Why do people care so much about graphics in games these days, that they have to automatically assume that a game will suck just because it doesn't look as good as say, Call of Duty? If this, along with Multiplayer, is all the gaming community care about these days, then I will literally facepalm so hard, I will probably decapitate myself.

Does it really matter if a game doesn't meet the same graphical qualities as a game you have been playing recently? In my personal opinion, it doesn't. While I have to agree that there has to be some level of standard these days, most games that I have seen being hated on have met those standards as far as I'm concerned. Just because a game doesn't look as good as other games out there which may be in my opinion over-rated, it doesn't mean that they are bad games in general. If you want good visual effects, go and watch a modern day film with plenty of CGI effects or something.

Next thing on my "moan about list" is Multiplayer. Sure, it's fun... Up to an extent. I cannot see how people can spend the majority of their gaming time on it, however. Again, it's fun and yes, it can be addictive sometimes. But even if these games have progression systems (for example, Halo Reach's credits), I really don't spend most of my gaming time on it. I have two reasons for this. Firstly, I do not feel like I am getting anywhere. It feels too repetitive for me, I need a good story or a little variety in my missions, at least. I don't like playing Capture the Flag on Halo 24/7, or Deathmatch on Unreal Tournament. I just can't do it.

Secondly, it's the people. In my four years of having an Xbox Live account, I have had to sit through countless encounters where the other people in the game are impolite, rude, aggressive or annoying. Sometimes certain people fit into just about every bad category I could possibly have for them. I have heard it all: Terrible music being played down the microphone, a white person talking like he's black (sorry if that came off as racist, I really didn't mean it in an offensive way, but hopefully you should get the idea of what I mean), kids literally screaming until everyone else's ears are bleeding and then the so-called "MLG Pros". And when I say MLG Pros, I don't mean the actual ones who play video games for the competition, respect the opposite side playing against them and admit defeat when someone is actually better than them at a video game. I'm talking about the ones who literally rage at their team mates if the team is losing, or being a big headed a**hole to the enemy team if they're winning and bragging about being so good at a video game (probably also doing really bad whilst doing all of this).

So why should these two factors matter so much in a game nowadays, when they didn't matter a single bit back in the 80s and 90s? I have seen games these days that could've been so much better had the developers not worked so much on constantly tweaking the Multiplayer gameplay basically because of people complaining about literally everything being over-powered. I have also seen games that have looked absolutely breath taking, but have completely let me down in almost every other aspect. So why should these matter so much when they mean nothing to the game overall?

Just letting people know... It's been a while since I've posted a review. Even longer since I posted on my blog here. I was going to review Halo Reach, but I got more into the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood review and ended up finishing that. Anyway, enjoy reading it... Feel free to let me know how I can improve my reviews.

The title pretty much says all that this is going to be about. I was surfing IGN the other day and I couldn't help but see their preview of the Two Worlds sequel. Now apparently, this is looking to be much better than the first one - something which is going to be fairly easy to do given the fact that the Two Worlds was completely broken. Sure, it had a few good things about it such as combining weapons that are the same instead of them cluttering up your inventory, and dual wielding swords wasn't a bad thing either. But seriously, playing it on the Xbox 360 felt like playing Crysis on a mediocore PC, on High Quality - yes the frame rate was THAT bad. The voice acting was some of the worst I've heard too, and to make things cheesier, they made a very bad attempt to make it sound "ye olde English". So what exactly have the team behind Two Worlds II done to combat this? Well, they've built it for the console this time - which means that the PC version might not be as good, but it's a good thing for the frame rate, since they'll know what the Xbox 360 and PS3 can handle this time around. Not only that, but they're ditching the old fashioned English talking. Since they're looking into the issues that the first game had, I might actually give this one a chance. There's quite a few good series that I can think of that got off to an awful start. However, this doesn't mean that I'll be shocked if it turns out that Two Worlds II isn't any better than the first game. I've come to learn that if you play the first game, don't expect the second one to be any better - that way you're not disappointed if that does happen, and you'll get a pleasant surprise if it is better. Hopefully in trying to make Two Worlds II better, they'll keep the stuff that made the first at least worth playing, such as the two things I've mentioned before. So I'm giving this game a chance, question is, what about everyone else? Are you going to give it a chance after what happened with the first game?

Apparently Elder Scrolls 5 is only a year away, but just what have Bethesda done to make Elder Scrolls 5 better? Fallout 3's overall gameplay, while similar to Oblivion's style of play, had evolved. Don't get me wrong, Oblivion is a great game, but Fallout 3 improved on everything it took from Oblivion. The bartering menu, along with other menus, was much more easier to use, especially with the PC version. I didn't like Oblivion's bartering system much, with asking for my confirmation of everything I wanted to sell, when I could easily just pick out a bunch of things to sell and anything I accidentally put in there could be easily taken out, and one confirmation for everything is all it took.

Another thing that was good was the limb damage. How about Bethesda improve on that system, and include it in Elder Scrolls 5? Head damage could include the same blurry view and stunted magicka. Leg damage could affect running speed and how much damage you would take from falling. Arm damage could affect your aim and your overall attacking power in hand to hand and melee combat. Body damage could affect how fast your fatigue goes down, and makes you less damage resistant.

Preset faces is a good idea. Either that, or actually bring in some decent random faces.I didn't like most of the random generated faces Oblivion used, either being too old or too deformed looking. Why not give us some decent random generated faces this time? What I usually do is get a random face, then work on it from there, but it usually takes me ages before I find a decent face that I can actually work with.

