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Drumtasticnick Blog

Just a quick update.

I've got a bit more time on my hands at the moment, so I've decided to dedicate some of that time to shed some light on the games in my collection that have been a bit neglected over the past 6 months. You might be shocked to read that I've had Fallout 3 for almost a year now and it hasn't even been touched! Shame on you, Nick...shame!

Anyhow, here goes. ***WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD***

Gears of War 2 Beat!

Well, well, well...what do we have here? The sequel to Epic's 2006's genre-redifining shooter has graced my video game cabinet at last. All for the princely sum of £15! Yes, you read it right. I had already reached my limit with purchases for July but I just had to grab it at that low, low price. I even went up to the desk (in the supermarket) and asked the nice lady if she would price-check it as I was sure it was a glitch. But alas, no...so yay!

I'd played the Horde mode at a mate's for quite a while now and was pleased to see that not much had changed in regards to the overall look and gameplay of GOW2. The cover system was still as slick and polished as the others and this new Horde mode (where the enemies come at you in waves) was a welcome addition, incresing appeal and longevity that the original game lacked. I went straight into the single player campaign guns blazing and game out smiling. It took me about 15 hours to beat the game on Normal difficulty (which I must say, was quite hard at times especially around the bosses), which wasn't too bad. Interesting ending too, leaving the door open for GOW3, which I hear is already in the making.

There's plenty of replay value too, especially if you're an achievement whore like me. I managed to squeeze almost 200 points from single player alone and I'm planning on raping it even more with a friend on the co-op mode in the coming weeks. Content such as map packs and levels are being added all the time, bringing with it more and more achievements for you to get your grubby mits on. I'm planning to hit it again on INSANE later on, but it'll probably end in this.

Next...

Dead Space Beat!

Yes, that's right folks...and it only needed 6 new pairs of underwear!

Absolutely loved this game, it's what survival horror is all about, not only scaring the **** out of you...but creeping you out in ways I haven't seen since I first played Condemned over three years ago. I was gripped from the moment I saw this all the way to when I needed a underwear transplant for this.

Also, I don't think I've ever played a game as damn DARK as Dead Space. Seriously, I couldn't even play it in the day as the light in the room reflecting off the TV made it almost unplayable. That meant the only time I could play Dead Space was at night...and for some stupid reason I insisted on having the lights off to get the 'full game experience' that EA probably would've wanted. Yeah, it enhanced the experience alright, if you mean by 'enhanced' you mean 'you won't be able to sleep without one eye on the door' experience.

Overall, a fantastic game and the only one I've ever played where upon completion of it on 'normal' difficulty...immediately wanting to go back in there and do it on hard. I don't think I've ever done that before. Can't wait for the sequel next year fingers crossed, I hear there's also a film in the making. If it's anything like the 'Doom' movie, I'd rather be having a nice hug from this guy.

Reviews of the two above games are in the making as I write this. That sounded like I have a team of people writing reviews for me, but by judging by their performance so far...they need sacking.

Peggle Review: A Work In Progress.

I've been writing this Peggle review for some time, however, I've come into a bit of a brick wall. Also, I'm bothered about it being so wordy for a Xbox Live Arcade Game. It's my first real stab at a video games revew so please, tell me what you think:

Peggle: A Review

Arcade ****cs. That simple phrase conjures up a plethora of both conscious and sub-conscious images of late nights spent down at your local amusements as you pump your entire week's pocket money into what is basically a glorified TV with some knobs and buttons on it. Like some kind of primitive pay-to-watch meter system. That's how I spent my childhood. Playing titles that will be cemented in the minds of many for years to come, timeless. Games that are beautiful in their simplicity, a place where graphics take a backseat to thrilling and memorable gameplay with a huge lean towards having the most fun as possible. Xbox Live Arcade's 'Peggle' is a game that has set itself a goal - to encapsulate the playability of the penny arcade in your front room. Taking the game at face value, Peggle is the spiritual successor to the iconic puzzler 'Breakout' of many, many moons ago but nonetheless a timeless ****c that has spawned many imitations.

