Regret is a dish best served at 88mph!

So my copy of Little Big Planet arrived this morning. Of course I'm without a PS3 joypad. But no problem I thought. A quick jaunt in to town and flex the plastic and I'd finally have a good excuse to blow £35 on Dualshock 3. Obviously my local WOOLWORTHS is already shut down and empty. The queue in GAME was not just the length of the store.. It looped around the racks and ran back up the other side. HMV crazily didn't have any (And the queue in there wasn't any better (Seriously do people not have anything better to do than shop??? It's 5 days after christmas and this was my first trip into town... Surely everyone else could of been and got things done already)... WHSmiths was also a wash out.. Obviously there was no choice but to go to GAME and brave the queue.

Only no dice. No PS3 pads on the shelves in the countries premier game retailer. Was I going to queue to ask if they had any in the store room? No. I'd just drive home. Order one from SHOPTO.NET and hope they despatched it the same day so it would be here tomorrow.. Got home only to find they're out of stock.

How can no one have a joypad?? I'd probably of thought twice about stamping on my sixaxis if I'd known I was going to be left PS3-less....

First Look: Resistance 2

Suffice to say the first game to make me smash a pad in.... must be at least five years since Gran Turismo 4 musn't it?

A Buckcherry Christmas treat.

The Christmas Haul

So the big day has been and gone. I have to say a very impressive haul this year. Considering I'm grown man (well christmas is really for kids isn't it?).

I got Resistance 2 for the PS3 and Banjo & Kazooie - Nuts & Bolts for the 360. (I ordered Mirrors Edge for £15 from Play and Little Big Planet from ShopTo).

I also got a very nice Ralph Lauren V neck sweater. An 'I am the Stig' T Shirt.

I got Mock The Wee book, Lewis Hamiltons My Story book and The Celeb Diaries by Mark Firth.

I've saved my favourites to last. I got a genuine Indiana Jones Fedora hat all the way from america and a signed photo of Lewis Hamilton.

Happy Christmas

Oh faithful reader.

The "Complete" List

John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*
The Darkness (Easy)
Lost: Via Domus
LEGO Indiana Jones - The Original Adventures (Story Mode)
Battlefield: Bad Company (Easy) & (Normal)
Ratchet & Clank : Quest for Booty
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Tiger Woods 2009
Haze
Saints Row 2
Gears of War 2 - (Normal)
Call of Duty : World at War - (Normal)
Fallout 3
Tomb Raider: Underwolrd
PGR4 - Career mode*

*Not a first time completion.

First Look: Motor Storm - Pacific Rift

The first Motor Storm game was a lot of fun (until the teeth gnashing frustration kicked in) but it did kind of look like a tech demo of the land deformation with a game hastily built around it. It lacked depth, looked samey and there where one or technical issues (The loading times between levels and vehicle selection where teeth grindingly slow (I'm as surprised as you that I've any teeth left with which to tackle the sequel)).

So what can we expect from the sequel? As you'd expect from a team that's cut its teeth on PS3 development on games deleveoped soley for Sony's machine it's a rather more polished affair. There's one new vehicle class to add to the classes from the first game (although there's lots of new vehicles within those classes) and there's a new tropical island. There's still plenty of mud and rock as well. Crucially there's also Fire and Water in the mix.

Fire levels effect the boost and cause it to heat up faster. Water levels give you the oppurtunity to cool the boost faster at the risk of slowing your vehicle as it travels through the stuff. It's a simple addition but allows for just enough tactics in what remains a frantic racing game.

The new levels themselves are graphically stunning. My non-360/PS3 owning mate who came round for a blast was very impressed (he's never commented on anything I've showed him before so read in to that what you will). They're more organic this time and feel like the courses have been made out of areas of land rather than just ribbons of track. There's the same mix of routes through the levels too but they're a lot more varied this time. There's also more variety with races taking place in and around abandoned factorys, sunny beaches and dark volcanic rubble.

The other new addition in the career mode is the ability to earn bonus events by meeting certain criteria during races such as crashing less than a certain amount or beating a race record time. These unlock elimination or time trials. The Elimination races are standard last man standing affairs (although they do mix up the race and the AI is possibly a touch less brutal). The time trials are more interesting and take the form of GTA style check point races with flares going off to indicate your route as your pass through the last one. These events work particulary well as they show you some of the routes through each circuit that are off the beaten track.

