The Walking Dead (Video Game)

Despite the theoretical ease of it, not many game developers seem keen on bridging the gap between movies/TV and video games, There have been a few good attempts like the (probably) award winning Heavy Rain, and lesser known Farenheit (or Indigo Prophecy, depending on region), as well as a few series from Telltale Games, who have also made the recent Tales from Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and back to the future games.

As one can assume from the name, Telltale games are specialists in storytelling games, and their experience and speciality is starting to show off.
The walking dead video game is incredible, at current, almost half way through November, this is my game of the year, and if im honest, its probably also my 'media of the year', because whilst its technically game, it could easily double for a 10 hour long film or TV drama.

This might sting a little...

Gameplay is a mix of old school point and click adventuring with some easy puzzles, and then interactive movie sequences were you pick dialogue or actions, the latter is the star of the show here. As the game begins, it gives a very clear statement summarized as 'this game series tailors the story to your actions', what you say or do in episode 1 can easily come back to bite you in the ass, tell a guy you hate him? maybe he'll be in charge of your life later. This form of storytelling is incredible, even conversation options where you dont pick something in time and abstain from the conversation can be picked up, with other characters recognizing your silence. This combined with certain action and decision sequences will have you quickly roleplaying yourself in the game, what would YOU do? how would YOU react? and so, you get involved in the constantly twisting story that is the walking dead, which in turn gives the game further more impact when someone dies or doublecrosses you.

Don't ever leave me Clem ;_;

I feel this is a good time to introduce you all to the 8 year old that is going to make you wish you had a child of your own. Don't have any paternal instinct? You do now!
Clementine is the most lovable character in video game history, by the end of episode 5 you will be apologising profusely to her for your past mistakes, please don't hate me clem, he had to die! It was all for you! I would shoot every other character in the face if it meant Clementine were to stay safe

tldr; This is the game of the year, Clementine needs you.

The game is currently 50% off in the Steam Autumn Sale, bringing it down to £10.49, approximately £1 per hour of godlike storytelling and dialogue, or £0.50p per tear you will shed.

Skyfall (2012)

Before I start, im going to go ahead and say Skyfall isnt a bad film.
Its easy when writing reviews to always focus on the things that annoy you about the film and skyfall had these little annoyances by the truckload, but the film itself wasnt bad.

The review also contains spoilers, highlight over them to read.

Infact, i dont think ive ever watched a truly 'bad' bond film, some of them arent great, but generally a bond film is a bond film.

My problem with skyfall then, is the plot, which for the most part is simplistic and boring, and then for the other part, riddled with good ideas which werent followed through. Many parts of the film feel like the writers had a really good idea for something and then got halfway and didnt have a clue how to continue the idea or resolve it, leading to it just kind of disappearing without a trace.

Prime examples of this are [ the death of the woman bond meets in the casino, or the counter-hacking-hacking started by Q ]

The main villain in skyfall also doesnt feel very bond like, with his grand scheme simply being to kill M, whatever happened to giant orbital space lasers or plutonium bombs.
Did I mention there are no gadgets in the film either? Did they lose their deal with aston martin or something?

My other massive MASSIVE issue with the film is the lack of intelligence displayed throughout, both by 007 himself and by the baddies, maybe its just because ive been playing Xcom recently, but were these people not trained to fight? to take cover? to not [walk through a field in a horizontal line towards a fortified house without prior knowledge of whats inside the house?], what about that scene with [the sniper, why wait for him to finish shooting and walk into melee range, he was ordered to terminate him afterwards anyway, shoot him in the arms and legs from afar and then interrogate the bastard]

Oh, and don't even get me fucking started on the ending.

Infact, the more i think about it, the more I am starting to get angry, maybe it WAS a bad film. idk.

It was alright  and infact if it were a standalone film or anything but a James bond film I think I would have enjoyed it more, but it just didn't feel like a bond film, which was kind of a downer for me.
After looking through some 'professional' reviews, seems im not alone in this sentiment, here are some quotes from metacritic

"With gadgets, girls and globe-trotting held to a minimum, Skyfall, could, for long stretches, be mistaken for just another 21st-century thriller, albeit a well-made and intelligent one."

