So I totally kicked Vanquish in the ass. After it kicked me around a bit first though. I had gotten a little extra money the other day and so I decided to treat myself to this game. The only reason I got it is because I read Kevin Van'Ord's blog and he listed it as the best game he played in 2010. He's my favorite reviewer on the site and nearly all of his reviews have come through for me. He's known for liking games that have really good stories to tell, and since Vanquish's story wasn't the best I've seen, or the best voice acting I've heard, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

All I got to say for Vanquish is - Damn. The game may not entirely deliver story-wise, but hot dog, the action is good! I won't even begin with trying to explain the story line because I didn't quite get it other than there is war and conspiracy. But being Sam Gideon, you are equiped with a super powered suit that allows you to slide across terrain with slick speed, slow down time for a moment to help better target and dispose of your foes, and are equiped with a unique and deadly arsenal of weapons. There are a ton of ways you can go about killing your enemies. This game has definitely got s-tyle.

Although it's not very long, it feels just about right. It has an arcadish feel to it and if it went on for a lot longer it would have felt dragged out and thus making it feel like a chore. The controls are sharp and fluid so it's a lot of fun to zip around and slow down time to shoot a robot in the face. The action really pushes the pace.

The specific genre of game isn't my favorite because I like games that have really good stories, but this one has really good slick action that will make up for it. It's a fun third person shooter. Teh end.

Short blog here.

I just wanted to post something neat I found out yesterday. A friend told me that Enslaved is based off of the Chinese epic novel "Journey to the West". I was curious about it so I did some research today and read up about The Monkey King. The story of Enslaved does loosely translate itself to the story of Journey to the West - which I thought was awesome! :D

The protagonist is named Monkey, who weilds a staff, is ridiculously strong, has a head band placed on him to keep him in check, is journeying to the west.. Just like The Monkey King!

Just thought I'd post that interesting information. :)

That makes me love the game even more! :D

I was thinking about it today, and from now on I don't think I'm going to make "proper" reviews of games anymore. Not that I couldn't, I guess, but when I write reviews I like to try and sound as professional as I can. When I talk about games I like to talk about it as if I'm explaining my thoughts to a friend. Talking as you would with a friend is always more fun than trying to sound smart. :P .. So for those who read will only get me "reviews" I guess.

Anyway, I bought Enslaved: Oddysey to the West the other day because I really wanted a new game before LittleBigPlanet2 came out, and I had a few extra bucks to spare and so it was between this game and Majin and the forsaken kingdom or whatever it is. Try to guess which I got! :D

First thing I am going to say is that I really liked Ninja Theory! They make such great games! First they came out with Heavenly Sword, and I heard rumor that it didn't do good enough or something so the company was ending, so I was sad, but then they come out with this and it's like YAY! It's not that they revolutionize the gaming industry, but they make very entertaining games. The characters they come up with feel so real and the dialogue sucks you right into the story. I thought they did amazing with that in Heavenly Sword, but it's even better in Enslaved. It really doesn't surprise me either since Andy Serkis, the man who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings, is part of the team. Enslaved's story is one of the finest I've played through in a long time.

In a post-apocolyptic world, you play as this brutishly strong man named Monkey, and you have a lady companion named Trip who has enslaved with using some headband device so that he would help her get home after they both escape a slave ship. Like I said, the dialogue is super believable and the interaction with each other is fantastic. I laughed a lot, felt sadness and even angry at times. Thank you Ninja Theory for being awesome.

I also liked the gameplay as well, because I like to mash buttons and watch my character wildly flay himself into the heat of battle demolishing his foe in s.tyle. That's what the combat feels like in this game. You got your light attack and your heavy attack, and a few shinies in between. Monkey's staff also turns into a plasma gun which can shoot someone in the face too! :D .. But the game never begins to feel stale or repetitive because it oftens switches things up. One point you could be smahing your way through a bunch of angry robots with your staff, the next you're running for your life through a bunch of obstacles, then you're preforming a series of platforming, etc.. It always kept the pace flowing really nicely.

