Yes so I moved over to Giant Bomb. Mainly because everyone else is but also because not 90% of the users on Giant Bomb are complete morons that suck up to the 90% of clueless moderators. I'll see you there. Username is the same letter for letter: ChestyMcGee.

The site is a little slow but it's worth it.

Oh yeah, and you can swear without getting a mod knocking on your virtual door with a letter of complaint.

If you read my last blog, you'll know I was happily suprised to be payed £50 for my work experience. With this money, I made the abetary decision to buy Battlefield: Bad Company (Gold Edition). This came about after playing, quite seriously I must add, the demo online with Matt and working together really well as a team in the two-seater vehicles (like the helicopters and tanks).

Anyway, the first thing I must say is I'm very pleasantly suprised by the singleplayer campaign. I expected just to have a playthrough of the campaign, find it mind-boggingly average, and then move immedietly on to the multiplayer. Bad Company is just plain fun. It removes all those things that other games have started doing for realism purposes, for example the reloads in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (where-by reloading a clip not entirely spent you don't have to pull any bolts, thus making the reload faster...I will add though that CoD4 banged on about this when the game was released but Rainbow Six has been doing this since 199. Instead, the reloads are overly long, exagerated...and absolutely fantastic.

I think the game that can be compared most to Battlefield: Bad Company the most is definitly PS2 and Xbox's Black - a game that attempted to recreate terrible 80's action films brilliantly well with an excessive amount of explosive barrels, loud guns and lots of swearing. BFBC does this too, and it almost feels like compensation that it appears Criterion have given up making Black 2. It's pretty much Black with better destructable environments and a less serious storyline.

This brings me on to the so-called great destructable environments. Some people have tried to compare this game to the likes of Crysis. Don't believe them. Basically, walls can be "destroyed", though basically all that means is when they're hit with a grenade or shell they kind of dissapear in a cloud of smoke and are replaced with clumps of rock and other rubble. This is nothing like Crysis, where small building such as sheds and the like are actually built like real buildings, and as such fall apart in a physics-based engine that makes it look very realistic indeed. However, BFBC's engine doesn't require a science-fiction super-computer to run and as such, every building can have its walls and roofs destroyed. The way trees fall down is exactly the same in both games and works on a 'gib' system. This is a simple method of having a model split in a fairly scripted way when it takes a certain amount of damage, another example of this is when you kill an Antlion in Half-Life 2 with a powerful weapon it explodes into little bits. Now, I've just moaned a lot about how bad it is...but it's fantastic. Sure, it's not the most technolgically spectacular engine but the implications of it in the sheer immersion in battles is great. It's a truely great feature that makes the fighting feel truely hectic and exciting. It's genuinly exciting to sprint through a building, the walls exploding behind me in a cloud of smoke as a main battle tank launches 120mm sabot-shells at me in a desperate attempt to remove me from the gene pool. Awesome.

Wow...for first impressions that was pretty long, but it's not really an average first person shooter. The thing that must be said about it is, when I was giving my first impressions of Metal Gear Solid 4 I said, "you have to play this game seriously", or words to that effect. With BFBC however, I must stress that you have to play this game for fun and for nothing else. Even I can manage to play through it not thinking about "oh, those grenades couldn't blow up a wall of that density" or "the reload for that Colt M16A4 is completely wrong; the bolt should snap back automatically and the release switch above the magazine should be all that needs to be slapped"!

So, I'm...well...I have no idea how far through the game I am but I reckon it must be about half way at the least. So, once I've played the online for about a month or so you can expect a review. So far (basing it on what I've played on the demo online and the game on singleplayer) I'm expecting to give it around an 8.0. "Just plain fun"!

...is a mixed but interesting experience.

For those who don't know, I'm working for five day week (starting last Monday, 23rd June) at GBM, who, as I've said to people in order to avoid confusion, are a graphics design company. In actual fact, GBM does work on the designs of others...okay, this is hard to explain. Basically, GBM are given design work off other companies, usually in Adobe Illustrator or Acrobat format and then GBM make fine changes to the designs and set them up for numerous printing, cutting and finishing techniques as specified by the client.

