bit difficult of late, meaning that I guess my brain just hasn’t really bothered with thinking creatively. So for now, and to show you readers that I do still exist, you can have a fairly predictable games update to see what I’ve been playing lately!

I went on a bit of a points spending spree not long ago, acquiring Peggle, both Fable 2 DLCs, the newest Tomb Raider Underworld DLC: Lara’s Shadow and the Fallout 3 DLC: Broken Steel.

Peggle is horribly addictive just as people warned me. It’s the kind of game that I play for five minutes and then an hour has passed without me even blinking. However, now that I just have the challenges to complete, it is annoyingly tough too! I wouldn’t be surprised if I purchase it on the App Store for my iPhone too despite it being the exact same game.

I’ve purchased Broken Steel for Fallout 3 but I haven’t played it yet. I’m saving it for when I’ve got plenty of time to get absorbed into it. However I did have a brief go of Knothole Island for Fable 2 earlier and it didn’t go as planned. I felt no urge to really play it and ended up playing something else as it just wasn’t interesting me. I found it quite shocking. At launch, I adored Fable 2. It was hugely flawed but I still loved it, more so than Fallout 3 in fact. But this just felt wrong. Maybe it was the extended break, or maybe it was Knothole Island being a bit rubbish. I’m not sure. I will go back to it and figure it out though, hopefully things will improve. I don’t want my fond memories being tarnished by this dull return trip.

I’ve not played Lara’s Shadow for Tomb Raider Underworld yet, been busy completing the game. Underworld was good fun, it was very predictable and essentially the same gameplay that the original Tomb Raider introduced but that’s no bad thing for me. I enjoyed it enough that I think I’ll return to Tomb Raider Legend sometime and possibly pick up Tomb Raider Anniversary too. Underworld has also been quite generous with the achievement points, meaning I’ve nearly reached 81k despite not really playing the game for the points. In fact I’ve lost my achievement whoring urge at the moment. I had both Paintball 2009 and Disney’s Bolt to play for that and I just couldn’t be bothered. Paintball 2009 just wasn’t my kind of thing and I didn’t want to waste my time, and Disney’s Bolt was initially ok but quickly became very dull. I’m sure my achievement whoring days aren’t over forever, but for now there’s just too many good games to play, to bother with average ones.

Unfortunately there are still times where I’m forced to play average games, namely when I’m reviewing them, as is the case with Afro Samurai. The game’s not great. It is stylistically fantastic, however the camera is iffy to say the least and the action is mediocre, your typical hack n slasher. I’ve no doubt that fans of the anime series will like it, however I very much doubt gamers will. Certainly not when there are better games such as Ninja Gaiden 2 or Devil May Cry 4 are available.

On the reviewing front, I’m also busy with Ninja Bee’s Kaloki Adventure for the iPhone which is great fun. The review should be up shortly, along with other iPhone reviews as I haven’t got round to posting them on here yet. I’m also reviewing Grand Ages Rome on the PC, it’s not bad but nor is it particularly special either. Again, expect a review of it over the coming days.

And finally, I’m loving Rock Band 2. I’m so glad I found the Rock Band Band in a Box reduced, it really was worth the initial outlay. It’s just pure and simple good fun. Plus the drums are ideal stress relief! All I can request is I’d love to have more Muse and Killers tracks but I’ll live. Plenty of The Who tracks which is good!

Oh and in case you’ve got to the end of this and you’re still wondering ‘what’s with the pigeon picture?’, I received a new camera today and I’ve been out taking pictures I really liked this one and didn’t know what to use for an image for this entry anyway, so it made sense! If I get a chance, I might set up a gallery or extra category for ‘proper’ photos now that I’m not restricted to my iPhone camera!

Happy Birthday Dad

Haly — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:55:15 +0000

I wasn’t going to mention it on here initially as for the most part I keep a lot of the personal bloggy stuff away from here. However I feel like it so I will.
It would have been my Dad’s birthday today. He would have been 64 today, not young, but not old enough to die either really. But he died last April suddenly, so this is the first birthday without him. I’d love to say I’m dealing with all the grief impeccably, in reality I’m not and I suspect no one really does. Mine is a mixture of extreme feeling of being alone yet also not talking about it with anyone other than my Mum. Lovely combination and that’s not even the half of it really. The truth is it’s because I can’t stand people coming up with ‘answers’ to a problem that has no solution, it just tends to make me go all emo and ‘you don’t understand’ ish so I keep quiet instead.

The next few weeks are going to be especially tough for me as it’s also coming up to the period where this time last year he was ill with a seemingly innocuous bug, and then culminating in his very sudden and graphic death at home on April 12th 2008.

Anyway, I won’t dwell. This isn’t that sort of blog, but I guess I just wanted to highlight it. Everyone’s got to write purely for their own benefit sometimes.

As you all were!

Personal Review of the Year

Haly — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:26:22 +0000

Simply put it’s been an exceptionally crap year for me. If you don’t want to see me moan about my year and I can understand why not as this is primarily a gaming blog, look away now.
Let’s see, I started 2008 off work thanks to a slightly irregular heartbeat, essentially I had an ‘extra’ beat. Eventually it was put down to stress and/or a virus. Then I started a new job in February (yay) which was my first full time graduate job and looked quite interesting. On my first day to work, I wrote my car off on the way to work (boo). Real pity, I loved that car. It was my second car, I hated my first car and for the last few months of its existence, often hoped it would be stolen. It never was of course and nor did I crash it. No I waited till I had a great car (for me) to be stupid and write my car off. So yeah, started the new job with no car and an old shoulder injury rearing its ugly head again. Oh plus the insurance company screwed up for ages (despite it being very clear cut and me admitting full liability) and then for much of March I had solicitors phoning me or writing me letters demanding money or else. Eventually my insurance company sorted it out, and I thought that’d be the crap part of the year over.

Wrong. Very wrong. April 12th, I was woken at 5am by my Mum. My Dad had collapsed getting out of bed. And well, not to go into detail, he died, quickly despite me, my Mum and a paramedic crew’s efforts. It was horrible, the sort of thing I still have nightmares about sometimes and for a long time I had them every night. Nothing can prepare you for it, and it wasn’t sanitised at all like you see on TV. It was graphic and something no one should have to experience.

Then…..I’m not sure where the year went. I was off work for a good month or so, then returned for a day part time. I realised then that I couldn’t handle it. I just didn’t care about the work and all it did was make me feel more depressed than ever. So I quit. Not the best financial decision in the world but sometimes you have to do what’s best mentally, and considering I was hardly sleeping at the time and suffering from flashbacks, it was for the best.

I’m not really covering the true depth of how bad the year’s been but I don’t want to dwell, it’s not fair on you the poor reader if nothing else!

So fast forward to the latter quarter of the year. I started a bookkeeping course at my local college (ok but boring) and I’m now working part time for Blockbuster which isn’t bad. The free rentals are nice if nothing else!

So to 2009. I have quite a few aims.

To start my business

To finish my postgraduate dissertation

To improve my finances

To progress with my games reviewing and article writing

To continue with taking a photo every week even if they do look a bit rubbish!

Gaming:

Finally a huge thanks to my friends for helping me survive the year. It’s so very much appreciated And that’s an understatement!
Normal service will resume with the next entry