" Skyfall, in the recent mode of Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films, is a gloomy, dark action thriller, and almost completely without the cynical playfulness that drew us to the series in the first place."

ps. I enjoyed the first 10 minutes or so immensely, particularly the opening, which was very slick. (and I dont even like adele or the skyfall theme song)

The Raid : Redemption (2011)

So 'The Raid' is the sort of action movie made for people like me, people with short attention spans, who probably dont watch films very often, and arent too bothered by a lack of cohesive plot solong as the film is entertaining.
The film ticks all these boxes, it runs about 90 minutes, with the first 15 minutes and last 5 minutes being more or less all of the story - the rest, is all action.
It is an indonesian film before it was brought over to the US, a man with a sharp eye obviously hoping to bring over the next 'ong-bak', the US version of the film also features a new soundtrack written mostly by the dude from Linkin Park, and its a good one - a hard hitting electro/DnB/dubstep soundtrack which complements the raw action perfectly.

The jist of the plot is an elite police team are sent into a highrise building to sweep the building of threats and kill the boss at the top floor (which, funnily enough, is basically the final level or two of the original Streets of Rage)
The review then?

The film is fucking raw. They enter the building in stealth, kill some dudes, and then the alarm gets set off... And shit gets real. The guns come out, the snipers assemble, the machetes and knives are unsheathed.
The raid at its heart is about an hour of impressive fight choreography, flitted with guns, knives and folk getting their spines and necks broken.

If you like these sort of martial arts films, you'll love this, because, like the guy below, its executed very, very well.

Payday: The Heist

Note: Readers in the UK can get this game for cheaps/free by buying/photographing this months edition of PC Gamer magazine. There is another code in there for DOTA2 beta invite too.

Payday has been out for about a year now, and is probably a game you've heard of, but never tried playing or felt interested in looking into. I was the same, until I activated my copy of the game and started my first heist.

The game premise can be simplifed down to something along the lines of...
Get in -> Get the money -> Get the fuck out
However, 'get the money' is usually easier said than done, being protected by vault doors, keycodes, buildings and so on.

Gameplay feels like a very objective focused Left 4 Dead, those who have tried gas grab mode (or whatever its called) will have the best idea of what to expect here, the difference of course being that instead of fighting off waves of undead, you fight off gunmen, and instead of special infected you have special forces (SWAT, Shields, Snipers, CoD Juggernauts).
Its fun and frantic, fighting off police assaulting the building whilst juggling health, ammo, teammates, objectives and trying your best to keep hostages detained, all the while drum and bass is pounding your desk (if you're playing with the volume up like I was anyway)

Music sample from the 'panic room' level - where you blow a hole in the top of a building and have a helicopter airlift their safe out
Music sample from 'Diamonds' - pictured below, where you rob a vault for diamonds

As far as replayability goes, The upgrades system is sort of cool, where you can level up to 145 (or maybe higher) and can pick what upgrade path you want to take for unlocks, skill upgrades and gear upgrades. The game also seems to use something similar to the director AI in L4D, changing up the level slightly each time - an example I encountered is one of the helicopter pilots who drops C4 for you, he is supposed to drop it on the roof but sometimes he is completely shit and drops it off the side of the building, whereby you'll have to go from the roof down into the alley on the side before you can continue. Its also worth noting that the game is hard as balls, the game announces the average success rate for each heist on each difficulty, the average success for normal across all heists is around 35%, and with 4 difficulties, 'overkill' mode (the hardest) drops that down to single digits.

If you have 3 friends and are looking for co-op style games similar to L4D, Payday is a pretty fun and surprisingly difficult excursion. Defo worth it if you ever see it on sale, and possibly worth it as long as you have a dedicated group up for a challenge.

Faster Than Light (FTL)

FTL is an odd game, introduced to me by pyrion flax from le youtubes, whose video review is probably better than the mini-review im about to write.


Your ultimate goal in the game is to journey from Sector 1 to Sector 8,and kill the enemy mothership - easier said than done because you are constantly being chased by 'the empire'  and the final enemy mothership is a cheating bastard and you need a crap-ton of space-xp to even stand a chance.

Maps are randomly generated, and as you can see, the empire closes in on every warp, and you really, REALLY don't want any part of their shit

The game is a roguelike, which is a fancy way of saying 1 life/perma death - Stressful for obvious reasons, which is made more stressful by the general difficulty of the game, where random ships in space will happily carve you up, set your medbay on fire, board you and rape your crew.
Sometimes you'll die not even to other ships but just by the world itself, run out of fuel? you die. Run into an Ion storm unprepared? you probably die. Randomly get boarded by 4 mantis troops? You die. Starting to see a trend here?