My first day started with a short tour of the buildings before I was handed over to some member of the computer team. They came up with the idea of me creating a poster for something. Already ideas were forming in my head. The second I was asked, "so what do you like?" the words "Video games" were coming out of my mouth before I could react. As a result, I was soon at work on a Mac making a, yes you guessed it, Metal Gear Solid 4 release poster. It used the background and message of this wallpaper. The two characters on the poster were taken from in-game screenshots from the game. The logo in the top right corner was made entirely from scratch on Adobe Illustrator. Likewise, the title in the bottom right corner was made on Illustrator with a downloaded font. Sadly, because the logo and writings were made using vectographics (they can be scaled to any size without any distortion what-so-ever) the low-res screenshots and background look quite tacky in comparison. Beggars can't be choosers though, and these were the best screens I could find on the 'ol tinter-web.

The next day I printed off this poster on multiple mediums using a huge ink-jet printer and with a large Lambda printer (in the Lambda Complex, OMG Half-Life!) which uses a modern version of emulsion printing. For this I had to work in a dark room...which suprisingly wasn't the dark red room I've seen on TV, in fact it was completely pitch-black and I had to work blind!

Today wasn't that much fun in comparison to the days before. I was basically working like a factory, assembling and cutting and using various machinery in a fairly repetetive nature. All of the tasks were interesting at first but got dull as time passed. One of the pieces of machinery, the cutter, was quite cool, it was a large knife on a conveyerbelt with a camera attatched. I got to control the camera to line it up with dots that are detected because they're a perfect magenta (CYMK colour, all settings on 0 except for M on 100) and then it cuts out any shape perfectly, following the magenta dots.

So, I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing tomorow but I think later in the day I'll have a chance to cut out the characters from myposter to make some desk-side stands of Snake and Liquid. This depends on how busy the cutter is, however.

UPDATE:

Thursday was me standing in one place for eight hours framing prints. Much fun.

UPDATE:

Friday was odd jobs and watching people work for the morning, then finishing off all my Metal Gear stuff. So I now have three or four A2 cutouts of Snake and Liquid with a picture-frame stand on them (so you can put them on your desk or what have you) and eight or more A2 Metal Gear posters on various mediums. Coolio. Best thing about Friday though which can only be described in the wise words of 50 Cent in 50 Cent: Bulletproff: "Pay day mo-f****!" Yay! I got £50 on a HMV card which was completely unexpected. MY superviser dude said it was the first time they'd ever payed a Work Experience person because I had helped them meet a dealine with those terrible prints on Thursday. Huraah!...now I might go and buy Battlefield: Bad Company - yeah I know I said I hate it but I went on with a mate and we worked as an awesome team (both getting the top scores) in the two seater vehicles (tanks and choppers) and it was amazing.

NOTE(S): If you're reading this blog any time soon after 18:30 and wondering what the hell I'm going on about with this poster because you can't see any pictures of it, don't worry, I'm on my Dad's laptop right now but when I get home I'll have the file up and ready on GameSpot.

After you've read this, stay tuned: I'll probably be posting a new paragraph or so each day to update you (as if you're interested) on the day's goings on.

Oh yeah, and now anyone else who's on work experience has to do a blog too (Ben, Tom, Jonny, David etc).

I finished MGS4 this morning after starting the game on Friday afternoon (one day after relase) and I must say it is easily the best game I've ever played.

I'm not saying it's the best game in every single respect but with all its attributes collectively it definetly is in my opinion.

What I mean by this, for example, is the 3rd-person shooting mechanics are good but not as good as Gears of War, similarily the 1st-person shooting mechanics are good but not as good as Call of Duty 4. This is perfectly acceptable though as MGS4 is not either of these two types of games, it is a sneaking action-adventure, or whatever you want to call it, and as such the shooting isn't going to be as good as a game based around that one purpose.

The first thing I'll say about the game is that it has been heavily 'Westernised' in terms of gameplay (not story). By this I mean it is perfectly easy, easier than sneaking in fact, to simply run and gun through the game like any 3rd-person shooter. This isn't exactly bad but it's very clear that the game punishes you far less than the previous enstallments for killing enemies and getting spotted. I play it like this, and I feel this gives you the best experience of the gameplay, combining both stealth and action together in a healthy mix:

If one guard is on his own, take him out with a shot or two to the head with a silenced weapon.

If two or more guards or together, or taking out a guard will alert others before you can hide the body, do your best to sneak around or through them, avoiding confrontation altogether.

