Portal 2 review

The past few weeks, a friend of mine was going mental over a new game that was meant to be coming out. This was Portal 2. I never heard of Portal before he became excited by it. It wasn't just him. A large amount of gamer friends on Facebook were all going mental over it. So I decided to download the first one. Portal 1 was great and I was really enjoying my play through of it... that was until I got to level 18 and found out that was the second last level. For a game I spent about an hour and a half on, it'd seem maddening that anyone would want to pay more than €20 on it. I left the Portal fanbase and deleted 1 from my Laptop. I didn't want 2 gigs of space being taken up by it. Then came the Portal 2 release date. More Portal spam for me then. Everyone was going game of the year, game of the year. I didn't get how a game could have improved so much. IGN was giving it high scores as was the community. Then after an hour of being bombarded with a friend telling me to play it, I downloaded it. This is my verdict...

Portal is about a woman named "Chelle", who has to participate in scientific testing in the "Arperture" science labs using portal technology. The technology in question is a gun, which allows you to fire portals to create new pathways for yourself and or objects. You must traverse through various test chambers with the sometimes questionable help of Wheatley, an Enclave Eye bot like robot ball. However all dosen't go to plan as Glados, the villain controlling Arperture in the first game is resurrected making escape from the facility by Chelle and Wheatley much more difficult. There isn't too much of an "Epic" story, It's no Red Dead, Final Fantasy or Bioshock but it is well written. There are a few twists but that isn't where it's quality comes from. The script is a comedy based one with very good jokes thrown in, even the blue screen of death makes an appearance at one point. I suppose this came down to having Stephen Merchant (Wheatley, also known for the Office (English Version)) play a part in it as he is a writer himself. J.K Simmons is also in it who is known better as the editor of the Daily Bugle in the Spiderman movies, J. Jonah Jameson.

The music is really well done. It's a unusual twist as to what soundtracks usually are. It's filled with Techno music. Not such a high pitched loola who's idea of music is chipmunks singing. It's techno in term of high tech computer noises which really add to the futuristic feel of the game. The music also changes depending on the situation. It gets more fast paced if you're detected by enemy robots or hurtling through the sky which I really liked.

Now as I said, the idea of Portal is that it's a puzzle game where you use a portal gun to open path ways previously un-reachable. It was simple in the first game seeing as there was only you and the occasional cube that passed through it. However in this game there is force fields, magnetic fields, repulsion fields, Blue bouncy goo, Orange speedy glue and white portal amplification goo which only makes puzzle results more varied and the puzzles themselves more difficult. Earlier on I mentioned how I rejected Portal one for the insanely short length of it. Portal 2 has fixed that tremendously. The length has gone from 1 and a half hours to 9 times the length of the original. So that aspect of the game-play was fixed. There is one thing I didn't like about the game that I didn't like in Portal 1. The camera. The camera in this game is the worst i've seen in a long time. People are probably confused as to how a first person game can have a bad camera. When jumping through Portals I found it flew around uncontrollably and really just made it awkward to play.

So in conclusion, what did I like/ dislike about this game see below...

What I liked

1. Comedic Script
2. Ingenious yet simple idea
3. After 9 hours keeps you interested
4. Good story with plenty twists

What I disliked8

1. Camera is still messed up (IMO)

This game was truly great and has completly changed my opinion about the Portal franchise after the bad taste Portal 1 left in my mouth. The game lured me in with it's hilarious script that was lurking around in the portal 1 script. This is a great game and I will be buying it for my ps3 ASAP

This game is getting a

9/10

I don't want to jump on the band wagon but everyone is giving this game close to 8 to 9 out of 10 and I agree. It's B-R-illiant.

Read more »

Xbox 360 users, beware of the KILLER FNV PATCH!

There was a recent update to Fallout New Vegas to install the trophies/achievments for their next expansion pack, Honest Hearts. The new patch corrupts save data rendering it unusable. The ps3 version which I use doesn't appear to have fallen prey to it and there's no reports of the PC version either.

