Since my last post I've actually beaten two games. Ratchet and Clank and Metal Gear Solid 2. Expect a review on the first one pretty soon. Anyway, I'm pretty impressed that I actually beat Metal Gear Solid 2. I've never been into "sneaking games" but after a few hours into the game I totally fell for it. At the same time I'm really pissed with myself not for discovering what a great game it was earlier, and thus I have begun to play Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (I'm about 2 hours into the game.)

I also wrote a really long post on the 20th anniversary of the NES but since I have a new computer mouse (and not used to the side buttons) I accidently pressed one of them. And then my browser took me back to the previous page, erasing all of my writing. That's what actually made me wait really long before attempting to post anything new.

On a side note and not really game related at all, I quit my job today. And just two hours after quitting I got another job, so I'm going to celebrate that with some gaming time.

I don't think I've added this many games before, without it being games that I've forgotten to add, or added for the first time vice versa. These are four games that I've bought this week. The best part is; I've gotten them all really cheap!



First of was Ratchet and Clank (which seems to be a really good game. I got this off an internet auction for $18. And I've played about one or two hours into the game. It seems to be a really good platform game, and I've been looking for a good platform games for years it feels like. Ever since I first read about the game I've felt that it must be something for me. However the promised "outstanding graphics" and so forth may not be as good as they were back then, but in some ways this game still amazes me. Drawdistance being one of them, you can see for miles! or so if feels like.



The other three games (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Evil Dead: Regeneration) I actually won about three hours ago. And I got them all for $30, which means I paid about $10 for each of them. The seller had labeled them very bad and he basicly just put a auction up with three games without any picture or anything, so I bet that's why people didn't find his acution. However I was lucky enough to find it. I actually found it by searching for Metal Gear 3. And people who has been reading my blog (if there are any more then the few I know of) may be surprised since I've written in the past that I have a hard time "getting-into" the MGS games. Well I want to play them, and now I'm determined enough, and now that I own them I will give them a third/fourth- (I don't count) chance! The Evil Dead game just came like a bonus really. I don't think it will be one of those games that I sacrifice most of my time with, just something I pick up now and then and play for the sheer fun of it.



So expect some updates on this games further on. By the way, I just noticed that I'm really close to be breaking the 100 line when it comes to my game collection. I'm actually at 99 games now (there may be some games however that I can't add to Gamespot since it's not in their database, haven't counted). When I was a kid and we got our first console (NES back in 1989/1990) I don't think I ever imagined that I would own a game collection with 100 games in it, well now I do (or soon enough), the next 100 games will really be a pleasure (and a big waste of money and time!).

After 2½ hours of Ico gameplay I must say that I'm more stunned of this game than before. Since I have a lot of things to do nowadays I can't focus 50% of my time on gaming, like I used to. That is both frustrating and in one way, good. But ever since I started to play Ico, I haven't been able to forget about the game. When I sit by the computer, mailing etc I tend to look at the Playstation and think "Man I wish I could play Ico right now". But I try not to overplay it, since I want it to last.

In my opinion the best thing with Ico is it's atmosphere. Even though the graphics aren't as impressing as they were when the game was released, they are still beautiful. I like the foginess of the game aswell (kind of reminds me of Silent Hill a little).

One other really groundbreaking and cool thing that came with this game, is how the characters behave with each other. For example, the whole holding hands thing. I can't say that I've ever seen that in a video game before. And then there's the thing where the main character help Yorda up on crates etc. He's reaching he's hand out shouting "Opa" to her, and she's grabbing his hand and he pulls her up. Surely that has been in games before, but it's different here, somehow the characters in Ico feels more alive than in other games.

As I'm sitting here, a little bit pissed over the fact that I failed the driving school test, again. I remembered that I had pre-ordered Ico. If everything goes correctly it should be here tomorrow! Which means that I'm going to anxiously wait for the mailman to come with my game.

I've heard heard nothing but good things about Ico (haven't really played it that much myself, just tested it very briefly) and I'm really looking forward to see if it's a that good of game like everyone tells me. Hopefully I don't have too high expectations.

Well more about this tomorrow I suppose. You never know...

 
I know, I know. I haven't written anything here in forever. I've been busy doing different things. Like checking up all information I need for starting my own firm etc.

Anyway, lately I've playing alot of Gran Turismo 4. And I mean alot! Two weeks ago or so I had 10% of the game completed, now I have 41%-something. And I have to say that it's pretty much to the B-spec function in the game. For those of you who don't know what the B-spec function is I will describe it really fast. Basicly it's a function that let's the computer race instead of you. And the best thing with this function is that you can speed up time up to three times. So this function has really come in handy when playing those long Endurance races, especially the "1000 miles"-race.