The basic idea (as it has been for years) is that you have bricks, a paddle and a ball. Your mission statement for each level is to eliminate the bricks using the ball and the paddle. Simple, no? It's a tried and tested model that works. Peggle takes this template and bends it, shapes it and gives it new life by upping the ante on the graphics, but not losing any of the fun that made that ****of game iconic. In front of you is presented a patten of blue and orange bulbs in various configurations, a ball release at the top and a paddle moving left to right at the bottom. To beat the level, the player has to hit all of the orange balls using the ten balls in your arsenal. One by one you aim the ball (which also moves left to right on its axis) for the best angle of attack into the blue and orange bulbs. Fans of the genre will appreciate the familiar, while new fans will get their heads around Peggle easily as the learning curve is not very steep. Powerups are also plentiful, and come in the form of a character such as a cartoon horse and a comedy hamster all bestowing different bonuses to the player. These powerups are activated by lighting up the green balls (two per level) and can activate goodies such as multiball, fireball and the 'Zen' ball - which is wherever you fire the ball, the Zen Master (an owl) will tweak your shot to attain maximum points. It's a real hoot...geddit? There are over 50 different levels, all of varying and original designs, modelling around the level background adding variety to a game that could get a bit repetitive. Peggle doesn't take itself too seriously. Actually, it's a right laugh. For example, instead of the loading screen? You get a note on the screen which 'Gathering fluffiness' and 'Composing Ode to Joy'. Now, if you weren't familiar with the Beethoven Opus that I've just mentioned then you will be if you manage to clear all of the orange balls and bricks with the available balls. That is to say, when you complete the level, Ode to Joy blasts out of your speakers accompanied by fireworks and fanfare similar unseen since the days of Mario when you juuuuuust managed to jump over the flagpole to get into the castle.

To say that Peggle is addictive is an understatement. It's about as addictive as crystal-meth...but far better for your health, but not by much as you will be spending hours trying to perfect your shot so it bounces into as many orange balls and nets you maximum points. It's also the little things that make Peggle stand out as a 21st century puzzler. Let me set the scene, your faced with one ball left in your arsenal and there are 3 orange bricks (or pegs) to hit and boy, they couldn't be further away from each other. You have no powerups or bonuses left, and the paddle moving relentlessly from left to right at the bottom of the screen seems to taunt you as you aim your final shot. You fire, and the ball heads towards one peg, bounces off the wall to hit the other then amazingly, deflects off a blue peg and flies towards the other orange when everything goes slo-mo n and then BAM!, the fireworks hit and the flukiness of your shot is tantamount to eurphoria.

*********

There we have it, my review so far.

Your feedback is welcome.

If you have been, thanks for reading.

I think I'm addicted to achievements.

I think I've developed an unhealthy obsession with achievements on my Xbox 360.

'Blip-Bleep'

That little noise, I'm hearing it even when I'm not playing. Thanks Microsoft for making already addictive games, even more addictive. But the thing is, even if I've exhausted a game, there's still the achievements and the gamerpoints associated with them to think about. It draws me back to play again...to find that something, to hit that such and such or to collect all the whatevers. The system works and can add a seemingly endless replay value to a game, even if you'd be happy never to turn on a game again, you feel compelled, drawn back into the fray once again to get those points.

It doesn't stop there however, the achievement noise is EXACTLY the same as the 'Your friend has just logged in' noise. So even though you think you've jumped the unjumpable or found some really really really secret area...you haven't. It was just the guy on your friends list you met a year ago on Halo that didn't annoy the hell out of you as much as the rest of the online population...that you never talk or game with.

Achievements are a status symbol too.

I've seen people with seemingly ridiculous scores. 20,000...40,000, I've even seen one player with 80,000. That's INSANE. How is this accomplished?! Do these people have no life? I mean, I play a couple of hours a night and I've only got past 5000.

What if the above picture were true and you could attain achievements in real life?

'Washed the dishes' - (female) 25G (male) 20,000G

'Passed maths exam' 150G

'Passed cookery exam' - -100G

'Crashed car' - 5G

'Crashed car into guy robbing bank' - 250G

Hmmm...

I think I've gone off Halo 3.

I can fondly remember standing in the freezing cold outside Gamestation a couple of years ago waiting for the doors to open so I could buy Halo 3. Man, was I excited! So excited in fact, that even though it was about 1am by the time I got back to my house, I put it in t'Box and played merrily until the wee hours of a morning...on a school night!

