| JP's profileJP InterwebifiedBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
February 13 Anna the sniper...I finally got Anna to give Left 4 Dead a go last night... her stats at the end of the first section... 45 kills, 35 headshots...
That's a low kill count but that kill/headshot ratio is impressive. She said it's because she didn't know how to look around so just strafed everything at head height but I reckon she's actually been practicing each day while I'm at work. Anyway I think she enjoyed it... which is good because it means we can have ourselves our first ever St. Valentines Day Zombie Massacre.... yeeehaaaw...
JP
February 02 Damn You Iron Maiden...I managed to polish off Rock Band's Solo Guitar Tour on Sunday night (on Hard). It wasn't actually that bad until the last venue and then it had some pretty punishing solos. I'm now trying to get my head around the drums on medium mode but I'm finding them fairly punishing. My hands are fine(ish) but I'm not sure on how to best use the kick pedal... my problem is the front of my calf keeps cramping. It's no big deal on songs that don't use it as much but on some of the more intense performances it's a pretty big problem. Any tips? I think I may be sitting too low. Pretty much done with Fallout 3 at the moment. Great game and I'm replaying it with my evil character - Dick the Destroyer. He's a mean, slightly crazy, pink bearded wierdo, with a thing for big guns, and small children. I'll probably go Back to Dead Space once I put Fallout 3 away. Nicholas needs to learn how to survive an alien infestation armed only with a plasma cutter... and I'm just the man to teach him. January 16 The Grass is Always GreenerSo my line on databases was always... yeah maybe Oracle is more performant and scalable but SQL Servers tools are more user friendly.
Now that I'm back using SQL Server 2000 I'm not so sure anymore.
Moving to a new company with a large SQL Server 2000 code base it's handy to be able to find your way around the database easily. One of the things Query Analyzer can't seem to do is detect dependencies on objects but this is all stored in the system tables and can be extracted easily like so...
In fact you can do all kinds of fun things in the system tables...
Of course this is old news if you're using SQL Server 2005 as there are sprocs provided to do all this stuff for you (only better). Harder, Faster, StrongerSo we were in Greece recently visiting Anna's parents for New Year. While we were there Anna managed to score some rather saucy adult films from a close relative who I've been warned I'm not allowed to name... or else.
Now I reckon that the one of the main secrets to the internets success is the vast amounts of porn. Because of the internet porn is everywhere... and I think most people at one point or another have sought it out. But I reckon porn is a pretty solitary passtime... I mean it has a pretty specific purpose right?
So I'm a bit unsure about the whole watching porn with the wife thing... it seems a little awkward.
I mean we watched Wanted the other day and occasionally commented on it during the film...
JP: 'Bullets can't do that you know... they go straight'
Anna: 'Really?'
JP: 'Yeah but they do spin in the air, it helps stabalise them... helps them go where you want them to go... they do it with rifling in the barrel, hence the word rifle.'
Anna: God JP you're so interesting... take me now...
I'm not sure I could have the same calibur of conversation while watching say... Butt Pirates of the Carribean... I'm not sure what would or wouldn't be appropriate to say...
JP: She looks as though she's really enjoying that... but I think it looks quite painful...
Anna: Yeah but I like her hair...
JP: Which hair? Anna: On her head... JP: Oh yeah that's nice... I dunno... anybody ever watch porn with their wife?... how did it turn out?...
JP
January 15 Maybeeee... you'll think of meeee...So I've been playing Fallout 3 recently.
Because it was released during the great games rush of winter '08 it faced heavy competition for my time from the likes of Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Mirrors Edge, Left 4 Dead, and Dead Space... and to be brutal all of those games are far more accessible than Fallout 3.
That isn't a bad thing... it just means I had to clear my plate a little bit before I really spent some time on it.
The premise is that you escape your sheltered vault (where survivors of the nuclear war have been sheltering for the last 200 years) and go looking for your dad to find out why he ran off in the first place. Once you leave the vault you're cast into the ruins of Washington DC where you can pretty much do what you want.