Actual gameplay itself is fairly simply, float along to sector 8, try to get as much scrap as you can so you can upgrade your ship, this can be done by killing other ships, or random encounters in space (helping people, distress signals, mercenary work). Then spend your scrap on stuff at space-shops, where you can buy new bays (giving access to drones, cloaking, boarding) or new weapons/drones (lazers, missiles, boarding drones, defense drones, sentries).
Combat itself is mostly just firing onto the enemy shields, and then going for their weapons bay, the problem occurs however when your ship is underequipped - and by that i mean some combination of...
A) You do not have enough damage to get through their shields
B) Your shields are not strong enough
C) You are being boarded and your crew is getting slaughtered
D) Your ship does not have enough energy
Option B is most common, with enemy weaponry damaging your bays, when a bay is damaged it does not work, meaning you now have to direct your crew to fix stuff, put out fires, or fight boarders. Remember that you can't attack if your weapons bay is damaged, and you have no shields if your shield bay is damaged.
If you are having option D, then you now have to reroute power to the areas which need it most.... do you want oxygen, or do you want weapons? Tough choice? but if you don't kill the enemy ship, they'll eventually tear through your hull and you die anyway.
You can also manually control the doors to vacumn out fires and things like that, assuming your door controls are working.



Now im probably not really selling the game too well here, but it is strangely fun and will sap hours away from you, and you wont really understand why or how you are still playing, or why you are restarting the game again. There is a fair bit of re-playability, with various achievements and 8 ships to unlock, so there is always that
I'd definitely recommend it, the game itself is only £7 at the moment on steam, I bought it the other day and have clocked 8 hours already, and at £1/hour it's already cheaper than half the xbox experiences you'll have.

Owl City - The midsummer Station (2012) review

Just a little plug for ol' owl city since im 'borrowing' the album

'The midsummer Station' is good. Surprisingly good.

Not that his older albums were bad (ive listened to them all), but this album has more of a grownup feel to it, utilizing heavier beats and effects usually saved for dance/dubstep artists.
Songs in this album seem to be divided into pop-rock stuff and what is essentially dance/club music, both of which are pretty catchy.

For example, bombshell blonde (linked below, cant embed as copyrighted and stuff)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sREbkI2gcE

Like... wat.

Remember this is the pansy that made fireflies.

Give it a try, turn it up, you might actually enjoy it, although you probably still wont tell your friends about it, nobody wants to be that guy listening to Owl city after all.

'Dark Savior' tribute

This is a tribute to one of the best games ive ever played, a long forgotten game which I feel like only I have played.



Dark savior was a roleplaying game for the saturn, an isometric 3d game with a crazy story with plot twists, memorable characters and a distinct soundtrack - pretty much the opposite of most games made today. It mixed 3d mario platforming with zelda style dungeon puzzles and scripted fights which turned the game into a 1v1 fighting game - complete with ultra attacks and a capture system which would let you use that character later in the game.

The game also had some 'Lost' style parallel universes going on, basically when you start the game you have to run through the first area, and the outcomes of which will decide how the rest of the story will play out - but these are MAJOR changes to the plot and dungeon layouts, not minor things.
Basically, a monster escapes from its holding cage on the ship you're on and attacks the captain, depending on how long you take to get there - the captain may have died and monster escaped, you may catch the monster there and then, maybe the monster kills you (and the story then-on is fighting your way through hell), maybe a combination of the above.
This basically leads to 4 seperate storylines, each playing out differently and is great fun to see what has changed, enemies in certain parallells turn into allies and vice versa.
Ive no idea how long i spent on this game as a kid, but i completed all the 5 parallells and they were all great.

Unfortunately, im fairly sure this game would be ridiculously hard to find on the internet - or in shops. But if you can find it and have some free time, give it a go.

v Not the most exciting trailer in the world, and doesnt actually give a feel for the game at all other than showing off the 'amazing' 3d graphics of its time, but there arent many gameplay videos online that dont give away major plot points.

