The "Complete" List

Canis Canem Edit
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Prey
Crackdown
Tiger Woods PGA 07 (career completed)
Call of Duty 2 (regular)
Double Dragon
Resistance: Fall of Man
Loco Roco (All Stages Cleared)
Colin McRae DiRT (Career completed)
Daxter
Forza Motorsport 2 (Career & Arcade 100% complete)
Medal of Honour: Airbourne (Casual)
Halo 3
Bioshock
PGR4 (World No. 1 Career & All medals silver Arcade)
Half Life 2

I can't think why I ever stopped playing this now. To get so far through and not finish it was pretty criminal. It's an excellent adventure. Really enjoyed it. Next up: Episode 1.

The Valve people certainly now how to pack the value in.

Currently Playing: The Orange Box

I picked this up in Game the other day (Got £25 trade in for MoH:A which I was quite pleased with). I've been waiting for a while. I played through a lot of Half Life 2 on the original X-Box (released I believe at the end 0f 2005) but I got the feeling it wasn't really doing it justice. Then upgraded to a spanking new 360 and decided to wait for the 360 version to replay and finish the story. Now the Orange Box is with us and what a generous package it is.

I decided to get stuck into Half Life 2 itself. What surprised me was how much of the general stuff I remembered whilst actually remebering very little of the specifics. This wasn't a problem to begin with as the first part of the game is quite straight forward and scripted however once into the game proper a large of amount of exploration is sometimes required to advance.

Technically it's much better looking on 360 (as you'd probably imagine) with the water effects most noticeably improved along with certain sections being noticeably more packed with stuff..The section just before you get the hover craft has way more junk and stuff in it.

What hasn't improved is the loading. It's frequent. Rather long and causes teh entire game to pause. Which does rather spoil the immersion a little bit. The levels are huge and apparently the PC version was teh same but having played bioshock and Halo 3 recently I think more could of been done to harness the power of the 360. Either loading on the fly a la Halo 3 or less of it. Bioshocks levels are, if not quite as huge as HL2's pretty damn big.

Anyway so far so enjoyable but I seem to remember it get's better as it goes along.

The "Complete" List

Canis Canem Edit
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Prey
Crackdown
Tiger Woods PGA 07 (career completed)
Call of Duty 2 (regular)
Double Dragon
Resistance: Fall of Man
Loco Roco (All Stages Cleared)
Colin McRae DiRT (Career completed)
Daxter
Forza Motorsport 2 (Career & Arcade 100% complete)
Medal of Honour: Airbourne (Casual)
Halo 3
Bioshock
PGR4 (World No. 1 Career & All medals silver Arcade)

Normal Service Will Resume....

Shortly.. (Honest) it's just that Project Gotham Racing 4 is sucking up all my spare time like some kind of gaming Dyson.. It's insanely addictive. Like Dyson inventing a new better crack cocaine. With out a bag. Or something.

Anyway I've got ADSL installed at work now so that should leave at least 8 hours a day where I can't hold the 360's joypad and stare, slack jawed, at the Bravia while concentrating on piloting my Aston Martin DBR9 around the citys of the world.

More soon. Promise.

Great Expectations

The PGR4 excitement continues to grow. Downloaded the demo from X-Box Live this afternoon.

First things first it's a very generous demo. There doesn't seem to be any time constraint and there's an arcade challenge with 5 or 6 events giving you a good flavour of what's on offer and they can be attempted in a small selection of vehicles. As usual you can attempt them in five flavours of medal (tin, bronze, silver, gold or platinum) and there's an online leaderboard which will show either worldwide or friends based leaderboards. For the gamer on a tight budget you could easily spend an evening in it's company and not get bored.

Secondly it looks and sounds very good. Especially when the dynamic weather kicks in. Racing a Ferrari in the dry is tough work. When the rain starts pouring not only does it look amazing it becomes a whole new ball park. I couldn't decide what was scarier.. The occasional flash of lightening or the sound of the tyres aqua planeing across standing water.

The track design is as devious as it was back in the second game and once again getting a feel for the circuits and knowing what's coming up is as important as skill behind the wheel. The driving model is slightly different with the cars seeming to be a lot less tail happy which means when you power drift or induce hand brake over steer it feels well earned and needs a lot of skill to carry the Kudos earned out of the corner.