Fallout 3 feels huge... I mean it is huge, not as big as say Oblivion, but it's dense. The DC ruins has loads of places to visit and the attention to detail in most of them is excellent... you can visit some places and piece together a bit of a story of what happened there just by spending a bit of time looking at your surroundings.
The combat works really well too... and above all else it feels like a Fallout game.
All in all Fallout 3 is great.
I had my doubts about it at first... the whole game looks like somebody dropped a nuclear bomb on a city... which is kind of the point but it's depressing on the eyes. I was unsure about the combat system, and the character animations can be pretty terrible.
But overall it doesn't matter... you lose yourself in it and just stop noticing the little things.
I have two critisisms of the game really... and don't let them put you off.
Firstly, considering how many interior locations there are, it would have been great to have had more styles of interior. There are only about 4 or 5 'types' of interior and they all start to look a bit samey after a while.
Secondly, because there are so many locations and most have their own little back story... it would have been nice to have an incentive or some sort of unique reward to visit them all. There are some collectables in some of them but most often you fight your way through some bombed out house and come out with the same kind of stuff that you went in with. It's very rare that you come out with something really useful that you can't easily get elsewhere.
So is anybody else playing it... if so what do you think? Were you good, or did you run around the wasteland been a bit of a dick. I'm been pretty much a good guy at the moment but I think at some point I'm going to create a character called SuperTwat and wander the wastelands throwing hand grenades at people. I'm also going to kill Three Dawg he winds me up.
Peace out... January 14 Phew that was closeWhen I last talked to you (the internet) I was in a bit of a hurry to escape my frenzied wife who, through no fault of my own, had agro'd me through the floor. That was well over a year ago and since then I've had many emails asking if I made it and if so how?
Lets just say that I've talked women down from worse psychotic rages than the one Anna had that night, and co-incidentally some time later we had a baby boy... Nicholas. I know most people reading this will want to know exactly what happened that fateful day... and maybe even get some advice on how to deal with a their own murderous partners... but unfortunately what I have can't really be taught.
So anyway I'm alive and I'm back!...
Here is a quick three point summary of what I've been up to since I've been away.
As of today gamerscore is 41,541... I actually wore one of my thumbsticks down. February 06 Inane Babble... seriouslyIt's Tuesday night... the night that I'm routinely banished from downstairs to allow Anna to watch the adventures of fictional Crime Scene Investigators across the US. I heard that the real life crime fighters complain of the CSI effect... apparently it's the program of choice for would be criminals intent on escaping justice - teaches them exactly what not to do.
I'm up here Thursday night too... Anna watches Bones, another CSI style program...
... and she's just finished reading the new Hannibal the Cannibal book too.
Perhaps she's actually doing research!!
Maybe she's planning something?
Maybe I pushed her too far one day and she's after revenge... perhaps I joked once too often about spending all of our money on a high definition projector for the XBox 360... or made some off the cuff comment about how her shoes didn't match her handbag... or maybe she even caught me doing stuff to her while I thought she was asleep. I can hear her downstairs opening one of the kitchen drawers. We got a set of knives for our wedding. You know what they say "Beware of Greeks bearing wedding gifts". I'm done for...
The worst thing is I didn't get to finish Gears of War on Insane mode...
Relax everyone... this is almost certainly paranoia brought about by 2 litres of Tesco's Fiery Ginger Beer.
So I picked up Vanguard for the PC. Haven't really had a chance to play it yet because the only PC in the house that has any chance of running it is actually in the process of been upgraded.
The minimum specification for Vanguard appears to be some kind of theoretical super-computer, created by a lesser super-computer, created by Stephen Hawkings.
The little bit of the game I did manage to play looks pretty awesome though. It's too early to tell but if it's anything like the 'true successor' to Everquest that it claims to be then it's going to be good.
Anna managed to get me a cheap copy of Project Gotham Racing 3. I have a strange relationship with driving games. I wouldn't go out and buy one... but if one does manage to come into my possession then I tend to obsess over it for a long, long time. I still maintain that Gran Turismo 3 made me a far far better driver in real life... although many others disagree.
