Birthday themed update

Haly — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:53:48 +0000

Point increase since 5th October: 775
Not a bad increase for 6 days at all! Especially not as I didn’t touch my 360 on Thursday excluding starting up Viva Pinata to keep my streak going. It was my birthday on Thursday which brought about a few nice surprises.
For one thing, it wasn’t quite as upsetting as I thought it’d be (due to it being the first birthday without my Dad) which made things a bit easier although the week was stressful. For another, my Mum let me regress to childhood and we got guinea pigs! I had guinea pigs as a kid, but when the second pair died when I was a teenager, they didn’t get replaced. Ever since, I’ve missed having them and for the past six months, we’ve gone to look at them whenever I’ve felt particularly down. So now we have our own It took most of Thursday for us to track any down (it took us till the 4th pet shop to find female guinea pigs!) but we got a pair

So I introduce you to…..Toffee and Scruffy!

Scruffy in particular is absolutely tiny at the moment as you can see compared to my Mum’s hands in the photos. They’re both from the same litter despite having different looks and being different sizes. They’re getting spoilt rotten while we try to get them a bit braver as they’re very shy at the moment, so that’s taken up a lot of my time!

In gaming (and birthday) news, I’ve got a couple of additions to my collection. Namely, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and Too Human which my brief thoughts on have been collected in my previous entry. I also got a vision cam which in theory will help me with Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, and a Prima Game Guide for Viva Pinata which I’m aiming to complete before I move onto TiP. With a combination of Viva Pinata (and TiP to follow), BiA: Hell’s Highway, Too Human and Fifa 09 I’m really enjoying gaming at the moment. They’ve given me a little revival. I didn’t cut back on gaming before but I guess it felt more like a habit, currently it’s feeling much more enjoyable and all these games should last me until Fable 2 comes out. Oh and not forgetting I have Sonic Chronicles for the DS to review at the moment, which should be good fun as I’m a huge Bioware fan and I used to love Sonic games

First Impressions

Haly — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:49:28 +0000

First Impressions of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway

I got this game because I love WW2 FPSes. Despite everyone else being sick to death of them, I still love the genre (as really WW2 based FPSes are a genre all by themselves), especially ones that have a decent story to keep me attached to the rest of my squad. I’ve never played a Brothers in Arms title before, not sure why. I think they must have appeared when I was too busy with Everquest or Counterstrike. So when this appeared suddenly on the scene (I hadn’t really paid attention to any previews), it looked pretty promising. It has so far delivered…but not without some suffering. It’s bloody hard to adjust to! I’m playing on the easiest mode possible but it’s a huge culture shock compared to the likes of Call of Duty. The game forces you to do two things, always take cover (and I mean ALWAYS) and suppressing fire is essential. As well as this, you control one or more squads of troops at any one time and it really is essential to keep them alive. At one point, when everyone had got wiped out but me, I had no chance of clearing out 3-4 groups of German soldiers by myself. It’s incredibly satisfying to get past a bit but also nerve wracking in places and frustrating in other places. It only takes a few shots to die so that adds to the tension.

I’m definitely enjoying it but it’s not a game I could play for an entire day, instead it’s a game I’ve played in parts, just enough to enjoy fully. I can see why it hasn’t had brilliant reviews though, it doesn’t really add anything to the genre so 60-70% seems quite reasonable. It seems to do a lot by the book. Oh and the multiplayer is shocking! But I’m not fussed about multiplayer at all so no big deal there.

First Impressions of Too Human

I’ve only played this for 30mins but I’m very surprised. After so many unsure reviews, I resisted buying it for a while. But thanks to some birthday money and it being Â£20 in HMV, I picked it up. Like I said previously, I’ve not played it much yet (was just a brief play before going to watch the England game) but first impressions were great. Again, it might not be anything unique but the presentation was fantastic and I got used to the control system much faster than I expected. I was worried about using the right stick for combat instead of the camera, but it does work surprisingly well, at least so far. It’s a game I’m looking forward to going back to later on today.

Halycopter » Too Human

Birthday themed update

First Impressions