Super Meat Boy

Another post, another game.

Super Meat Boy is a single player action puzzle game where you're a little piece of meat and you have to get from point A to point B whilst maneuvering yourself around various deathtraps. The game itself is pretty simple, you got sprint jump and move, that's it. The hard part is nailing jumps, timing your run and dodging anything and everything that looks even slightly dangerous.

From what I've played so far the game's pretty decent. Sure, you can get stuck on a level for what may seem like an eternity but that's all part of the fun in my opinion. Getting a little bit further every attempt until you finally get the whole thing right is rewarding enough to make the game still enjoyable without being a pushover.

The storyline and cut scenes are pretty comical, to see a little cube of meat being all baller and trying to save his bandaged girlfriend from what appears to be a circus clown/illusionist had me laughing the first couple of times.

I don't think I'll be starting any new games in the near future so I might actually finish the story mode of something!!

Proper reviews, maybe, just maybe.

I figured that if i ever actually fully complete a game (currently playing about 5 different games all at the same time, yes, I'm that good) I might give it a proper once over. It'll probably be older and non-mainstream games that I'll review as there's plenty of other sources for reviews for the big games and doing something that's already been done 10 gajillion times doesn't really float my boat.

So stay tuned, and maybe, just maybe, a decent game review may appear here.

Gran Turismo 4

Gran Turismo 4: The Real Driving Simulator.

How true that ended up being.....

My roomate has an ancient (yes, anything 4+ years old is ancient) PS2 so I decided to get it out and play a little bit of GT4. I had played my fair share of racing games in the past including Burnout 3 and 4, Need for Speed Undergrounds and Most Wanted some other random unknown titles. Playing those games had gotten me into a certain style of racing that just doesn't translate across to GT4. In those games it was all about nothing but accelerator tap the brake to slide into and around corners whilst going from 0 to 250+ in 2 seconds.

First I had to get my B-grade license and what I thought would be some easy tutorial telling me what the accelerator etc. was turned out to be quite an ordeal. Turns out in GT4 the brake actually gets a fair bit of work for a change and the line you take into corners and the speed at which you take them can make massive differences to an overall race. After failing the first corner challenge utmost times by just throwing the car into the corner and expecting it to bend to my will I decided to take a somewhat more a conservative approach. And voila, picking the right line and speed into the corner almost acts like a slingshot out of it.

I was impressed overall by the realism of the game. Sure you can cut corners here and there and going over gravel etc doesn't seem to have any adverse effects so far but maybe GT has found the balance between being to realistic and not enjoyable and having enough realism to get the satisfaction of nailing a race/corner/passing maneuver.

Overall I would say the game takes a bit of getting used to but when you start getting the hang of it, its really quite rewarding.

Going back to RIFT

After saying to myself I'd never go back to RIFT I decided to give it one more chance to make a good impression on me. I wasn't going in with high hopes though.

 I load my character screen up, select my level 50 Cleric, enter a pvp warfront, get smashed repeatedly. I play on the defiant side and although on my server (Spitescar US) defiant have been getting better, we were still losing 3 out of 4 games. To make matters worse, healing was still boring as fuck, dps'ing was like using a glass cannon and the game I was suddenly being reminded of how much this game annoyed me.

An hour later and I was already at the end of my patience. I'd given RIFT another chance and it had disappointed me. Well at least I wont be paying subscription anymore :D

Dead Space 2

So, after finishing (kinda but not really) Shogun 2 I decided to play Dead Space 2. I cant say I'm the biggest man when it comes to jump scare games and dead space 2 is no exception. For anyone who hasn't heard of it or played it's basically just an FPS set amongst some kind of mutant human infection. But I haven't payed much attention to the storyline so far.

So chapter (level) 1 starts off with a cut scene just setting things up. I all like, chill bro, its not going to be that bad. Next thing some black dudes rescuing me when BAM. He goes down like a sack of shit due to the alien arm spike tentacle thing sticking out his chest. Next thing i know I'm being told to run for my life while all shit breaks loose behind me with screams and growls and mutant assholes everywhere i look. I make it to some door only to have one of them grab me. The games all like press "e" but I'm to busy shitting my own pants so it rips my head off and I'm back to the start. Second time through was a little easier since I was expecting it but nonetheless, more shitting of the pants. I got the alien this time with some frantic pressing of "e". One fraction of the game down. Pants full of shit. So much more to go. That pretty much sets the scene for the majority of chapter one with jump scares left right and center.