Read more »

Minecraft super PE project

Hey everyone, I recently did a review of Minecraft and in it I felt I never made anything BIG and anything that had a WOW factor. I don't count my Seatlle Space needle with Minecart coaster BIG because it just looks too simple so I decided to make something big. The PE in my PE project stands for Planet Express. I made a to scale model of the Planet Express space ship from Futurama with interior and thought i'd share it here on the blog.

High view of the ship itself, (Black notch on the top is enterance)

Wing at an early stage

Early side view W/ Foundations

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-TOAD

Read more »

Update on PSN + XBOX wants in too?

So recently (Monday to be exact) Sony came out and decided to announce, 5 days later mind you, that our details, including name, adress, phone numbers and credit card details could've been stolen. Now if they were to announce this when they found out (Friday) I would've been more understandable. However they decided to save their fucking hides and announce on MONDAY that these could be in the possession by

• A) A thief
• B) Internet Hackers
• C) A Paedophile
• D) A paedophillic internet thief...

I think it's fucking despicable that it's taken this long. However, I'm not going to move to the other side because of this, one because I use phoney details, two, I stress to anyone that says otherwise that online isn't everything. I'll update you all with info as I get it.

There was also rumours of Xbox Live being infiltrated as all banned account are unbanned, so the only one can brag about security in the last year is the Wii... but that's a wii so it just can't brag (I'm an owner of one myself but it's online is worse than pathetic.

Read more »

WII HD (Project Café) CONFIRMED & WILL BE PLAYABLE AT E3!

Well Nintendo have officially confirmed the existence of the successor to the best-selling Wii. It's to have specs greater than that of the ps3, A controller with a HD touch screen in the middle.

The codename ; "Project Café" in the last few hours has also been confirmed in a sense, https://www.warioworld.com/, a site for Nintendo developers has set up a page entitled Café. However a password is needed to access it so... just the name for the time being...

But it is confirmed to be playable at E3 so that's something to look forward to. Until next time.

Read more »

Assassins Creed Brotherhood review.

Assassins Creed, A series which has stormed the next gen series of consoles. Originally set in the middle east the character plays as Altair, then in Assassins Creed 2 you play as Ezio Auditoré De Firenze, a descendant of Altair. Ezios father and two brothers are killed by the templar order, an order bent on controlling all of humanity. Ezio exacts revenge by becoming what his ancestors were... an Assassin. During the events of Assassins creed 2, you take down the templar order bit by bit, until you "kill" their leader, the pope, Rodrigo Borgia. Now I say "Kill" because Ezio let's him, stupidly, go. This is the general plot of Assassins Creed 2. Assassins Creed Brotherhood takes place directly after. I got it on Tuesday and this is my review.

As I said already it takes place directly after the cliffhanger ending of Assassins Creed 2, showing us a quick glimpse of the ending of brotherhood not 2. I don't know why they tried to do this but they explain in game that there's a technical glitch and you must start straight after you finished. GREAT STORY TELLING THERE ( I am being VERY sarcastic there). Then after a quick re-fresher of the controls, we get to play as Desmond Miles, Ezios present day Descendant who to is an assassin trying to defeat the templars. Desmond must enter a machine called an Animus(A machine which lets you re-enact the memories stored in a persons DNA) in order to find out the location of the piece of Eden, an artifact which could save the world from the templar order.

This game is essentially a repeat of the story of Assassins Creed 2 story. Ezio gets an Assassin order to get an apple of Eden. It's even the same characters more or less, execept the brothels owner is replaced by Ezios sister. The only big change is the protagonist, Chezoré Borgia, Rodrigos son, so even there there isn't much of a change. As far as gameplay is concerned there is a bit of an improvement. Horse fighting is more accurate and has been expanded. Guns and throwing knives have been introduced to Sword combat. Heavy Weapons are now permanently equip-able. The Free Running I find is more accurate. A crossbow has been introduced for silent long range Assassinations. The ability to call in fellow Assassins was introduced, however I don't think they did as much as they could've done, classes as in Heavy, weapons, sword, Crossbow, gun Assassins or just Customizable groups would've made it better. A big no-no for me was the fact that there's only ONE city, Rome. The architecture is the same essentially for miles making the map pretty boring in Comparison to the variety in Assassins Creed 2. It's essentially a slightly enlarged Florence. Although there was some fun new minigames such as the Borgia towers, where you assassinate the captain of Borgias forces in an area then burn the tower to start to give people hope.