The risk/reward balance seems very good and it'll take a lot of effort, one feels, to start nailing perfect laps.

Overall I'm very very happy with how this is shaping up. Roll on Friday. I'm in Love.

What's on the Box(set) ?

Recently I've discovered the joys of the DVD boxset. Most can be picked up at a reasonable price if you shop around and it enables me to watch things that I've forgotten to watch or missed the first time around at my leisure.

I've loved every minute of 5 series of The Shield, 2 series of House and last but by no means least 4 series of The O.C.

Anyway in these posts I'll be updating you on what I've watched last.

On this occasion that's season two of 24.

I watched season one and whilst it was an enjoyable romp it didn't blow me away quite as I'd been expecting.

Season two is an improvement. The story line (concerning a plot to detonate a nuclear missle in down town LA) is more gripping and the 24 hours strung together with better pacing. It doesn't have a shock reveal in quite the same manner but each episode ends with something of a cliff hanger and whilst I find the 'real time' effect a bit of a gimick (each episode cuts between several characters much like a normal show) it's gripping TV. Jack develops as a lead and though my main complaint would be the shoe horning in of a story line for Kim (Jacks daughter) I did get emotional when he thought he was going to die and was saying goodbye to her.

Suffice to say I've ordered season three.

The "Complete" List

Canis Canem Edit
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Prey
Crackdown
Tiger Woods PGA 07 (career completed)
Call of Duty 2 (regular)
Double Dragon
Resistance: Fall of Man
Loco Roco (All Stages Cleared)
Colin McRae DiRT (Career completed)
Daxter
Forza Motorsport 2 (Career & Arcade 100% complete)
Medal of Honour: Airbourne (Casual)
Halo 3
Bioshock

So in back to back completions I've gone back to Bioshock and polished it off prior to the slew of games that will be coming my way in the next few months.

Two things to say. I feel compelled to write a full review of Bioshock very soon so I'll save all my comments on it now for that.

Secondly, whilst not reaching PH levels of completeness (a fair few games have fell by the way side for one reason or another this year) I've completely out done myself this year in completed titles.. Perhaps I'm gaining a little more patience with old age.

The "Complete" List

Canis Canem Edit
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Prey
Crackdown
Tiger Woods PGA 07 (career completed)
Call of Duty 2 (regular)
Double Dragon
Resistance: Fall of Man
Loco Roco (All Stages Cleared)
Colin McRae DiRT (Career completed)
Daxter
Forza Motorsport 2 (Career & Arcade 100% complete)
Medal of Honour: Airbourne (Casual)
Halo 3 (Normal)

And so the fight has been finished.. I may play through again on a harder level.. Level 8 would probably put me off.. No doubt the multi-player will provide many happy months of Halo based action. It's a great shooter. ****

Great Expectations

Another new section in which I tell you lucky lucky people what I'm looking forward to.

At the moment despite all the exciting looking games coming out I'm most excited by a long chalk about Project Gotham Racing 4. It's scored 9 in EDGE and 8.5 at Gamespot and looks to be a return to form after a slightly dissappointing third installment.

Once again it seems to deliver a cutting edge graphical experience on 360 and a dream car mix. I'm considering phoning in sick on saturday.

Currently Playing - Halo 3

Reached level 8 and man what a nightmare. It's a travesty of repetitive enviroments and continually spawning enemys coming at you from all angles and, in some cases, shooting from a fair distance away. Because (as far as I can tell) the enemy keeps spawning there's nothing for it but to try and slog from checkpoint to checkpoint before you die. Not as easy at it seems cos it all looks the same and it's not clear where you supposed to go next. In fact last night I must have got disorientated cos I ended up back tracking for ages and not realising until I saw some scenery that I actually did recognise. It was time to call it a night on the single player and move over to the multi player experience.

Thankfully it doesn't dissappoint. Obviously if it's not broke don't fix it and Bungie have built on the very fine foundations of one of the best Live ranking/lobby systems around (why more developers don't copy it I'll never know.. YES EA THAT DOES MEAN YOU) However there are some refinements. When you start out at rank 1 you can elect to play upto 5 training matches amongst other players who are training. Once you've ranked up you can't access it anymore so it's a nice introduction to some of the levels and the weapons without getting pwned and headfucked every few seconds.