Right now I'm actually racing the last race in Professional Races. Then I'll try to get that S-license I haven't gotten yet and do some "Extreme Races".

In other news, since they have re-released Ico in Europe I pre-ordered a copy of it as soon as I saw it. I don't want to pay 90$+ for a PS2 game, and damn am I glad that I didn't win that auction half a year ago (I had a bid of 90$ for a copy of Ico that was used!). Ico will arrive in my mailbox on the 25th, so expect some updates on that game from my side.

So, what's new? It's been like a month or so since I last updated. Actually I tried to update one time during that month. I wrote a pretty long post, but Gamespot failed to load the page causing my post to disappear. And after that I was not in any mood to re-write it.

Last saturday I bought the game The Warriors (I chose between that and Resident Evil 4 but I eventually decided for The Warriors because it was like $12 cheaper). I've also bought Silent Hill 2 and Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack since I last updated.

My impressions on The Warriors are really good. I had tried it some at a friend's place. But that was just the "free roaming"-mode. The story is really good, and the voices are top notch! I really like how Rockstar has turned the story to before the movie (which I actually watched for the first time yesterday, it's embarrasing, I know!). Rockstar has taken the fights to it's extreme, and I often feel like I'm playing some sort of Manhunt-game. This is one of the most violent games that I have ever played. However I haven't played it more than three hours or so because my Playstation 2 doesn't seem to like it that much. I think it has started to sound like it's chewing the disc about 5-6 times or so. It has done this before, but not with a game only a DVD-movie. However it doesn't seem to scratch the disc. And from what I've read on different PS2-tech forums, a PS2 can sound like this one some discs because they have a harder time reading 'em. Although I'm a little bit scared about it and therefor I try to limit the play-time as much as possible, not playing for many straight hours.

In the last week or so I have started re-playing Grand Theft Auto III (the third time or something now). Although I have never completed it on PS2 (same goes for Vice City). I've just played these two games on PC. So my goal now is to complete both games on PS2 during this Winter.

I'm going to ease down on buying new games from now on, I've been all crazy and bought approx three games each month. I need to calm down and complete most of the games that I've bought. So therefor I have decided not to buy any more game s in December and January (only if FFXII is released I may re-consider this decision).

There's three more days of work left before I can take the winter off to do other activities. Hopefully I'll get the time to play more of Gran Turismo 4.

Today I finally completed Fahrenheit. Although it was a fairly short game (took me 6 and a half hours or something) it was really a good one! What I liked the most with Fahrenheit was that everything felt so fresh and groundbreaking. Like I've written before in previous posts is that I really love how your actions changes the gameplay.

I really look forward to seeing a sequel to Fahrenheit. But not a game based on the same story though, something similar, but not another Lucas Kane that is controlled by the Oracle etc. That would destroy a little bit of the game it self.

Some of the techniques that were used in this game will surely be interpreted in future games. Especially the whole "your actions controls the game"-thing. It's not brand new, it has been done in many other games. Silent Hill, just to name one of them. However it felt like you really had to control your actions in this game, think wisely before doing anything. I really loved the sense of being chased. I must admit that in the beginning of the game, I didn't pick up evidences with Carla & Tyler that I had left behind me with Lucas. Just because I was too afraid that it might have led them to me faster. And that it would shorten the gameplay. Well, now when I think back at it, I must say that was a little bit foolish. Nothing like that would have changed the game that much, or would it?

The best thing with the game itself; the attitude! When some people in suits found out that there was a hidden mini-game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas where you had sex with a woman, they went insane and gave it an AO-rating. Now that's just silly. The game was already for people over 15, I'm sure that everyone that's over 15 knows about sex, how it's done. I bet 99% of the kids that played San Andreas had already watched pornmovies and seen everything, maybe even had sex themselves. Fahrenheit went further than any game I have previously played (atleast the European version, you American people missed some non-forgettable scenes with Carla and Lucas). I have never in my entire life seen sexscenes in a game, that was meant to be there! Don't get me wrong here, I'm not giving the game a better score in my book just because I could see some naked video-game characters. I just liked that they did include stuff like that. Games aren't about limiting our fantasies and cutting away things that aren't suitable for certain people. That's why we have all these ratings, so people can judge wheter or not to buy the game themselves. If sex ought to be included in a game, then sex it's going to be. I really liked that Quantic Dreams pushed the envelope here and included those sexscenes. And I gotta give Atari a big pat in the back for letting Quantic Dreams include 'em.

If you haven't yet played Fahrenheit, go out and buy it immidietly! It's worth playing more than once. I know for sure that I will play it more than one time. Right now though I'm waiting for Red Dead Revelover to arrive, along with my three newly bought NES games. I'll update when they're here and all.