If the militia are in combat with the enemies, help them; it makes the game a lot easier and gives you a welcome break from sneaking around. It also gives you a chance to do some real gunplay and use the huge selection of weapons on offer.

I heavily recommend playing the game with these little rules, it's really how the game is supposed to be played and you'll enjoy it a whole lot more, and it'll be a whole lot more rewarding, if you play it like this.

On a more serious note, the graphics are years ahead of everything else and anyone who was still sceptical of the power of the Playstation 3 should see this game in action. It's phenominal. If this game were to be on the Xbox 360 the textures would have to be far lower res, a lot of sharp and clear text that is on some objects would have to be blurred out, many particle effects would have to be thinned out and even with all this the game would probably run at half the framerate. Also, even on PS3 the game has to install at the start, and do a one minute install inbetween every chapter.

The sound effects are also amazing and it's the little details that count. For example, when you put a silence on a gun it is still pretty loud when fired in first-person, not because of the firing but because you can hear all the sounds of the gun working when the muzzle noise has been eradicated; the bolt clicking back after everyround, shells ejecting and hitting the floor, the next round being loaded into the gun is all heard. On a related note, the animations are far ahead of anything else and aswell as beign eye-candy for all us gun-nuts it also helps with building up the characters. For example, the reloads are amazing, right down to the detail of when you reload a clip that isn't spent, the bullet that was ready to be fired pings out of the chamber when Snake pulls the bolt. In contrast though, the animations on the characters are great, the lip-sync isn't as realistic as the one implemented by the Source Engine (Half-Life 2 etc.) but it looks more natural. Little details in the characters like Otacon's nervous shuffle of a walk really helps emerse you in the experience.

And emersion is what MGS is all about. It's not a video game as such, it's an interactive film. For this reason some people might moan about the cuscenes that are anything from one minute to more than an hour (at least you can pause them now!). If you don't like that sort of thing then don't buy the game, simple as that, go and play a more action-heavy game and that's fine. But MGS is for the gamer that allows themselves to take the storyline of a game incredibly seriously, even mabye more so than they would take the storyline of most films. Without doing this it is impossible to enjoy the game fully. Word of warning then! Don't play in an environment where you can be distracted! Don't play with your mates around you, especially if it's your first time through. Don't play with your own music in the background! Enjoy the game as a film and as a work of art!

Because that's what MGS is. A work of art. The character design, the acting and the direction is better than most Hollywood films. I would even go as far to say that Hideo Kojima is as good a director as that famous, God-like Steven Spielberg of the eighties and early nineties. For this reason, since Metal Gear Solid 2, MGS has always been a bit lacking in the gameplay field. What was amazing in 1998 wasn't so good when MGS2 came out and sure they added a few new features but it wasn't really enough and I feel that MSG3 was also a big let down. This wasn't because the gameplay was bad, not at all, it was just that there was so much stuff in the game you could do...but never had to do; you could just run through with a silenced tranquilizer gun and never get spotted. For the first time in ten years though, I can safely say that Metal Gear Solid's gameplay easily matches up to the amazing storyline.

In conclusion then, I can safely say that I will give MGS4 a ten out of ten in my final review. I'm not sure that if Gamespot still employed the previous system for scoring it would get a ten, probably a 9.9 but with the new system, 9.5 is just too low.

PS. Sorry for this incredibly long and rambling blog. I'm just really shook up after playing this game. It's amazing. So amazing my usually well thought out, well written, well spelt, well punctuated and well constructed blog-writing has had to take a backseat for a slightly more insane style of writing.

I'm going to go for a lie down now!

To celebrate yersterday's release and the fact that I should begin playing it sometime today, here's my Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Cinematic Trailer compiled in the way of the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty intro video. Enjoy!

OMG! MGS!

...are both pretty rubbish (they should put both games together, that I'd like to see!).

Firstly, Battlefield: Bad Company is an incredibly dissapointing game. It's main focus is the fact you can "shape the battlefield" how you wish with the use of "Tactical Destruction". Considering this is the only thing, apart from some rather dull vehicles, that sets it apart from any other FPS, is very saddening. When you grenade a wall (by the way, fragmentation grenades would do no more damage to a wall that your average bullet anyway), boringly geometric squares get cut away from the building in an unrealistic way. Also, when I blew up some random explosive barrles at the bottom of a grain silo the whole thing just turned into dust and dissapeared, which is just pathetic. To be honest, the whole destructive cover system is worse than the partly physics-based one in the PS2's Red Faction and only marginally better than the scripted one in the PS2 and Xbox's Black.

