I'm sorry this isn't much of a blog (honestly nothing all that interesting has happened in my life for a while :P) but hey, here's my latest review. It's for Serious Sam 2, Enjoy!

Serious Sam 2 review for PC

I'm going to PAX Melbourne next year! Ordered my tickets a couple of days ago, gonna be so fun :D any of you guys going? Anyone actually been to a PAX? I'd love to hear about what it's like! I thought that going to the EB Expo about a month ago was great fun, and having PAX come to Australia is a step forward in the industry down here. It'll be interesting to see what the big titles are next July, should be cool.

Also I just finished recording my review of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for PC, great game that. I'm sure most of you have played it, but if you haven't I definately recommend that you go out and get a copy as soon as possible! You won't regret it :D

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time review for PC

If anyone's still reading and wondering what's going on in my life? I've just stopped caring about pressures, about school, about the dreaded year 12. I'm just enjoying myslef, life is a blast if you want it to be. Just drop the worries, and live life in the now. Quite frankly, I have no idea what I'm going to do in the future, and judge me as you wish but I honestly don't care at the moment. If you always prepare for the future, you'll never be satisfied. I'm sounding too deep on a video games website :P

Fare-the-well!

-mini

Just a heads up I'm just blurting out thoughts as they come on this one, don't bother reading it unless you're pretty bored.

Soooo just got back from a school meeting about managing stress. Now I feel really damn edgy. They're going out of their way to tell us not to stress out too much about the next year of our lives. They went out of their way, and I went out of my way to be told that the next year shouldn't be that stressful. Hm.

You see as of last Monday I've joined the oh so scary Year 12! My final mark determines whether I'm going straight into university next year. Woo. I don't even know if I want to go to uni, but everyone I know seems to want to. Everyone is pushing me, as if I really, really want to get a good mark and am really stressed out about it.

Thing is, I'm not stressed about school. What stresses me out is other people being stressed out, and telling me not to worry. Should I be woried? Am I doing something wrong? I don't think I care as much as other people about school or my final mark, and I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. There's always alternatives to get into basically any uni course if I wanted to, it takes a bit longer but it's easier. I just don't want to work to live and live to work.

I try to enjoy the now, I do what I feel like when I feel like; but I also try to please others, I want to live up to their expectations, which are apparently set a lot higher then mine. I just really don't want to always be working to improve my status in a workforce, or get a better job. I'd be happy with an apartment and a Datsun really. All I want is to be happy. People find happiness through achieving their goals and I understand that, but I'm not sure that's my thing.

On a lighter note I made a BIT.TRIP RUNNER review earlier this afternoon, before the meeting that was made to calm me down fired me up. It's a pretty fun little game though I'm just so awful at it. Can't even get past the first chapter!

BIT.TRIP RUNNER review for PC

Sorry this was a bit of a ramble I just wanted to gather my thoughts. If you read it, well, thanks I guess.

-mini

Somehow in my last blog I managed to not mention Assassin's Creed 3, The Last of Us and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, all of which I didn't get to play but saw about 15min gameplay of each. Here are my impressions!

The Last of Us looks amaaaazinnngg! I want it and I want it now! It looks really, really intense and has a much darker tone then Uncharted. It looks very cinematic and combat sequences seem to let you approach them from different angles, and I loved how that girl actually helped out in the gameplay. For example when the guy on the stage ran out of ammo, the girl said "hey a**hole" and threw a rock at him, which startled him for a melee attack from the main character. Just looks like a really cool game and I'll try and buy it on release.

Assassin's Creed 3! I'm definately not a fan of this series, and to be completely honest this game looks about as boring as its predecessors. The AI are horrible, no surprises, and it has a bunch of gimmicky useless weapons again. Also it looks too easy... again. I do love the settings however, and the personal story of the Assassin seems better then ever, but still it looks as dull and repeditive as its predecessors. The boat battles looks pretty cool however, if a bit shallow. Also we saw the main character get attacked by bears and play out the same freaking quick-time event over and over and over for about 5 bears straight. Just a heads up Creed fans! You're going to find bears really annoying after this one. Overall it looks better then it's predecessors, but better doesn't always mean good. Creed 2 proved that.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist basically looks like a more refined version of Conviction, a game which I actually really liked despite it being really damn easy. I'm looking forward to it, I hope it's longer and more difficult then Conviction, as what I saw didn't really show that. It just seemed like Conviction, which is nice.