Well, maybe we're a little bit after when it comes to movie premiers in Sweden. Doom the movies hasn't still been released for public viewing yet here. But I got ahold of a ticket to the movie preview along with my boss. So we went since both of us are old-time gamers.

After discussing the Commodore 64 for a while during the movie trailers we started talking about our expectations of the movie we were about to see. Honestly, both of us thought it would be another cheesy Hollywood Action movie. I can't say that we were entirely wrong, but looking at the movie as a movie based on a videogame series it delivered more than I could ever expect.

To best describe the movie I would say it's like watching Doom III. It contained alot of frightening moments. But I was a little bit disappointed that they dropped the scary moments like three quarters into the movie. The last half hour or something is just plain raw action. Don't get me wrong, I really do love the frightening moments (actually they were some of the better moments in the film) but I wanted some more of them. Not to spoil or anything, but it was so obvious that if a team of eight men (they were eight right?) goes into an alien-invaded space base on Mars. There's not a single chance they will come out as an eight-man team again. You know the moment you're introduced to the team that about 80% of them will die.

I can't say that I'm too fond of The Rock as an actor, but the actors was really good in this movie. It's only Portman and Destroyer that were cliché in my opinion. Although both of them was really acting good.

And that's what disappointed me the most with the movie, it doesn't stick out. There's really only one scene in the movie that's entirely original. And that's the FPS-scene which was far by the coolest scene in the movie. This made the movie much better though in my point of view. In that sense Doom really delivers what it's supposed to do. A video-game movie.

What I liked in particular with the movie was the time that they had put down on making it. You can clearly see that they have thought of much. If you have played Doom III you'll recognize things like the computer GUIs etc. The Ark looks like something out of Doom III and that's what surprised me the most. That they had actually done so much to it.

If you're a video-game fan (which you probably are since you're here) I'd definitly recommend you to see this movie, just for the sake of it. Doom isn't anything special, it gives you what a real action movie with some frightening moments. This review may have sounded really negative, but since I came into the movie with no expectations at all other then I thought it would suck big time really, I must give it a six out of ten.

I haven't really said which games I won on the three auctions I bidded on. Well, I ended up with Gran Turismo 4 and Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy for you American people).

Now that I have had just a little bit more than a week to play the games I can honestly say I'm really pleased with what I got. Fahrenheit is a really, really cool game. It's actually something fresh for me, just the whole layout of the game. I love that your actions controls what happens in the game (more things like this in future games, thanks!). I also do love the story. I don't know how many times I've avoided to find clues with Carla and Tyler that could lead them to finding out it's Lucas. Eventually though they found out anyway (sorry if I spoiled anything). I've completed roughly 65% of the game now (short game...), and it's really thrilling actually. I just hope I don't run out of extra-lives. I've only got two or something now, and I'm worried that if you fail and loose all of them that it will be game over, and then it saves your game just so you can't load again.

Haven't had the time really to play Gran Turismo that much, been playing like 2-3 hours or something. Anyone who has played any of the prequels to Gran Turismo 4 knows that they aren't games that you can complete in like 4 hours. I think I've only completed 4 or 5% or something. It will take forever, and I'm pretty sure that I will never get 100%. Although it's nothing that I crave to do, I just want to ride, fast.

Right now I have bidded on another game, Red Dead Revolver. I haven't actually tried the game before, but since it's a Rockstar Game I have some hopes that it isn't all bad. I know it's not that popular, but it could be fun to waste some hours on. While on the subject of Rockstar Games, I'm really looking forward to playing both The Warriors, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. However I won't buy a PSP for the latter game. I need more batterytime and more games too look forward to before I'm spending thousands of swedish crowns on that console.

I've been all auction-crazy lately. Some days ago I decided to check if Gran Turismo 4 was for sale, and if I could get away cheaply. It was my lucky day or something because I got it for the low price of 200SEK (roughly $22). It's used, but not much as the seller wrote in his auction. He wanted money fast, so that's why he had put up such a low buy-it now price. Will have the game on monday.

Tomorrow ends an auction for a brand new Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy). Hopefully I'll be the winner. I've bidded 300SEK (roughly $32). I really hope that I win this auction because it seems like such a cool game. I've tried it for about an hour over at my friend's house. But only the PC version though, I sure don't hope that there's too much graphical differences between the PC and PS2 version.

I've also bidded 50SEK (~$7) for a used Colin McRae 2005. Not that I'm a big fan of the series nor think the game looks any extrodinary. I just want a plain racing game where you can get really dirty. I remember playing Colin McRae back when it came out for the Playstation (Jesus, that's years ago!).

Hopefully I'll be three games richer next week. Will update on which games that I got.