Campaigns came and went, Hardcore gave way to Legendary and so on and so forth until there came a day when Halo 3 became a title I could dip in and out of with carefree abandon. This was a good thing...for a little while anyway. You see, when you've completed the story on the hardest difficulty, it's hard to will oneself to go through the whole game once again for those precious skulls. If you're like me, then you wouldn't have the inclination nor patience for those well-earned Gamerpoints. This leaves you with Halo 3's intially enjoyable and quite addictive, multiplayer online modes.

There was a time when in the months that followed the realease of Halo 3 that the online experience was pretty much half of the enjoyment, as it is very well done. The party modes are excellent, with quick load times and plenty of game scenarios to work through while level design and playability is amongst the best in its class. A good multiplayer section of the FPS genre has become a requirement if the title is to have any level of merit or replayability. I have no qualms with that aspect of Halo 3 at all. However, unfortunately my problem is with something that Bungie have tried to accomodate for, but to no avail.

The part that sours Halo 3, almost spoiling an excellent online experience is...the competition.

Yes, those 14 year old kids in America who have been up almost every night perfecting their kill rate percentage by fragging one and all, unfortunately those kids frustrate the hell out of me. I'm finding more and more that your opponents are just too good, I've barely got used to controls again and I'm faced down, staring at myself spinning slowly while I wait for the game to reload itself. It puts me off, and I know there's nothing anyone can do about it.

'Why don't you just play it more to improve your skills?' I hear you ask. Well, I don't class myself as a 'casual' gamer by any sense of the word anymore. I used to, but no longer. I just don't really have the need to pursue this cause of improvement as I just keep getting shot in the face or blown up by some unknown assailant lurking in the shadows. I don't have the time nor the inclination to improve, so, unfortunately it's going to get played less and less as more titles that don't bring out such a 'I must be the best in the world, even if I miss a week of sleep' attitude are released.

I know that Bungie have tried to compensate for this by creating a ranked grading system to pit those of similar experience against one another, but as you can see by this mini-rant, it's far from perfect as many die-hard Halo-ites slip through the net just looking for that next kill. Spare a thought, though for the next person you see aimlessly wandering into your sniper scope, as that player might be one death away from turning off the game for good.

Twitter!

Good afternoon gamers,

For any of you out there that use the micro-blogging site that is Twitter, feel free to follow me and I will follow in return. I update regularlywith links to my other blogs and articles.

Check it out

www.twitter.com/drumtasticnick

I thanks you.

Gaming on a budget!

Even though I STILL have a few titles in my collection that I am yet to touch, thanks to my post Christmas splurge, I have bought a couple more. I think I'm going to limit my purchasing to £20 a month now, yes...that's better. So, without further ado...here's July's purchases:

Dead Space

I've been watching reviews and videos of Dead Space since the beginning of the year, brimming with excitement at the thought of playing it. I've always been a fan of the survival horror genre, ever since the early days of the Resident Evil Series and, by what I saw in the reviews was more of the same...but in space and with a few tweaks. A good friend of mine (whose various consoles and 50" plasma TV I would be using quite a lot in the future) bought Dead Space when it came out, so I went round, we killed the lights and he took the pad. I'm one of those gamers that loves watching people play video games as much as I liked playing them. I was impressed by what I saw. Creepy, visceral gameplay with a haunting soundtrack to boot coupled with a very interesting combat system. As soon as Dead Space came down in price, it would be on my shelf. So I've ordered it and I await it's arrival...I could do with a good scare.

Unreal Tournament 3

'Monorail Tournament' as my girlfriend misheard me call the above title, is the second of my two games bought this month. Once again, I've played and owned Unreal's in the past so I'm used to this. Obviously, I read the reviews as I was keen to say how a game born on the PC, could be successfully ported to the consoles. Swapping the precision of the mouse for the possible vagueness of a controller could be a tricky gamble. The reviews were positive and the price was great so here we are. It arrived today, and my first 5 minutes weren't great. I figured that this game's primary strength was it's online capabilities so I went straight in for a quick match with an online opponent. I didn't see any grading system like that in Halo, and got my ass handed to me 20-0 by a ten year old in Japan. Typical. Yeah, the surroundings and gameplay were reasurringly familiar, but I had forgotten how hardcore my opponents were.

