Happy Halloween!

In a complete deviation from last years top five scariest games, this year I present to you a.... general blog about Halloween! Still, it's going to be all about Halloween in general instead of just scary stuff.

Team Fortress 2 received it's first seasonal update on Thursday! For this weekend only, players can access a brand new Halloween map (which includes exploding pumpkins and a ghost), get two new hats and unlock five special achievements! Personally I love it. It's probably only of the first games that Isn't an MMO that I've seen receive special seasonal content. Not only that, but it's packed full of the attention to detail that Valve are so famous for. When a player taunts, he does the thriller. When you die, you drop a bag of candy. When you see the ghost you run in fear, unable to shoot. All the health pickups are bags of sweets or chocolate bars. There's skulls and pumpkins and little ghosts hanging everywhere. It's just... Well. It once again proves that TF2 is a labour of love and just how dedicated Valve are to the fans. All I can say? Please PLEASE let there be a Christmas update!


Last Halloween, I can't say I relished in the enjoyment of playing any horror games. In fact, most of my Halloween night was spent playing the Mirrors Edge demo and Defcon (which I suppose is creepy, considering I put it as number five on my scariest games ever!) while eating cheap chocolate and ignoring the door...

This year however It's different for tonight I have a plan. I'm going to submerse myself into the quite frankly terrifying Dead Space, before moving on to the rather grisly Left 4 Dead, and after a quick run through on Doom 2 I'm going to brave.... Tycoon City New York! Oh lord I hear you cry! Surely not! The materialistic values of modern day American society which subsequently burn the American dream to an unidentifiable crippling shard are so present in it's bleak and decaying world that surely it won't be long before you either break down on the floor weeping in fear or simply kill yourself to escape the nightmare?

My reply? No. And that Joke was too nerdy to be funny.


Happy Halloween guys!

Feeling Rather RETRO

I found a load of old DOS games today, and after a bit of a fiddle (Damn you Vista...) I finally got them to run!

So for the past few hours I've been playing classic games such as DOOM 2, Theme Hospital, Sim City 2000 and good old Warcraft 2! It's been brilliant. I get to open them in DOS, play them as they were meant to be played. Everythings there, the incredible gameplay, the 90's graphics, the catchy tunes and the god awful frustration trying to get them work.

Truly a blast from the past :')

Game Plan

I've been reading a book recently called "Game Plan: Great Designs that Changed the Face of Computer Gaming". It's all about ten games that completely changed modern gaming. It's dead interesting despite the fact that I don't entirely agree with the games listed (If you're interested the games are Populous, Tomb Raider, Super Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Street Fighter 2, Broken Sword 2, The Sims, Half Life and Everquest) but the most interesting thing about it is the interviews with the developers on the earlier titles (Mainly Populous, Super Mario 64 and Street Fighter 2).

The great thing about them is that the developers had no clue what on earth they were doing, and that most of the extraordinary things we see in videogames today were because of the mistakes made back then. Combos for instance, were created due to the animations in Street Fighter 2 not allowing the player fight back after receiving a hit. They weren't intentional at all, they were never meant to be there and that fascinates me.

Now if only I could make a revolutionary mistake....

Epic Mickey

I really, really like the look of this. The games developer himself has described as the bastard love child of Disney and Tim Burton... what's not to like? It's like Super Mario Sunshine meets Edgar Allen Poe. Looks incredible.

Thing is... it's a Wii game. If this was on PS3 / Xbox... it would be perfect.

Racing Games

So Gran Turismo 5 has been development for longer than I even care to remember, and after reading about it for a bit today I realised that I don't even have a single thing to say about it. I honestly don't care about complex, realistic racing games in the slightest. All this talk about millions of ways to custom tune your new pimp mobile in Forza 3 or the amazing new.... I dunno destruction mapping in Gran Turismo 5.... It just means nothing to me.

The only racing games I enjoy are ones that are so over the top they would make Lewis Hamilton fall to his knees and weep blood. I'm a sucker for the futuristic blur-fest Wipeout, the tonka toys equivalent of real life driving Trackmania and of course the classic Mario- Kart which I don't have a witty comment to put before it. These games are fast paced, exciting and very entertaining. These games are the adrenaline junkies happy place, where as Gran Turismo is to me, reminiscent of driving long distances with my parents... after my Game Boy has ran out of batteries.

A Few Things...

Just wanted to chat about a few things today, without mentioning that game I've been talking about for a while now (Happy Friz?)

First up, it's been sort of confirmed that Activision has been working on a remake of the quite fantastic N64 Goldeneye for the... erm... Wii Shop. OK, so it's on the wrong bleeding console but still there . It's still being remade. Although knowing Nintendo It's probably just the N64 version with more waggle waggle.


Secondly, how good does Borderlands look please? A loot driven, cell shaded, Fallout 3-Esq RPG with online co-op? Dunno about you but that sounds like a pretty damn good game. I'll defiantly be picking this up.

Oh and lastly, Modern Warfare 2 will be joining us in just over a fortnight. I'm kinda excited. Actually if anything I'm almost intimidated because I'm buying it on the Xbox, meaning I have to play with everyone I know from College who had COD 4..... It's gonna be tough!

The Prince!

I started playing the new (ish) Prince of Persia game again today. I got it just after Christmas last year and never really got that far on it (about twenty minutes in i think).

I'm enjoying it though, it's good fun. It's one of those games that's just nice to play. The gameplay, storyline and even the graphics are just simple and pretty. It's just a one of those FUN games, you know?

Anyway, the Prince is voiced by Nolan North, the same guy who voiced Nathan Drake in Uncharted, so if anything I can just pretend I'm playing the next installment of the Uncharted series.... *sighs*