I'm not as bad as my friend Hing though... he got so messed up on GT3 that he actually thought his house was a car. He'd offer to drive you places then sit on the sofa with his Dual Shock controller, looking out the window, and making engine noises.
Wait I heard something...
No... I forgot about the chainsaw... oh my god... SHE'S CUTTING THROUGH THE DOOR... sorry Marcus... you'll have to go it alone against the Locust Hordes... I ... love... you...
January 25 No... more... TunaSo I've been on this tuna and cottage cheese diet in order to get rid of the little bit of excess weight I've put on since university. I'm more focused about it than I have been in a long time... but my wee is starting to smell pretty bad.
I think it's all going to have to end with an almost primal test of my mettle... hiking across a glacier, climbing a mountain, perhaps even fighting a bear dressed in chainmail - (imagine that... a bear... IN CHAINMAIL!... how on earth would you go about taking down such a well armoured beast).
I'm open to suggestions.
So I just finished playing the Crackdown demo on the XBox 360. It borrows heavily from Ultimate Spiderman but that's okay because that was a pretty awesome game too. The cell shading is nice, I'm glad to see more people using the whole non-photorealistic thing. It also has the GTA inspired radio tuner.
The good thing is that the game actually makes you feel like the ultra powerful hero... you can jump higher, hit harder, and generally be a lot more badass than your average guy... in contrast to Oblivion where (although it's awesome) you play the entire game feeling rather average.
Too bad that the demo is too short and the full game is not out until late February.
Started looking at XNA Game Studio Express. Looks fairly powerful and incredibly easy to use. I'll post more on this as I learn more - but the ability to write games for both the PC and the XBox 360 is pretty sweet... if you're into that kind of thing then it's worth a quick download.
Finally... Anna and I were going to buy a kitten last weekend... but it turns out cats really don't get much action over winter and the best time for kittens is summer. As soon as we get one of those fuffy fiends I'll post a picture (if my scanner is working).
The Simpsons have really screwed me up... the rescue center had an area called 'The Arena' and all I could think of was a monkey with a knife squaring off against an elephant.
Later December 14 Too many pickled onions make JP a smelly boy...I was hungry and they were all that we had. 380 grams turns out to be quite a lot. I guess Anna is sleeping in the spare room tonight.
So it's the Christmas party for my work tomorrow night. I'm a little apprehensive. I've been known to do some fairly silly things whilst under the influence of alchohol. The job is still relatively new so I'd prefer not to be fired for trying to squeeze bits of people that I shouldn't be touching, or becoming embroiled in any blood feuds.
It's a free bar and a rowdy crowd though. My best bet is to accept drinks wherever possible then pour them in a plant pot while no-one is looking. Have you ever seen a drunk plant? Me neither.
I'm currently on an Oracle 10g course. Knowing this stuff is important for my job and I'm actually learning a lot. Coming from a SQL Server background Oracle still puzzles me. Some of the 'object' stuff just doesn't seem to belong in any right thinking relational database. Oracle have created a hybrid object/relational monster full of various things that really should be just tables.
I'm fairly confident the Oracle guys knew what they were doing... perhaps I just don't share their vision. Perhaps I'm too pre-occupied with other things.
It's the Christmas meal season.
Last Saturday was spent at Hing's house. Present were a small hard-core elite of university friends and their growing number of other halves and dependents. Hing organises and cooks for us every year, it's always delicious, and it's always great to see everyone. This year Hing got married, I got married, and Wes and Kaye had a l'il baby boy.
It wasn't all bad news though because Wes also got a Wii, which he brought along.
My thoughts on the Wii are fairly conflicted. I try to be open minded but I really don't think Nintendo has ever really appealed to me as a serious gaming platform... For every great title that they release there are a multitude of games that I am simply not interested in. This isn't to say those titles aren't great, they're just not my thing... a bit like ladyboys.