So, I quickly exited that embarresment and went for the campaign mode instead...with the difficulty set on casual.

Wait a minute...is this Gears of War? It certainly looked like it from the opening sequence. I knew that Epic made both this and the Gears series but I didn't think the two would look so strikingly similar. Not that was anything wrong with the graphics of Gears of War, they're awesome. I got cracking with the campaign and it seems the plot is centred round the protaganist (Marcus?) as he loses his consciousness after a battle with some unknown alien assailant, stripped of his rank and now has to regain his reputation and re-earn his stripes. As I completed the first two matches (these were essentially deathmatches, but behind the veil of story) my first impressions of Unreal Tournament 3 brightened. I welcomed the quicker frame rate, it felt like a PC shooter...which I'm sure was Epic's main aim in the porting process. The weapons and action echoed Unreal's of old but with a breath of fresh air....breathed from another Microsoft perspective.

It lives!

It was a dark day when I turned on my Xbox 360 and was greeted by the contents of the previous post. After much stomping around the living room hurling expletives, I regretfully unplugged the console and placed it in the naughty corner, ready for it's trip back to Microsoft. In the interim, I read up on a plethora of 'RROD quick fixes' such as wrapping the unit in a towel until it overheats and then somehow fixes itself...surely overheating is a bad thing?

I wasn't swayed by these so-called fixes so I made sure I had adequate entertainment to keep me busy over the month that my console would be out of my sweaty palms. Maybe I should take up knitting? I think not. So with that horrible thought firmly branded onto my subconsious I plugged the old girl back in and started it up with fingers crossed harder than ever before.

Like a pheonix from the ashes...it lives!

I don't think I've ever done so many fist pumps, it was like beating Bison for the first time. Watching his body crash through that golden statue as he fell was tantamount to a lottery win...that's how happy I was.

*fist pump*

I don't know why my 360 works again, maybe it's only temporary...but I honestly don't care at this moment in time as now I can carry on being the hermit that I was before.

A Catch 22 review

I've been reviewing games for a while now, however recently I've come into a bit of a problem that's stopped my writing in its tracks. The games that I have reviewed in the past have been in my collection, or those that I have borrowed from friends. I have completed them and then written a review...after a few paragraphs I noticed a pattern, all the games that I've reviewed have achieved 8+.

The games I own are all great games, otherwise i wouldn't have bought them as I read reviews on this site before making a purchase. Therefore I would never spend my hard-earned on a game that I knew was bad, meaning that all the reviews that I put together are always going to be pretty positive.

What's the solution to this?

Rent 'sub par' games?

I could rent games that I know that are rubbish, but I would never be able to complete the game in the time that I rent it for (normally between 3-5 days) as I work full times and can only play at evenings and weekends really. I don't know about you, but I don't think, no matter how bad a game is, it should be played through to its end. It may have an amazing ending, or an awesome editing program...you just don't know if you haven't had the time to play it through.

Do I just not read reviews or articles on games anymore?

I could not read about games at all, go blindly into HMV buying any game that I 'think' I will enjoy, however that way I might as well stand in the street and set my money on fire.

Any advice?

This weekend...is not for the gamer.

Alas, already we are at the weekend once again.

The time where I can devote my time to video games (and writing about them) is on it's way. Where time seems to move so much quicker until it's Monday again. However, this week is a Bank Holiday! *high five*. So, I have an extra day, even though I know that I will be back at work again. Deep joy.

However, this weekend, it's different as I'm visiting my girlfriend's parents. So gaming is a non-possibility. Until now!

As you've probably read below, I've recently purchased my first handheld since the Gameboy in 1993 (which I left in ASDA when it was barely a year old...gutted). Even though I love spending time with my in-laws to be, gaming of any sort would usually take a back seat to less enjoyable things like...I don't know...exercise. My new PSP, it's made for when console gaming is just not possible. I'll probably come off sounding like a geek but hey, who isn't around here? (j/k). Come hell or high water I WILL WRITE A REVIEW THIS WEEKEND!

Although, knowing me, I'll put it off.

Which is bad, but fear not (not that you were) there will be reviews here soon. I just need a bit more time.

DNK.

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