Uwaaaaahhh~

Uwaaaaahhh~

So pretty much a week without a proper blog post. I guess i should put something down at least. Time for a few reviews then i guess



Saw 'Ponyo on the cliff by the sea' earlier today , one of studio ghibli's films. I didnt really know what to expect at all aside from that some form of sea creatures is involved.
The jist of the story is this... ponyo.. thing... goes exploring (nemo style) and then is captured by a boy who lives on the cliff by the sea, they become friends and yada yada but then ponyo gets taken back to the sea by her father. Ponyo , determined to get back to the boy then basically fucks up the ocean by drinking some sort of elixir of the gods in order to try and get back to the boy... I'll leave it there.
Its good stuff , unsurprising given its studio ghibli and the animation and stuff is pretty good (although surprisingly nowhere near as good as '5 centimeters per second' which had amazing animation)
5/5 fo' sure with this one. Id also like to comment that the music in the film is amazing - aided by my now 5.1 surround setup thing ^^

uhm... Havent really seen any other new films recently... Id also like to take this moment to say that bruno looks pretty bad , and that the new harry potter film actually looks kinda good.

Next then.

Tales of Monkey Island (chapter 1)
Finished this today , not too sure how long it took me to finish it , maybe 3 hours?
Ive never played a Monkey island game before so i thought id jump on this given the nice graphics and such its been given , native resolution is where its at. The graphics have a nice look to them , simplistic but detailed enough , the dialogue is very cleverly written and witty and the story is alright too. The puzzles are for the most part okay and reasonable to figure out however there were 2 bits of the game where i got completely stuck (the first due to me not finding an item in a faraway place). But yeah , good stuff and a recommended play - I await the other 4 chapters.

FUEL
Despite the mediocre reviews i thought id get it and give it a go , pretty much open world sandbox kinda place with races thrown in. Quads , bikes , jeeps , SUV's , muscle cars , buggies and even trucks can be used to race and most races are generally 'here are some checkpoints. go.'
Think burnout paradise without the speed and boost and takedowns , and put in the townless regions of Oblivion (Elder scrolls 4) and then ravage the land with a few tornadoes.
Fun game for racing , although can be very very annoying at times and sort of samey after the first...hour.. or so..
Im actually enjoying it more than 'Pure' which is kind of surprising given that they're similar sorts of games but 'Pure' was pretty much SSX on ATV's *shrugs*

Chaos;Head
A 'visual novel' im currently 'playing' its pretty boring but at the same time has that sort of appeal that the first season of Lost had where you want to figure out wtf is going on. Theres actually an anime series of it which ive downloaded as well but about 1 hour of reading text in the 'game' translates to <20 minutes in the anime and cuts out all sorts of stuff so i kinda wanna keep 'playing' instead of resorting to that.

Call of juarez : Bound in blood

Sequel to the original Call of Juarez , which whilst not particuarly mind blowing - was a definately a solid and fun FPS game.



The sequel tells the story of 2 brothers and the shit they get up to , generally being badass gunslingery outlaw types and wrecking peoples shit.
The graphics in the game are amazing and the game seems pretty well optimised for PC's (moreso than other recent games anyway) , areas are detailed and the cinematic effects such as motion blur , depth of field and screen shaking are very well done. I also really like the way the HUD is almost completely minimal aside from the concentration bar at the top right of the screen , i always try and find a nohud option anyway so not having one to begin with was a welcome change.



Gunplay feels good with a fair variety of weapons and styles to play , at the start of each mission you can pick Ray or Thomas ,who play as Tank and Stealth respectively- Ray can use dual pistols and has more HP and Thomas can use snipe and use bows and daggers for silent kills.
They added alot of intresting features to the game such as a cover system , running to the corner of a wall (solid snake style) will allow you to peer around and fire using just the mouse , similarly hiding behind a low wall will let you pop out just by aiming up and down (without need to crouch)



Other neat features are the quick draw segments where you can fire each gun independantly and in different directions (like in the first Call of Juarez game) , the concentration mode which works different for each character (Thomas's involves holding left click and then moving the mouse down to move the firing pin back whilst Ray's acts as a mark all targets and then let rip style) and best of all - the duel , where you'll have to move to focus your opponent then move the mouse down to grab your gun and back up to fire at the enemy as soon as the bell strikes.



Another worthy addition is the free roam segments , where you can go to a shop to buy new weapons and take on side jobs then get on a horse and ride out to the mission area for some extra money for guns and ammo.

Definately an awesome game and worth a try.