Wii's are great fun, maybe so are ladyboys, they just both seem a little bit gay.
Although... if you are the type of person that rushes to pull out party games like Twister whenever your friends come around then the Wii may be just right for you. Playing Wii sports is a lot of fun with the right group of people. I'd still go for a XBox 360 any given day of the week.
November 22 Meet Marcus and his Whirly Blades of DoomMy babblings at the moment are more enthusiastic than normal. I'm very excitable. Those people who are unfortunate enough to be able to hear me know why; some have taken drastic action and moved to Scotland until I've calmed down (although Anna insists it's only for a few days for work meetings).
Gears of War rocks.
Epic have came up with something that is going to cause everyone currently developing in this genre to wonder if their game is obsolete before it's even released. It doesn't rock in a traditional shooter way, it goes beyond that.
If you've ever played paintball you'll know that if you stand in the open you will get shot. So you run for cover... and so does everyone else. It becomes very hard to know where everyone is because everyone is hiding. Occasionally somebody might pop up and fire a few shots, maybe to keep some poor suckers head down while his mate goes around the side to where said suckers cover isn't so good. You'll occasionally hear the bursting of paint pellets and subsequent howls of pain
You're situational awareness is reduced because your movement is restricted. Your focus is generally straight forward, beyond your cover to some guy hiding next to a tree stump. You'll occasionally exchange fire but it's a stalemate. The only way for you to succeed is to work with others, draw that guys attention to someone else while you go around the side and sneak up on him. Then while he's firing at your mate fifty feet away you can lay into him with your chainsaw bayonet and shower the tree canopy with his blood.
The multiplayer Gears of War is EXACTLY like that.
It also has amazing graphics and excellent sound.
My only compaints really are that the multiplayer lobby for ranked matches is crap. It takes ages to connect to a game, and if something goes wrong (like the game you want to join is now full because it took so long finding it) it does the whole search again. I'm not kidding when I say that you can spend upwards of 15 minutes searching for a game to join... and it's not because there is a shortage of games. They really need to fix it.
Gamerscore is now 4675. Oblivion is very slow going. November 17 Evil Alien Robo-Midgets Ate My KeyboardSo I'm back. We did other stuff that I may talk about once Anna declassifies them in a few years time. Onto bigger and better things. I picked up the new D album the other day. They're rocking as hard, if not harder, than ever. Although it's short, it's pretty much what I'd describe as a masterclass in rock opera. It's funny to boot. They've missed out most of the little sketches betwen the songs, which I think is probably a good move.. the first album rocked pretty hard but the sketches got in the way after a while. I've been playing Oblivion a lot trying to pick up some achievements but it's slow going for two reasons. Firstly I seem to spend all my time burgling the poor computer controlled townsfolks houses... I don't know why. Secondly the demons in Oblivion don't live by the demons code... rock-off challenges just don't seem to work on them. I will get through it eventually though. A funny story... The other night I was playing Chrome Hounds which has no story as such, but I'm itching to try the multiplayer. Anna slept through it. The next morning she complained that she hadn't slept well. In the early hours she'd woke up in a daze thinking their was a giant robot walking down the street outside...
September 26 Chow SafariSo on Friday I jet off to Las Vegas for three whole weeks for my honeymoon. Now I've been to Vegas before and it rocked, but now that I'm married my experience may be tainted by commitment and lack of carefreefullness... The only way I know to counter this is by drinking vast amounts of Pina Colada - vast like the ocean. After all when in hot places you are encouraged to stay hydrated.
I may have mentioned this before but we're going to rent a car and go exploring.
I have a little list of things to do while I'm in the Nevada/California area:
Now I may do none, or all, or some of these things... it is possible I'll exceed my own expectations and eat something really exotic like a Giraffe, Parrot, or baby Polar Bear. I really don't know and that's what's fun, we have no set plan. It's so exciting. If I make it back I'll do a write up of how it was. Eagles of Death Metal are currently massaging my eardrums to orgasm... it took a while to sink in just how good they are but... wow. I finally found out how to drag stuff in Oblivion on the XBox360 so yesterday I spent hours killing bandits and moving their corpses around into erotic positions... that's pretty high calibur entertainment right there.