The music in this game too, was stolen from Assassins Creed 2. With very little music being able to stand out. The only one I can recall ,which was good, is the theme, which happened during the loading of some of the chapters. The graphics in this game have had little improvement as well. There's better graphics in terms of water but that's about it.

So let's see if you can guess if I enjoyed this...

What I liked;

1. Better combat with weapons
2. New minigames

What I disliked

1. Regurgitated Graphics
2. Regurgitated Music
3. Regurgitated Story
4. Regurgitated levels
5. Regurgitation making me regurgitate my dislikes
6. Flawed Notoriety system

To name but a few.

I was a big fan of Assassins Creed 2, I didn't like the First however. I expected a lot more from the series that made me want to get the platinum trophy (For Xbox and Computers, It's the equivalent of getting all the achievements) . This game really dissapointed me and it's getting a 5/10. That being said, I did enjoy playing but felt cheated out with the simaler story etc snf felt it was just an extended expansion pack.Hopefully Assassins Creed 3 will re-kindle my love for the series. Now i'm off to kill the team who came up with brotherhood, Hopefully they aren't doing number 3...

Read more »

Minecraft Review

Minecraft, It's the Facebook of Indie games in terms of it's wildfire spread of popularity and it's huge profit for it's creator "Notch". Since I first was on the internet, I've been an avid fan of the site: Funnyjunk .After a while I began to notice something. A lot of the jokes on this site included these sad looking cactai. I wasn't sure what they were apart from their name and where they from. These were obviously the creepers from Minecraft. So being the curious chap I am, I googled Minecraft. Found out that you needed to pay and with the classic outdated version not loading for me I gave up. A few months later, A friend of mine told me all about it. He explained it in great detail and urged me to look up a torrent for it and Play it, I did and I did and this is what I have to say about the past month I played for it.

At first, I was confused, It was an 8 bit game with no form of real tutorial and only found help, while it was VERY good help on the Minecraft wiki and Youtube. I soon found myself building a grotty little cave with a small light. Then darkness enveloped the land. My friend told me to beware what comes out at night and the videos confirmed it. Then I met the internet meme I had known for a good while. I had sealed up my cave completely apart from a small window to know when it's morning, turns out it saw me. There was quiet, a hisssss then boom. My small cave was annihilated. Turns out the depressed Cactai were suicide bombers... well they are depressed. Then came Zombies, Skeletons and Spiders OH MY! I died of course but I still enjoyed it. I soon became accustomed to the short safety hours of daylight and the dangers of caves. I built a shack on a lake originally, expanded it to a house and after hours of watching Frasier, turned that into a Seattle Space Needle reaching the top of the map, and yesterday after enjoying many a day on Minecraft spent 15 euro and turned my crappy Alpha Torrent into a legit Beta game.

A Minas Tirrith castle, Credit goes to unknown owner

What is Minecraft? Many people have different definitions for it. Mine is that it's MS paint + Lego + Basic Rpg Survival game = Minecraft. You mine blocks and craft 'em, Into official items, make art, interesting sculptures, whatever you want it's up to you. I've made flaming KISS logos, A heartagram (from the finnish band HIM), Space invaders and so on. That was my alpha account, which is quite basic in comparison to the beta game. I've made a large castle now, complete with kitchen, crafting room, lava moat, Seattle tower with a minecart riding up and down for easy transport instead of climbing a lot of stairs + Many more. Minecraft does have things to stop you from making your dream world. A shady bunch of characters called Mobs which deliver pixelated terror into even the most hardened adventurer. These range from skeletons to Zombies to Ghosts and of course the Creepers and more. However if Combat isn't to your taste (Or if you just want a cheeky head start) you have the option to remove them by changing the difficulty.