The platforming was nice, but it felt too straightforward. If there were a little bit more freedom in that aspect the game would have gotten a 10/10 for me. But that's just when your climbing stuff, there's all types of platforming stuff in this game. Like jumping onto Monkey's Hover disk and having fun. I love hack and slash fighting and I love platforming so putting the both together for me is a total win!

The story of the game is really where the gold is at. At least I think so. I've talked about the characters and dialogue and such and how they made me feel, and given you enough information about the story so you know what's up. I don't want to give any spoilers out. All I will say is that this games ending was one of my favorites in a REALLY long time! I wasn't expecting that ending at all and it was one of those endings that the impact comes down to a person's point of view and/or morality. It's one of those "Whoa.. What would I do if I were faced with that decision?" Because it's a really tough situation to decide. At least in my opinion. So damnit, get to playing Enslaved so you can watch the ending!

The game probably took me around 10 hours to complete, and I wish I would have played it bits at a time so that I could enjoy it longer while I wait for LittleBigPlanet2 to release, but I liked it so much I couldn't put it down. So now I'll need to find other means to entertain myself while I wait, which won't be hard since I'm pretty simple minded. :P .. So those are my thoughts on a great game. I hope I made reading this bareable haha. I wasn't planning on writing this much about it. Au revoir!

:)

So I finally got to play LIMBO!

I had been wanting to play it even before it was released, and have said on Asagea_888's blog numerous times when she posted about it, that I was looking forward to it. Fortunately, my friend, who is Abigorus here on GS, bought it on his Xbox and I got to play it! :D

LIMBO was definitely everything I was expecting it to be. Although I found it to be short, which was a little disapointing. I love those kind of games which make you stretch your mind to figure out the puzzles. Even though LIMBO was deliciously full of puzzles, there were only a few that I found tougher than most. Most of it mainly relied on timing. I really enjoyed the first bit of the game, I thought that's where it was most fun, because it felt more spooky running through the woods and escaping spiders and crazy people, along with it's sneaky traps and pitfalls. I did like the factory look places, but I found it less spooky and more puzzly.

The atmosphere was FANTASTIC! The art design with this game totally rocked and definitely gave the feeling that you're in some sort of limbo land. I was surprised with how dark the game could be, such as with the ways the boy could die. Getting torn to shreds by a big saw is brutal. Scary scary scary! :D

In the end, I really enjoyed LIMBO. I wasn't crazy about the ending because it leaves too much open for debate, and although I like games that go that direction, leaving too much open frustrates me. But the puzzles were great and the atmosphere was spooky so there's no reason to complain.

Thar, mah final thoughts. :P

Hello fellow bloggers,

Time has flown and now it's a brand new year. I hope everyone have enjoyed their holidays and that dreams have come true and magic has been experienced this past year, and I hope for even more magic and wonderful things to happen this year for all of you. I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog and he wrote this and I thought "Wow, what a way with words."

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

I haven't been very active in anything these days to be honest. I joined the Gamespot community to try and get myself to be more active in something that involves people, but I always back to my usual ways and become a true introvert, reading books or something.

Something new that is happening in my life - I'm going to be a dad! Yar, I'll have a little monster running around due in August if everything goes according to plan. I think I'd really like to have a boy, but then I'd like to have a girl too because I think girls would be more inclined to have me read them stories and such, but having a boy might give me a better chance of having be more like me, doing the things I do. In the end, I really couldn't care less if I had a boy or a girl, as long as he/she's healthy and normal. :)

In the gaming world, I'm looking really forward to LittleBigPlanet2 and Dead Space 2! LBP I have been looking forward to for a while and I can't wait to get my hands on that plushie! :P .. I'll problably lose a few weeks of my life to that game if everything is as I expect it to be. I've already lost a few months back to World of Warcraft since the expansion was coming out, but it's starting to lose its luster again so I feel it's time to move on. Unless I got into a really good Role-Playing guild but I don't see that happening.

In book world I'm currently reading Fablehaven. I picked it up at Wal-mart during the holidays as a three book pack. I read Warcraft's War of the Ancients trilogy last month and thought that was really great, and was going onto Stormrage but I've been feeling sort of down and needed something a bit more cheerful to read to get my spirits up a bit. Fablehaven has been proving to do just that, at least so far.