Once onto the main games itself it's mostly as you'd expect. Great levels that seem to have a lot of scope for tactics and learning the best vantage points. Having played Halo 2 to death it's strange not knowing where everything is, and for my money, the weapons are a bit harder to find. The default weapon though is now the assault rifle which is a much meatier weapon.

A special mention goes to a couple of new game modes. First off is Shottie and Snipers which is pretty much as it sounds but it's great fun wandering around with the shottie taking out all the sniper elites who often are so absorbed in looking for targets you can get right behind them to deal out hot lead.

Second is the mongoose checkpoint race. Four (or more ) teams of two share a mongoose. One drives and one VIP has to be raced through a checkpoints (think King of the Hill. They are random but in set places). The VIP gets to unleash hell with unlimited rockets which cause the other team to blow up in a huge spin but (in the main) not die. It's a bit like Cat and Mouse from PGR2 in the level of fun on offer. Much fun was had. A lot of time was spent with Joe and me blaming each others driving/shooting. Good Times.

Heavy Rotation

A new section where I'll give mini reviews of what I've been listening to this week. Mostly it'll be new stuff (or new to me anyway unless it's of particular note).

This week I have been mostly listening to:

Stephen Fretwell - Man on the Roof

I loved the first album ever since I picked it up cheap in Woolies. This isn't as instant a listen but it does reward the effort. The tunes emerge as do the bitter sweet lyrics. It's basic stuff. Man guitar and the occasional flourish of piano or strings but Fretwell combines them so well to stir the emotions. As soon as it stops I want to put it right back on again. It would be a classic barring a duff music hall style first track and a rather bitter tuneless track in the middle.. pruned to 12 tracks it would've been *****. As it as throughly recommended ****

Forever Like Red - Distance

I've switched from read The Mail on Sunday to the The Times on sundays. Partly to appease Nish but mostly due to it's excellent review section. This record got four stars in last sundays issue. The review name checks Snow Patrol, Coldplay and U2 (Stop! Come back!) so of course it was a definite purchase for me. Eventually found a sole copy buried in the A - Z racks of my local HMV so I doubt they'll be selling out Wembly anytime soon.. However if you like the aforementioned bands (and even if you don't) you'll probably like this. ****

Foo Fighters - Echos, Silence, Paitence and Grace

All the pre-release reviews I'd read seemed to be positive for this latest Foos release but for me Dave Grohls 'other' band remain a singles band. They can knock out 3 or 4 classic slices of awesome Zep inspired rock every couple of years but the consistancy to pull of a whole album seems to elude them. I think the 'Greatest Hits' will be the only essential Foos album..

But it'll be worth the wait ***

Currently Playing : Halo 3

I realise that after my initial enthusiasm for blogging I've been rather quiet of late.

So I'm going to start with finishing the fight. Got stuck into the campaign and I'm on level 7
out of 9. I've got to be honest it's good not great. It's exciting getting stuck into the battle
and it certainly looks very nice in all it's 360 powered glory (apart from when you're travelling fast on a vehicle when you can see the detail getting rendered in) but for me inevitably the third part of a trilogy needs to pull something special out of the bag and so far this hasn't. It adds some
nice new weapons and vehicles and is similar to the first game in the type of levels but the story
sucks. Having missed much of the 2nd part due to it being shit it doesn't make a lot of sense
and to be fair you mostly want to skip the cut scenes and get back into the action. It has it's moments though.

My main complaint is the crap AI of your supposed team mates. Mostly when driving. A couple of examples. One guy whose Mongoose I got on the back of seemed content to drive up and down the same stretch of beach. Another time, after a particularly well executed piece of dramatic batteling by me it should be noted, I leapt into a Warthog gunner to continue the fight only to find my team mate drove us into some wreckage and we got shot to shit before I could get out. Most annoying.

Out on it's ear?

A bit of sad news this morning. After limping along for a year or so Rich will be closing www.wakinglimb.com at the end of the month cos even he can't be bothered with it anymore.