So yeah, there's those games. If I happen to remember any more games I missed I might make a post about them :P

Ciao, minimme.

I went to the EB Games expo last night! There were a lot of great games around the joint, I wish I got to play them all but hey what can you do. I did get to play all the game I wanted to, which was fun. I had a great time.

If I were some big name company who handed out awards for shows like this, I would give 'game of the show' to Tomb Raider. Yep, that game. I haven't cared about Tomb Raider in years, it sort of lost its way in my opinion. This one looks like great fun though, at Square Enix's little press conference thing they showed straight up gameplay of it to us and it looked really intense and interestingly a lot darker then previous games. It really surprised me as I wasn't expecting much from this "reboot." I also got to play it for a few minutes, all I did was shoot down some deer with a bow and arrow, 'twas pretty cool.

I got to play some of the games that I actually wanted to play too, which was nice. Hitman Absolution is pretty fun, as is Far Cry 3, but I think both games you need a fair while to get into. Far Cry 3 seems to be a fair bit like 2 with a different setting and less annoying enemies, but I don't know what kind of tone they were trying to set with its atmosphere. Coming from someone who only loved Far Cry 2 in permadeath, it looks like Far Cry 3 will offer a similar experience with less grit. Looking forward to it.

Absolution was about what I expected, I got to play the Chinatown mission and the pre-order "Sniper Challenge" mission, both are really cool but as I said you need some time to discover the fun in games like Hitman.

I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and all I can really say is chopping up things is fun! I love the Metal Gear Solid series, and it's a bit disappointing that it's a beat-em-up, but judging it as a beat-em-up it's a really, really good one.

I also played the LBP Carts battle mode against a bunch of people in the Playstation booth and that was pretty fun, feels a lot like Maro Kart's battle mode which is to be expected. I also played the Vita Silent Hill game in that booth and I can't say I'm impressed with that.

I watched some little exclusive 15minute gameplay footage of the new South Park RPG and I'm surprised to see that Obsidian are developing it. As a fan of South Park who doesn't really watch the show very often it actually looks really, really fun and it looks exactly like an episode off the show. It's a turn based RPG thing in the city of South Park where you play as the new kid and it honestly looks really cool. It looks what On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness except higher budget and for South Park instead of Penny Arcade.

The Wii-U is okay, not too impressed but atleast they're putting more then just kids games on it. It looks like Nintendo are trying to get back at the more 'hardcore' audience instead of just kids and casuals which is nice. I'm curious to see how well it will sell. Also one of Jim Sterlings video's about the Wii-U was interesting, sort of *Respect +1*'d me for good old Ninti. Check it out here.

Overall this was a great little Expo thing, I'm glad Electronic's Boutique hosted it and I'm looking forward to going to it next year. I'm certain I haven't mentioned everything I saw there but these are the most interesting games, I didn't bother with Halo 4, Blops 2, or MOH because apparently I'm amazing at pattern recognition and they look so similar to previous installments in their series. Ask me about any other games that were there though I might've seen them. Also I vaguely remember somewhere saying that PAX is coming to Australia next year, if that's true that'll be amazing!

It was a great night, totally worth it. And it ended with fireworks! Can't go wrong with them! Also here's my latest game review, check it out: Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes review.

Cheers, mini.

Good evening Gamespot! Last night I saw Taken 2! And the verdict is... LIAM NEESON IS A BADARSE!!

In other news, I'm going to the EB Games Expo Sydney tomorrow night, I'm keen to see the new Hitman game, the Wii U, and Far Cry 3. I'll keep you updated if I get around to it. I'm pretty excited. Who knows, maybe I'll see one of you guys there! I'll be the goofy looking 16 year old who's spending most of his time playing Hitman. :P

16? Man that's new. I could swear I was some 14 years old some two years ago. 16 sounds way older then 14, which sounds way older then 12, which sounds way older then te-- you get the point. It's late night, and i happen to be talking about nothing again. I'm so predictable...

Anyhoo I just finished reviewing some Medal of Honor game on my new 'minimme's game reviews' channel. I'm going to try and post a review of something every week, it's actually great fun reviewing games. Go ahead and watch it, it would mean a lot to me :) I'd love some feedback. And perhaps some review requests? Heheh.

Medal of Honor: Airborne Review here!