I wish everyone's new to be filled with happiness and may many great things come your way. :)

I used to write poetry all the time. I'm feeling a little blue tonight, and then, surprisingly, I began to write.

Time, why the melancholy in the flap of your wings?
Will you refrain reality from setting before the five o'clock shadow,
Will you this day let aurora sit with me a while?
Even the coffee's awakening bite has lost it's luster
And my deck of cards struggles to remember its shuffle
Perhaps I shouldn't have built my castle in the sand

It's pretty lousy, just something thrown together on the spur of the moment, but I thought I'd share it anyway. I miss writing.

It's been a while. I wasn't really planning on writing a blog today either, but I decided to get Fallout New Vegas today and was updating my games list, and well one thing lead and another and you know the rest. This will probably not be much of an interesting blog, and probably not a long either. One word comes to my mind this day - Life. Not the new BBC series either; the real deal yo. Life in work, life in gaming, life in love and life in pleasure.

I'm a person who can't decide what he wants to do, and usually abandons whatever it is he's working on to start on something else. For example, I love to read. Just yesterday I finished Neil Gaiman's - The Graveyard Book. It was tremendously great! I love books and because of that I love to write, which leads me to the book I'm writing. I get excited about it and I can't stop the ideas from flooding my head and I write away. But then I pick up a new game and that's the end of it for a while. I play my new game, which leads me to more games which ultimately leads to getting addicted to World of Wacraft again. Eventually WoW's luster will fade and I'll catch a great video on YouTube which inspires me to create a video of my own. Suddenly I'm obsessed with trying to be creative that it drives my wife bonkers. So I'll pick up my guitar and I'll try writing songs. After that, when I either get discouraged or run out of ideas, it's back to my books, and the cycle repeats itself all over again. Madness.

I consider myself mediocre at all those things, which makes me run around in circles not allowing myself to progress at one specific thing until I get really good at it. I would use the term "Jack of all trades" but I don't want to sound full of myself. Actually now that I've said that I'm trying to figure out why I'm even writing all of this? Hah. Sorry for the rant about myself. But that is what runs through my mind time and time again. I wish I could live somewhere like where the Samurais lived in the movie "The Last Samurai" featuring Tom Cruise. Ever since I looked at that place I've always been in love with the idea. I think it'd be AWESOME! :D .. Laying back, taking in the scenery, reading a book, munching on a cookie - the freaking life! But that'll probably never happen. I don't think my wife could give up technology. :lol:

So that's that for today. Not really sure what it was but it was something nontheless. Hope you're all having a good day. :)

I finally got through Final Fantasy XIII. This morning at about 4 am I woke up not feeling very well and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to try and finish the game. I knew I was close because I had just entered chapter 13 the night before. So after a few hours of the morning, I finally finished the game, and it was sweet.

My initial impression of the game was that it was beautiful, fun and flashy. The combat system wowed me right off the bat and the story was intriguing, but as I progressed through the game, its linearity really turned me off. I was getting very tired of the hallway-simulator as I've heard others call it. Too much straight and narrow! So I actually ended up letting the game sit for nearly a couple of months, and when I came back to it the break in between made it a bit more bearable for a short while. But I was really captivated by its story, because the most important thing I look for in a game is a great story, so I knew I wouldn't be able to put it down this time.

In the end it was satisfying and a relief to be finished the game. The ending did not disappoint and I'm glad I finished it for its stories sake. So, click here for my review that I wrote earlier this morning about it!

Enjoy. :)

*Warning: This blog post contains some frightening imagery. Read at own discretion.*

For about the past month or so I have been thinking a lot about the things that really frighten me. That may sound strange, because who really wants to think about things that frighten them? There are enough things in this day and age that can put enough stress on people minds as it is; E.g. money, health, terrorism, shelter, hunger, etc. Life in general for some people is stressful. But I am not talking about the possibilities of life that make us worry or scare us. I'm talking about the things the things that live in your closet, hide underneath your bed, noises in the forest that bring up frightening imagery of beasts ready to snatch you up when you lose it and begin to run; all of the things that only exist in your mind. And for me, that would have to be Zombies.