For your reading pleasure I also had a blast on the online racing. I have to say it's a very polished affair and easily equal to most Live affairs. Match making was quick. I didn't suffer much in the way of lag and it works very well as a live game. There doesn't seem to be any elastic banding online so it's not quite as brutal as the SP and all the better for it. If you're good enough to work up a lead you can keep it if you're skillful enough. I won one event and got several seconds and ranked up quite nicely. I was also able to accept a friends invite. The only downside being that after each event with 'randoms' your dumped back into your lobby and you have to search again. It would've been nice to have the option to carry on racing with the same people. But considering it's a free service and my first taste of PS3 online I was very happy.

So far, for me at least, it's an essential PS3 purchase. (especially now it can be picked up for £20 making GTi Club on PSN look a bit dear at £10).

The "Complete" List

John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*
The Darkness (Easy)
Lost: Via Domus
LEGO Indiana Jones - The Original Adventures (Story Mode)
Battlefield: Bad Company (Easy) & (Normal)
Ratchet & Clank : Quest for Booty
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Tiger Woods 2009
Haze
Saints Row 2
Gears of War 2 - (Normal)
Call of Duty : World at War - (Normal)
Fallout 3
Tomb Raider: Underwolrd

Mixed feelings. Like Nish I feel they've finished it a bit short so they can sell us DLC. The last few levels (apart from the short changing us by re-using the ship again) felt like a huge improvement. It seems to end just as it get's into it's stride.

On the other hand I've had enough for now. Overall it's better than Crystal Dynamics previous outings but not really back to the form of The Last Revelation

Even with Nish's instructions I never did get the hang of adrenalin kills either.

Currently Playing: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Well I'm just over half way through. So far it's something of a curates egg for me.. Good and bad in parts. For everything I do like there's something that's annoying me. I'd say it was certainly better than Legend but it's not the return to form we'd all been hoping for.

The animation is very nice when it's working but it's jerky whenever it's not working so well and Lara get stuck on stuff far to often for my liking. The wall climbing is a bit hit and miss. The combat sucks (For some reason (perhaps not reading the manual) I can't pull of an adrenalin headshot for love nor money).

The graphics are pretty stunning and the enviroments and puzzles are well thought out.. I've been stuck but often a good look around and I ponder will see me through. The camera though is far too twitchy and it's often difficult to see what exactly what you want to look at. I know she's supposed to be looking at something of interest but her head twitching all over the shop at, as far as I can tell, nothing is very annoying too. On the other hand the grapple that felt tacked on has really come into it's own and I'm loving that she can lower herself safely down on it. I like most of the levels I've visited.. It's proper tomb raiding and not generic adventuring. Oh and I really hate the motorbike.

Overall though it's more than the sum of it's parts and it does capture some of the magic. It turns out though that it is rather short. Certainly compared to the old PS one adventures that where absolutely massive. Whether this is due to the time it takes to make HD content for the latest generation of consoles or, as my good friend Nish thinks, cos they've left half the game off the disc so they can flog it to me as DLC I'm not sure.

I can however see me playing it again on the harder difficulty settings and I'll probably hold on too it so that I can play the DLC too.

All quiet on the western front..

I'd of said I never really noticed the noise my 360 makes while playing a game but then I installed PGR4 to the HDD (mainly cos it takes ages to load and I was hoping for an improvement) and you really do notice the absense of noise.

Wallander

It's always a double edged sword when a favourite fictional character gets transfered from book to TV. Strangely the BBC started the series with the book I read first even though it's not Wallanders first outing.

Let's start with what I didn't like. I know this is going to sound a bit nerdy but they didn't get the car right.. Wallander always drives a Peugeot. It's mentioned several times. In fact in one novel he considers trading it in for a newer Peugeot and it's specifically mentioned that he always buys Peugeots at the same dealer. Now I know Volvos are swedish. Presumably not every Swede drives a Volvo in the same way that every Brit doesn't drive a Rover.. Or something that was British if we still had a car industry.

Every thing else was pretty spot on. The story and investigation stuck very closely to the novel. Kenneth Branagh perfectly captured the character of Inspector Wallander. The relationship between him and his daughter and his father was very accurately portrayed. The novels always portray the hard boiled procedural nature of police work and this too was captured to a tee.

Overall a good TV show.

Playstation Home

So I gave away my beta access code to some PS3 enthusiast over at the EDGE forum cos he seemed to want it so much more than I do.. I hardly get enough time to game let alone wander around dancing with virtual avatars.