The graphics in this game are infamous for the MS paint like appearance but people are forgetting that this was originally one guy working on his own. Sure he probably has a team of people under his belt now along with about 5 million dollars but personally, I wouldn't like a World of Warcraft graphics scheme. I like the Graphics in this game, it's part of it's charm. Now I know that I complained about the graphics of Pokémon in my first Rest in Peace post but Minecraft is the first in a series and has been around for 2 years with many improvements. Pokemon has been around for about 15 years with VERY little BIG improvements ( I do not call 150 new pokemon an improvement, I call that milking)

The music in Minecraft is very pleasant, it's a piano score however it, like the graphics are lowered in quality. I've actually downloaded the soundtrack and have played it while relaxing, reading or even playing a lite game with little action such as Little Big Planet. It creates a pleasant effect and is fitting for the theme of creating. There's also eerie ambient sound effects, which only add to the tone of fear when nearing the enemy mobs hideouts.

Minecraft is open source allowing for many updates, not only from Notch but the players. I got a few skins to dress up my plain dreary character. I've gone from a Blue clad plain man to Ezio to Bear Grylls to an 8 Bit Link from Zelda. Even if you don't like the 8 Bit MS paint graphics there are plenty of fan made texture packs to up the graphics. There are also plenty of fan made servers to suit your taste.

So what did I like/ Dislike in Minecraft,

Like:

1. Ingenuity behind the game
2. The amazing variety when it comes to crafting
3. Open Source-ness
4. The fun behind simply mining rocks and crafting them
5. The cheap price for a great game

Dislike

1. Music although pleasant sometimes it doesn't play
2. Bugs
3. The infrequency of updates despite the huge profits notch has received

So my overall review?

Minecraft is an amazing game that is well worth the €15/$20. Even though it's in the beta stage it's very enjoyable and i'm looking forward to the 11/11/11 release date. I urge you to at least give it a try because I have a strong feeling you'll enjoy it

Now THAT'S a treehouse

Read more »

Sony confirms outside hackers disrupted PSN

Late Wednesday/ Early Thursday, PSN went down. This really annoyed me, even though I rarely do play games online thanks to my shitty internet but I wanted to try play a Co-Op game of Dead Rising 2 with a friend only to see an error. I dismissed this as a minor repair thing that Sony does every month or so for a few hours. Next day the same and the next. I thought something was wrong and my epic search across the Google main page instantly revealed what the gaming public strongly believed they had an idea. Anonymous. Now last month I made a post about Anonymous disrupting some PSN features. This was a bit minor to me as very little consoles went offline. However this time it's world wide. From America to Japan, from Australia to right here in Ireland, Ps3's remain without a network. This rumour that it could've been anonymous confused me as Geohot (guy who jailbroke the Ps3 and was being sued, initial reason for the original attack) and Sony settled. Now a lot of the internet and I myself believe, that this is the work of some splinter cell of Anonymous, still trying to prove themselves to be big men. As Herbert Daring Dashwood once said, Bad Form Ms. Chase, Bad form...

Read more »

DISCUSSION TIME!

Ok so a LOT of big blockbuster superhero movies are coming out this summer;

1. Thor
2. Captain America
3. Green Lantern
4. X-Men First Class

I was just wondering, which of these movies are YOU the reader looking forward to the most and why. Personally for me, I think that X-Men first class is the most exciting. Don't get me wrong, I'm eagerly awaiting Captain America and Thor (Never liked DC things so Green Lantern isn't a big deal for me) but I've been a huge fan of X-Men for years. It's one of the few series that I actually read the comics. Even though one of my Favourite actors (Kelsey Grammer) is being replaced when it comes to playing Beast I'm still looking forward to it and I can see this as possibly giving birth to the series again, seeing as the writers of Last Stand decided to be pricks and tried to kill the series off as they went down by killing off main characters/ removing their powers; Rogue, Xavier, Magneto come to mind.

Well anyway, what's the movie you're looking forward to most?

Read more »

And Of Course My Microphone Is Broken......

So something I was planning to do over the course of the Gears Of War 3 Beta was to give some commentary. Unfortunately my microphone decides to break just when I was about to get off the beta and actually do it. So sadly there is going to be a delay until I get my new microphone which shouldn't take long, I have recorded quite a lot of footage and have already picked the games I am going to talk about. Anyway truly sorry about this delay, if you want you can subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay ahead. I will be definitely posting it here anyway.

Read more »