September 19 Unholy MatrimonyI was going to attempt to convince people that I escaped my wedding in Greece via a tiny peddle boat, fled to Turkey, then hitched back to the UK... but I'm a really, really bad liar.
So I'm now a married man, which doesn't really change too much, but I do have to get used to calling Anna my wife rather than my girlfriend.
I'm usually fairly flippant about most things but I have nothing to really say about the actually wedding ceremony/reception other than it was a really really great, once in a life-time experience, that I'll never forget.
Greece itself was hot, as usual... the sweaty kind of heat that makes it impossible to stay dry unless you're stood next to a fan. They reckon in about 50 years time some of Greece will have a similar climate to Egypt... surely only those little dancing lizards find that kind of temperature fun... to everything else it's just too damn hot.
Of course there were no zombies in Greece... for that I had to wait until I got home.
I picked up Dead Rising on Thursday. In short it rocks. It's one of these games that if I don't control myself when I talk about it I start babbling... ...babbling like a demented zombie... on speed...
Technically, the entire game is hugely impressive. Character models and textures are probably the best I've seen, the number high detail characters on screen is massive, the attention to detail is amazing, and the voice acting is top notch. The only slight drawback is the survivors AI... despite your best efforts they seem determined to be eaten alive.
But all of that is peripheral... the game is really about killing lots and lots of zombies with a variety of deadly weapons.
Want to see what happens when you throw a circular saw blade at a zombies head?... what about if you run into a crowd of zombies pushing a lawnmower?... or can a zombie survive a blow to the skull from a potted plant? Dead Rising allows you to answer all these questions and many more.
I know for a fact that I'll never look at shower fittings in the same way ever again.
I also picked up Tomb Raider: Legend and FarCry Instincts Predator (buy 1 get 1 free - thanks Virgin). I don't have much to say about FarCry, I've only played it very briefly.
I played and completed Tomb Raider in about 5 hours. The game looked great, was very fluent, with a passable story, and good voice acting. Graphically, what struck me was textures on Lara were excellent. When she got out of water her skin looked wet... when there was an explosion her skin looked dirty with soot and dust. Also the binoculars had a really auto-focus effect that didn't impress Anna but had me fairly giddy (I'm such a nerd). I love the whole acrobatics thing.... jumping from ledge to ledge, etc... but, annoyingly, some of the toughest bits were brought about by awkward camera angles and controls, rather than actually devious game design. Some of the physics based puzzles were good but they were few and far between... also tigers seem to live in the most unlikely of places and required an inordanate amount of bullets to kill.
I am been a bit negative... most of the game was really entertaining. Croft Manor really suprised me. As innocent looking as it was at first glance it was actually full of hidden puzzles.
I think overall it was far too short, and the Prince of Persia games are better in this genre. I certainly wouldn't pay £50 for it... in fact if you want to play it I'd recommend renting it rather than buying it because you can easily finish it in a couple of days.
Oh yeah... gamerscore is now over 2800. Thanks Lara, you hussy, you put out so easily... September 05 Beer will make it better...Well the next time I write an entry in here I'll be married... sh*t.
A word of warning to those people thinking about getting engaged, or in the early stages of engagement: Your big day doesn't sneak up on you... it sprints... like an angry, hungry, cheetah - intent on mugging you, and using your hard earned money to buy bling and trifles.
I wish I could rap... that would make for great hip-hop.
I ship out to Greece early tomorrow morning... accompanied by what I can only describe as a gaggle of relatives and friends. As far as I'm aware there are going to be a huge amount of familiar faces on the plane. It was fairly humbling to see how many people were willing to come to Greece for the wedding. I really didn't expect many people from the UK and it was a great gesture on their part.
I don't think I'll be able to describe my next week as a holiday. I'm told I'm going to be pretty gorram busy. I can read between the lines and have decided this is an attempt to keep my mind occupied and stop me running off in fear... or doing some recreational cliff-diving (oh yeah!!)...