The number one scariest (non-realistic) thing that could ever happen in this world, to me, would have to be a Zombie outbreak. There are a lot of things in life that could happen that would be really scary, but in this article I'm strictly speaking about things that could never happen. Things like vampires or werewolves. You get the idea. Nothing in my mind compare to the horror of an all out Zombie apocalypse. And even though they scare the living day lights out of me, I can't help but be fascinated to the idea. Weird, right? Zombies are the only thing I ever have nightmares about. I used to have nightmares all the time as a kid, but as I grew older I stopped having them. That was until about maybe a couple of years ago my friend, Kyle, who is also known as Abigorus here on Gamespot, introduced me to the game Left4Dead. I bought it and played it with him on PC and we had a blast. I watched several Zombie movies throughout my life, but this game was just insane. I actually am afraid when I play this game to the point where my legs have went numb from fright of being chased by a Zombie horde. while I try desperately to get into a safe place so I can turn around and unload a series of shotgun blasts into their faces. I have even screamed out loud on occasion, and I NEVER do that. Any time I play this game I have nightmares. So ever since we began playing Left4Dead together, I have had a growing fascination about Zombies.

I watch all the latest Zombie films that come out if I can. I am currently reading through "The Zombie Survival Guide" written by Max Brooks, which I will be following up with "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" by the same author. I know in my mind that a Zombie apocalypse could never happen, but it's still a really scary thought; people dying and then reanimating into a being that knows no rest, no fear, and no pain and has an everlasting hunger for human tissue. Just the thought of being eaten alive is scary. "The Zombie Survival Guide" is a really interesting book full of facts about how to survive in a Zombie infested world, and even though I don't believe it could ever happen, it's just fun to read this type of stuff. What would you do if you were trapped in your house/apartment and there were Zombies galore surrounding your premise? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of hungry of the living dead moaning and scratching at your walls trying to reach you, the candidate main course, and your chances for survival are slim. That is probably one of the scariest thoughts ever; trying to escape a mob of undead then being pulled away feeling a number of jaws biting hard into your skin until either absolute death, or worse, you become one of them. Another scary thought is that there are billions of people in the world, and considering how many become infected and are turned, what makes any specific person so special that they can outlast it all? When a horde of Zombies come shambling and dragging their feet towards a person, there's not a whole lot that sets them apart from everyone else. Weapons, Fitness and their wits are a person's only chance for survival against a world populated with beings that don't go down unless their brains are splattered against the wall or until they decay and rot away.

Those are some reasons why I find Zombies are the scariest things ever. But no matter how much they frighten me, even to the point of giving me nightmares, they truly fascinate me. My friend Kyle and I are planning on co-writing a book together based on characters surviving a Zombie outbreak. My wife doesn't like the whole Zombie idea because she knows that it gives me nightmares, so she disapproves about me reading those books and watching the movies, but no matter how much I know she's right I can't help it. Saying all of this is making me sound crazy. But I guess we all need a little bit of crazy in our lives sometimes. I'm looking forward to writing this book with my friend. I hope it turns out well!

Let me know what kind of unrealistic/imagery things scare you if there are any!

As I'm typing this, Demon's Souls is currently playing on my PS3 system giving it a shot as a magic wielder. Don't worry, I'm in a safe place away from harms reach. :) .. I have been attempting to complete the Tower of Latria section of the game but I kept dying against the Old Monk. For some reason I never got another player as the boss battle and got the cpu instead, so when I die I invade another players world and become their boss battle as the Old Monk. I always win. :) .. So why cpu so friggin ridiculous?! But after a few attemtps I ended up beating him.

Anyway, onto the funny part. While I'm waiting up in the Old Monk's room for the player to arrive, my wife calls me from work to talk. We keep talking while I wait, and she had no idea I was playing the game, until I notice an enemies health bar from outside the room begin to deplete. The player is coming for his both fight. So I say to my wife "Alright hun I'm going to have to let you go." She asks "Why?" and then I reply with "Because I'm the boss." There were no words after that statement, only a laugh that said "Oh really?" So of course I try to explain myself saying "I meant in the game! I'm someone's boss fight. I'm A boss!" We both laughed. :) .. The moral of the story is that I need to learn to explain myself better or I'm going to get myself in trouble. :P