Bringing back some old stuff also seems like the right thing to do with TESV. What like? Well, Bonemold armour, Indoril armour and Dreugh armour was one of my favourites, but they were gone in Oblivion. All three of my favourite armour sets. Medium armour was a great skill, it was a balanced form of not having something too heavy for your inventory, offered some protection and made it so you could move with more ease than heavy armour. Now in Oblivion it's one or the other. I didn't like that, I love having the choice of a bit of both. And before you ask, no, I'm not bisexual.

More weapon types are needed, nearly every weapon type that was in Morrowind had been cut in Oblivion, this includes spears, halberds, crossbows andthrowing equipment. I would say axes too, since the axes in Oblivion are classed as a "Blunt Weapon". Erm... I'm pretty sure if I swung an axe at somebody I would probably cut his head off. So why not bring back the axe classification, so it, well you know, makes more sense? And bring back the spears and crossbows. Warriors need Spears, Assassins need Crossbows. A bow and arrow simply isn't assassin-like.

More variety in voice actors is certainly needed. Why did we have one voice for every elf male, one for every elf female, one for Nord and Orc males, one for Nord and Orc females... Ugh. Even the Breton and Imperial females had the same voice, which made it impossible to tell the difference between the two of them. Why not give a voice for each race, just like the good old Morrowind days? It would make the game much better.

We need a longer questline. Morrowind's was really long, while Oblivions was short. I'm still finding new quests for Morrowind, yet I think I've finished all of Oblivion's quests. I know Oblivion's quests are more detailed, but when it comes to quests, it's the quantity, not the quality. So long as I've got more to do I'm happy.

The levelling system was simply appalling in Oblivion. Long rant short, it's just annoying how a low level character gets paid hardly anything, and when you get the artifacts as a low level character, they become useless, losing that unique and poweful feel they had to them. If you got them as a high level character, you would have a powerful artifact. It shouldn't be like that, Bethesda shouldn't put you off of doing quests as a low level character like that. The whole point of doing some quests is to level up. And another thing. Daedric is supposed to be the rarest material to encounter in Tamriel, right? Then why is it, when I get to level 20+, I see it everywhere. Literally. As in, it's more common that Iron now. So my idea for this is either improve it so I get the actual reward for doing quests, and the artifacts either level up with you, or they are the same powerful thing no matter what level you are, and make it so everyone and their mothers isn't wearing Daedric armour. That, or remove the levelling system completely, as it ruins Oblivion's fantastic gameplay.

So those are my problems with TESIV Oblivion, that should be amended in TESV. Hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope Bethesda takes some of these into consideration.

From what I've seen based on the demo, I think ODST is looking like everything Halo 3 should've been from the very start, apart from the ODST part obviously. I don't really think Halo 3 is that much of a great game, but this one is looking to be much better, pushing the engine to the potential I saw in it. The open world, the interactive features with the visor, everything is looking really good.

I don't know if I've got this right but isn't stamina a form of damage resistance? Like the less stamina your character has the more likely he's going to get wounded. Just a new feature I'm confused about in Halo 3 ODST. Anyway I love the fact they're bringing health packs back, something that should've stayed in Halo from the very beginning. The Pistol looks like a combination of Halo 1's and Halo 2's pistol, it has a scope but it can also fire rapidly. I don't know how much damage it does though. I heard you couldn't pick up Covenant equipment, but in the demo I saw a lot of "press RB to pick up Plasma Rifle" dialogues, so they could be lying there. Unless they meant equipment like the bubble shield. And to be quite honest equipment never really interested me, so that wouldn't bother me if you couldn't use it.

I'd appreciate it if they implemented more stealth into the game but then again I haven't seen much of it so they probably have. Firefight mode looks pretty cool, and Bungie were very clever to hide most of it's features, and showed some gameplay of it using the theatre mode. However judging by the fact that you can get Sergeant Johnson as a playable character in Firefight if you pre-order this from certain shops, I'm guessing there's a ton of characters you can select, along with more features. After all, we did see all this from theatre mode, and not Firefight mode.

Something else I noticed - the return of Red. Sorry, it's my own nickname for one of my favourite weapons in the Halo universe. I am of course talking about the Brute Plasma Rifle. Your character won't be so "stiff" this time around either, meaning that things will happen to make your character react instead of just stood there, and all of this will happen while you're still in first person. Nice. I'm hoping to see the return of many things from Halo 2, and even Halo 1. Things such as the Spectre and Shadow. Hopefully in driveable form this time around for the Shadow. Bungie also said that there's several ways of transport around New Mombasa, my guess is one of them could be a rail system.

Anyway there's just a tiny couple of things that are slightly off putting. The expansion is full price, something I knew would happen because Microsoft are just plain greedy, even Bungie said this is just an expansion and is not worth full game retail price. However, it does come with a Halo Reach beta, so I don't know what to do. Also, the Firefight mode uses skulls. Now I love a challenge, but I don't like the effects that some of these skulls have. For example I don't want to be playing Firefight, I'm killing loads of Covenant, then along the way the nasty surprise of Blind Skull comes in. Like I said I love a challenge so long as the challenge is only on by my choice. However it's looking like a promising expansion and I'll get it for expansion price one way or another (I usually just go to Tesco :P) and I'll be posting more impressions when I see more games.