Despite what I say, I'm looking forward to it... I'll probably give a more accurate description of things if/when I get back. September 04 Vampire Hookers vs Ninja Gangstas - DiscussSeveral years ago I went to Las Vegas with my friend Hing. It was a blast... we stole a car and visited Los Angeles and San Fransisco. I remember it vividly... there was a big gang war, we pimped some hoes, and there was this corrupt policemen that wouldn't leave us alone. I spent a lot of time trying to drink cocktails but Hing was always bugging me to go on these huge orgies of violence and destruction...
...
... wait that was Grand Theft Auto.... but our visit was pretty cool too.
Anyway, I digress. Because I convey stories of the trip with such excitement Anna has been wanting to go for a while. So, for our honeymoon, we're spending three weeks in sunny Las Vegas... with a view to hire a car and wizz around a bit.
The battle plan as it currently stands is...
The whole trip should be awesome. I'm looking forward to going to the National Park, I love the outdoors. Hopefully I'll get to eat a Grizzly Bear Burger, Snake Steaks, or at least something I can add to my list of unusual foods I et... Almost perfect gaming conditions eclipsed any other real life stuff I had to do over the weekend.
Despite my claim that my gamerscore would be over 2000 by Monday this didn't actually look like it was going to happen. I spent a good few hours playing Full Auto on XBox live on Saturday with my friend James. Although really good fun this wasn't racking up the points the way I hoped.
A good deal of Sunday was spent doing some of the single player races... It seems that as you progress the races get tougher but there are less races in a series, so with mad skillz you can make some rapid progress through the game... my skillz are apparently pretty mad.
Tomorrow is my last day of freedom before heading to Greece and facing the savage, Klingon like, Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony. I'm not sure what actually goes on but I suspect it involves flaying. September 01 Yellow Wizard - Your lifeforce is running out.Finally completed the Dungeon Master achievement on Gauntlet last night... my 360 almost gave an audible sigh of relief when I switched it off. That was one big ass, tedious achievement - worth 60 gamer points as a reward for enduring long hours of shooting food, and killing those freaky sorcerers with jazz hands. Onto bigger and better things now.
I've been a bit worried about the XBox recently, to the point where I'm still debating whether or not to send it back under warranty. When I first got an XBox 360 my first game King Kong would crash the console without fail. Microsoft originally claimed that this was because of the giant monkey jumping around inside the casing, but eventually they agreed to send me a new console. However now, occasionally, the machine freezes on boot up. This is intermittent and easily solved by switching the machine off, and then back on. There seems to be no other adverse effects.
My main worry was due to the fact that the demo of Full Auto froze consistently. When I purchased the full game it was partly to see whether the XBox would still die when I played it. In maybe 20 hours of play time it has frozen 3 times, which isn't really all that bad... all other games work fine.
I'll make a decision after I get back from Greece. Also if anybody else is experiencing boot up problems I recommend this thread.
Finally sat down and did a little programming last night, I don't particularly have anything to share at this point but abstract factories and the liberal use of naughty words were involved.
I looked at some modelling tools so that I could visualise my code a little better. I'm very tempted to buy Visual Paradigm for all my UML needs, I'm running the trial version now. I also really like Poseidon but the fact that it's written in Java really annoys me...
Expect my gamerscore to bust through the 2000 barrier this weekend. I aim to misbehave.
August 31 Fear and Loathing in PeterboroughWhoever thought up the achievements in the XBox Arcade version of Gauntlet needs some vigilante justice. Do they even know how long it takes to get to level 100 in that game... do they know how hard it is to sleep after 4 hours of solid dungeon crawling... obviously they do - the sadistic gits...
Managed to squeeze in some Full Auto on XBox Live last night. Apart from missing the unwreck feature the game is pretty much unchanged. The few times I managed to avoid crashing at full speed into a wall I did really well, winning 1 race by miles and coming 2nd and 3rd most other times.
