I turned 21 the other day. I almost can't believe it. Got a fair bit a money and decided to buy some games I've been looking at buying for a while. I bought F1 2011 because A) I like F1 games but haven't bought any in ages and B) cos it's another of those rare racing games that have split-screen play. I bought Bioshock 2 because I'm looking to broadening my gaming horizons now I've decided I won't be buying any more CoD games that take up most of my gaming time. I also bought House of the Dead because it was only £7 and seemed like a fun, cheap game to help justify keeping my Move controller.

My replacement PS3 lasted just 3 weeks before it bricked. Bloody thing!

Just a quick blog post to say that I do now have my Vita. I won't post my thoughts on it until later, possibly next week though, as I'm quite busy. From what I have used of it so far though, it's awesome :)

I pre-ordered the PS Vita Starter Kit from GAME and the PS Vita Wi-Fi only console from Amazon.co.uk, both choosing the free shipping option. Due to the rubbish way Amazon handles free shipping (to encourage people to pay for faster delivery, especially for pre-orders), today I received the Starter Kit in the post, yet only today did I receive an email from Amazon telling me they'd shipped the console. Damn Amazon, trying to increase their profit margin :P My lonely Starter Kit:

My PS3 literally just YLOD'd (an hour ago). At least this one lasted nearly 2 years. I'll probably pay the £110 to replace it, but I'm not sure if I'll get the Vita now since money is kinda tight. If I did, I'd need to dip into my savings to keep a healthy current account balance. FML. This is my third YLOD'd PS3 I think.

I've been sitting on the fence about Vita for ages, but the more I see of it the more I want it. I've pretty much decided that I'm going to buy it. The price did put me off a bit but I've found a way to reduce that quite considerably.
I've been building up my Nectar points for ages and so I'm going to use them to get money off pre-ordering at Amazon.co.uk, since you can redeem Nectar points for Amazon vouchers. I have £20 worth of Nectar points and since Amazon are already the cheapest place to buy the Vita, I'm only going to be paying £199 for the console itself :D
I'm also going to take advantage of the free 4GB memory card deal Amazon announced the other day – I'm going to re-sell it in order to save money on getting the 16GB card. If I re-sell it for £25 (just under the Amazon price of £27.99) that means the 16GB card will effectively only cost me £15. However, due to my membership with the AdPoints beta (who give you Nectar points for watching ads and 1,000 points at the end of the trial on 23rd Feb) I may be able to have enough points to get a further £5 off, or maybe even £10 off (if I watch enough ads between now and 23rd), which would mean it would only cost £10 or £5 basically :)
But that's not quite the end of it either! I also have £4 of GAME Reward Points saved up, which I will use to get £4 off the Official Vita Starter Pack, which includes a cleaning cloth, case, 'simply case' (not sure of the difference between the two), a wrist strap & a screen protector.
So, all in all, what should cost me £279 (Wi-fi only console, 16GB card, starter kit) will only cost £229.00 (or, if I'm really lucky, £219) due simply to reward points (with a little help from re-selling a free 4GB memory card from Amazon). Gotta love those little points :)

I am really enjoying MW3 but if there is one major criticism I would level at the game is the layout of the multiplayer maps. I am really annoyed that there are no maps that have any wide open spaces. Maps like Creek, Ambush, Overgrown, Bloc and Bog from COD4 and Afghan and Estate from MW2 were great for sniping and game flow. (Notice that the number of open maps go down with each MW game.) MW3 has no such maps; all maps have large indoor areas and/or lots of clutter all around the maps. The most open map is Village, yet it's still full or buildings, caves, hills and a tunnel which break up the map far too much. Sniping has been made slightly easier to compensate for lack of maps with long sight lines but it doesn't compensate for the fact that there are no maps which suit sniping at all. Yet matches in such maps are always fun because although they can (especially in COD4) end up with each team at either end of the map with endless snipers just shooting from one side of the map to the other (but with many oppentunities to sneak through and massacre most of the opposing team with a sub-machine gun or assault rifle), they are tense, intense and different. I really hope that IW correct this through the DLC.

I just revisited CoD Black Ops and soon remembered why I hate it. I don't know how they managed to mess that up so badly... all maps are badly designed so your team is easily pinned down by the other team, sniper rifles with either too much recoil or not enough power, some guns very underpowered while a few are massively overpowered, and on top of all that, it's basically impossible to actually shoot anybody because of awful hit detection. I don't get why Treyarch games (i.e. WaW and Blops) always have awful hit dectection where as IW games (i.e. MW1 and MW2) have fantastic hit detection.

I'm 20 today. My teenage years are over. I can hardly believe that. I don't really feel much different. I don't think I will until I've finished university next year. That is a scary prospect...

Some months ago I decided that I'd had enough of games not longer including split-screen or other similar in-person co-operative mode, such as that in the LEGO games (although I'm at pains to point out that the awful Burnout Paradise Party mode is not included in this definition of co-op gaming!). I decided I would made a website dedicated to furthering this cause. Unfortunatly I forgot about it cos I was in the middle of uni. But, now uni's over, I've decided to make a concerted effort to get this site off the ground. Please visit it here and pledge your support! http://splitscreengaming.x10.mx/