I eventually reach what appears to be some boss and this guy is ugly as fuck. Big ol' tentacle hanging down from beneath him and arms as big as houses. But with some clever stasis play I get him down. So he's dead on the ground and  walk over to him when BAMMMMMMMMMMMMM HOLY FUCK his arm lashes out at me nearly blowing my IRL heart out of my chest.

After that I pretty much said fuck this shit and bailed.

Shogun 2 - Total War

Here comes the first post, better introduce myself. I'm 19 years old and currently attending university at Monash University Melbourne, Australia and considering I rarely go to class, this leaves a fair bit of free time. As to not fall victim of chronic boredom my computer comes in and saves the day. What cant it do?!?!

I like to consider myself an avid gamer, probably excessively at times. Over the past few years its pretty much just been MMORPG's. I played World of Warcraft for three years but recently quit as i'd never really tried an MMORPG outside of WoW, no Aion, no Warhammer, no Age of Conan, but when I saw the hype behind RIFT I thought I'd give it a try. After a month of playing I can honestly say it didn't live up to the hype. Sure, its a fresh change from WoW, but it wasn't really anything special. Add to this the fact that it would crash constantly unless I ran it on low rendering (with a Radeon HD 6970) for no apparent reason and pretty soon I was sick of it. This was about a week ago so I got myself Shogun 2 - Total War. I'd played some other Total War a while back and whilst my roommate loves a good turn based strat game, I cant say I was going in with high expectations.

For anyone who's played any of the Total War games, my start was pretty terrible. Somewhere around 6-8 turns I had a legion of unhappy citizens banging on my front door. Apparently you need to keep the hordes of people amongst your city happy. After they wiped the floor with me I ragequit and bailed simultaneously which was pretty sweet. So the next day I got my roommate to go over the basics with me. After some simple explanations I was ready to go.

I began my path of destruction, first one city, then two, make an alliance here, stab a friend in the back there, offer the 6 year old daughter of my bets general as a hostage here, watch me dominate their faction 2 years later there. You get the picture. I was an unstoppable force of fury, no mercy, no fear, just throwing troops at the enemy with no thought to the families they'd leave behind. I'd encourage promiscuity within towns to just pump little baby troops out. No one child policy in any of my provinces, I was practically breeding human meat-shields, It was glorious! Everything was looking great, I was wiping the floor with anyone who stood in my way until....

THE SHOGUN, I hit some magical province number of 15 or something and suddenly I my notoriety was legendary. The shogun of Japan was having a big old sook thinking I was coming for him so he gets the entire of Japan to declare war on me. I was getting attacked from all directions now, from the sea, from every orifice into my provinces and at one stage I swear I saw a legion of paratroopers. But I jsut took all this in my stride. Just kept pushing, this shogun didn't know what he had gotten himself into. I took a few more provinces and suddenly I was 24/25 provinces needed. Now all I needed to do was control the shogun's seat of Kyoto. I pushed my army deep into his territory, took the capital and now all I needed to was hold it for one year or four turns.

First turn 3 different armies came, but i repelled them all, I turned the day into night with as arrows filled the sky, my rivers turn blood red with the spilled blood of the enemy generals, again, no mercy, no fear. So that was one out of four down. Second turn was surprisingly easy. Maybe every one had heard of my awesomeness and had just backed down due to the fear I instilled in them. But then came turn three.

With my army already depleted and baby troops not quite ready for battle, i was feeling vulnerable. And this is when they struck. A 5 star general cam first with 2500 troops, with a reinforcing army of 600. I barely held this off with my all my archers going down leaving only a handful of troops left. Then came what I thought would be the end of me, It wasn't a large force, but it was enough to have me worried with the few troops I had left. They had their army split into 2 parts so I thought i'd just try and force the army without a general present to bail and then try and deal with the general himself. The first part worked but then came part 2. Troops were well inside my city walls now. I had to bring all my wounded tired and demoralized troops around to deal with them. They cute through my first line of Samuria's blood spilling all over my screen, so if it in game and some IRL as I bit down on my lip hard in concentration. I lost one group of troops and then another, I was attempting to focus on the general in the hope all other troops would bail when they saw their leader fall. It wasn't looking good. I had the generals cohort down low and then with my own generals charge, I brought him down. I held my breath in the hope that rest of the army would turn and run.

SUCCESS. I had held off this devastating force. For turn four I had my reinforcing legion arrive and i finally felt safe for the first time in Kyoto. I clicked end turn turn and noone attacked. I WAS SHOGUN. I HAD CONQUERED JAPAN. THEY ALL NOW BOWED TO ME AND ME ONLY. Cutscene ensued, victory screen flashed up and the time and effort felt all worth it. Shogun 2 - Total War, you have been conquered.