So as you can tell... now that Anna is away I've reverted to a feral gaming state. Expect me by the weekend to be an unshaven nervous wreck with crazy bloodshot eyes, and an uncontrollable addiction to rocket fuel coffee. I'll probably go through intermittent fits of laughing manically, then sobbing pathetically before lapsing into short periods of uneasy sleep, haunted by Gauntlet related nightmares.
By the time Monday finally rolls around I'll be a shell of a man, drained, malnourished, and stinking of stale sweat. The house may well be trashed, knee deep in water, on fire, or smoked out by some terrible kitchen disaster.
But my gamerscore will be over 2000 - so that's okay. August 30 My Big Phat Greek SpeechDid I mention I'm getting married... ? Now Anna, my bride to be, is Greek, we're getting married in Greece, and a huge number of people at the wedding will be (you guessed it) greek... the Greek thing is important.
Anyway... in one those moments when I really should have been thinking carefully about the consequenses of what I was saying I declared that not only would I do a speech at the reception in English, but I would also do a speech in Greek - and that they'd both be fantastic.
This was back in spring. That gave me plenty of time to apply myself, learn Greek, and come up with some rousing words. It's now the end of August, the wedding is on the 9th September... I don't know much Greek and I still haven't written a speech. How organised am I?
I have been thinking about the speeches fairly seriously over the last few days and did actually start putting it down on my phone this morning... and it's sounds pretty good. It'll be short, funny, and it'll hopefully heap praise on some of the people that have really helped us actually make the wedding day happen. I still need to do the greek bit, get it translated, and then practice it a lot... but there is still time so fingers crossed.
Anna is heading to Greece with her bridesmaid Kaye today. They're like the pathfinding force of our wedding party. She'll secure the LZ and kill any hostiles before the main invasion force arrives. This means I have the run of the house until I leave for Greece next week... expect my gamerscore to improve significantly.
Speaking of which... Full Auto continues to rock hard. Completed the Hunter series and most of the Time Trials. I swear racing games make you a better driver in real life... made it to work in 50 minutes this morning. August 29 Viva La Bank HolidayThe beer festival rolled drunkingly into town last week. As a kind of last minute substitute stag do me and some close friends went down and had a few drinks. Although there were over 200 different types of beers, ciders, perrys, and wines on display I was sensible and managed to stay pretty much sober... although this was mainly due to having to get up at 6.30AM the next morning for work than any restraint on my part. I did manage to stay away from the now infamous Bonce Bouncer this year...
Topped the night off with a few games of DeathRow which Wes brought around for the XBox. It's an old game and the graphics are dated but if you imagine Speedball/Rollerball but with a frizby then you've pretty much got it.
The game involves getting a member of your team to throw your frizby through a hoop in the opponents half. As simple as that sounds neither of us had ever played it before, and to be honest scoring goals is for losers... as soon as we found the punch and kick buttons we let the AI teamates get on with the goal scoring while we went about decimating each others teams... it turned out to be quite a fun game.
Spent a lot of the weekend playing Full Auto on the 360. I either love or hate racing games... and Full Auto really does it for me. The tracks are original, the racing is fast and furious, and the fact that your cars have giant guns mounted on the bonnet just tops it off. One word of warning though, the game does demand to be played with the volume turned right up which can cause problems with housemates/other halves/neighbours... however if you explain the situation then I'm sure they'd understand.
I went shopping on Saturday... I wonder if it's normal to find yourself daydreaming about zombies whenever you're in a shopping centre. August 24 Welcome to my space...So I've been meaning to do a blog for a long time now. Mostly because I want to see what the fuss is about, and I guess there is also some attraction to having somewhere on the Interweb to write stuff about ME.
So what is this space going to be about - apart from me... I think we'll just have to see what I find to talk about. Topics will probably fall under the following categories... Me, computers games, how I plan to rule the world, computer programming, and miscellaneous ranting and raving.
However that will all have to wait till later, because I'm currently working...
|
|
|