I'm playing through The Longest Journey at the moment. God I love this game; some of the best, most well developed, well rounded characters in any game ever. The story is just superb, as are the settings and basically everything else except some of the puzzles. It suffers from the classic "completely stupid adventure game puzzle" syndrome; which consists of things like combining two completely unrelated objects together to solve a puzzle. I hate how a lot of Adventure games do that, I think a nice fix would be a little thing called logic! And perhaps multiple ways to do puzzles. That being said it's only some puzzles that are like this in The Longest Journey; but it's still annoying.

Well, that was a fun little ramble to myself. Good old Gamespot blogs help me gather my thoughts about absolutely nothing. If you read this, pat yourself on the back and reward yourself with a smile. I'm going to go listen to some Spinnerette and fall asleep. Fare-the-well.

-mini

Hello again gamespot! It's nice to catch up with you again. We haven't talked in a while, I guess I've just been finding myself more amused with other things but hey, what can you do. I noticed that all my comments on all my blogs have been deleted, so that's somewhat curious. Also Gamespots parent company seems to have bought Giant Bomb so that's also amusing, I watched a little Gerstmann video today about 'the Kane and Lynch incident' and it's nice to see everyone be friends again.

Speaking of Kane and Lynch, I made a video review for it today. Yep; a video review. Today I decided that making video reviews would be fun, so I'm going to try and update the little YouTube channel I made with reviews every now and again, it's actually quite fun reviewing games.

Here's a link to my so-called channel.

So far I've only reviewed Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (which I actually liked believe it or not) and a free game called Nitronic Rush; so if you've been missing my little Gamespot reviews that's where they'll be now :P I know they're monotonous and dull but I'm just getting used to this whole 'video review' thing and I'll try and improve on them as time goes on. I find it really great fun decomposing what makes a game fun or not, perhaps I'm a nutcase.

I'll try and keep you guys on Gamespot more updated, I've been slacking off a bit huh. Also I've been playing some Guild Wars 2 lately, which is sort of cool I love the architecture and level design but it still feels like a boring old MMO at times. Who knows, perhaps I'll make a video review for it :P

-mini

As you probably don't know, I never buy games on release. Not even Skyrim could make me pay $100 for a new game. So, after some months, I finally obtained Deus Ex 3! And it is good! I'm glad to see it's Deux Ex, as you have to actually think in this shooter (I know, right?). I love how, just like the first game, there are heavy consequences when you screw up. In a lot of instances, the game doesn't simply reset you when you let hostages die, or kill an ally, you just continue on with the game. That's what I loved about the first game, and this game too, though I'm only a few missions in.

Also, I finally got around to Assassin's Creed 2, it's a lot better then the first game. I'm so glad about that. Though it's not the masterpiece I've been told it is, it's still a very fun game. I've heard the new one is kinda uninspired, but I might try it out.

A game I've been meaning to finish is Mafia 2, I borrowed it and played through a bit of it, but never finished it. I definately found it a huge disappointment after the first game (which I've labeled my favourite game; in my head) but it wasn't bad. I want to play through it simply because I loved the first game so much, though I'm not expecting anything amazing from it.

-mini

I enjoyed Splinter Cell Conviction, since I got it just recently, I knew it wasn't exactly a hardcore stealth game like the previous Splinter Cell games, 'twas about as good as I expected. It didn't make you feel like you were Sam Fisher, so throughout the game I ignored the fact that it was a Splinter Cell game, and played the game as if I were Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible.

Speaking of Mission Impossible, I saw the new film today. You get what you pay for when you see a Mission Impossible, it's about as good as you expect, nothing more. Good movie. Would you agree that they should make a video game based on MI in the style of Conviction? Wouldn't that be awesome? :P Though movie games usually screw up. On a side note does anyone else remember the old MI game on PS1 and 64? That game wasn't half bad :)

So today I picked up another ubiquous Ubisoft game; Assassin's Creed 2. After playing the first game, expectations aren't high, but I've heard it's rather good, so I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.. Man Creed 1 was terrible...

-mini

My sister was creating a magazine about a month ago for her major project in her college, so she got me to write some short reviews to put in it. Here they are:

Mount & Blade: Warband Review

LA Noire Review

Also, I saw the new Earth Defense Force game released on Steam, I've never played an EDF game, but they look like my kind of game! I'm gonna get it sometime.