Now don't try and argue "yeah well a truely physics based destruction system will never happen on current-gen" then you're an wee bit of a simpleton because the new Red Faction 3 will have one in, Crysis has one for smaller buildings and for the trees and bushes and World in Conflict has one for vegetation, all buildings and even on the ground. Aside from the destruction system, the game is just dull and unexciting and it's only real high-point is the fact the cutscenes are well written, well acted and are actually funny.

Secondly, I've played the Ninja Gaiden 2 demo and it's not dissapointing, because I wasn't expecting it to be good. The only thing that makes it better than Devil May Cry 4 is that it's got really fun and over-the-top gore. But that's it. Other wise it's exactly the same game that even has the same sound effects and the same graphical style. The thing that sets it apart from Devil May Cry, apart from the gore however, is that the graphics are rubbish. All in all I find this genre of gaming a waste of current-gen systems' power.

UPDATE: I've played a wee bit of Bad Company online and I have to say it's classic Battlefield. In other words I'm sure it's great online but I'll probably never know because it takes about half an hour to get into a game, then the game is either fantastically laggy or you disconnect due to an error and then EA blames you for it. Oh yeah, and these are the worst controls in any FPS ever; who's great idea was to put crouch on the right stick? And which imposile is responsible for the helicopter controls. Man, the helicopter controls in that Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat were better...and a tiny team of like five guys built that part of the engine from scratch and it was so good EA bought it off them!

Wow, I wish something truely good would come out, even in the cinema just to stop me writing ranty blogs. I enjoy a rant but to be honest I'm getting a bit sick of them. Oh yeah, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots comes out next week! Huraah! And then The Dark Knight soon after! If I was playing Counter Strike: Source right now I'd probably say something like "WOOT"!

So lately I have begun to play, and become addicted to, The Movies, the PC game that allows you to run a movie studio, its stars and its films.

Basically it's an incredibly detailed version of Theme Park World with large elements of The Sims thrown in. I really enjoy this game because it's massively challenging and deeply involving right from the start. The only issues I have with it are that, from the years 1920 to around 1960 I was top of the charts in everything and winning all the awards...and then my amazing actors, actresess and directors had to retire and now I'm left with a bunch of young hippies and I'm failing miserably. Basically the game is a wee bit too difficult. However, I'm going to invest in the expansion pack which adds a hell of a lot to the game (and it's only £5 on Game).

In other news I've played a lot of Rock Band recently. Overall I think it's great but, again, I do have some issues with it. Firstly, I despise the guitar, mabye I havn't had enough time with it but I can't stand the new picking and the buttons lower down on the neck (the classic buttons, not the solo ones) feel really cheap and flimsy to me and the neck is far too geometric. Secondly, I love singing the songs I know, even if I don't like them that much, but singing the song I've never heard before is a boring and embarrasing experience. DRUMS ARE AMAZING!

Sean out.

...please, for the love of God, do not see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, it's probably one of the worst films I've ever seen - right up there with Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (what the hell is that name about, by the way?)...but at least the action in that film was good!

I'll try my best not to include spoilers but I probably will at some point. But who cares anyway because this film is so boringly predictable you'll know the plot after the first ten minutes.

The Good:

They've kept Harrison Ford as Indy Jones and he's pretty much the only good actor, or actress, in the entire film.

The direction is good enough but, wait a second, isn't this supposed to be directed by Steven Spielberg? It certainly doesn't show.

The credits! (JOKEZ! LOL jACk CaRTWRiGHt)

The Bad:

The special effects were terrible, I could've done better on Microsoft Paint.

The acting was terrible apart from Harrison Ford and a passable performance by that little kid (who apparantly is like 19...who knew?) who was in that other terrible film, Transformers.

The plot was dull and predictable and to top it all off is all about ALIENS. Yes you read correctly, aliens. Aliens that make the film look like a trailer for ALIENS vs Indy Jones.

Super-clever ants that make a tower out of their own bodies.

Woman who knows there's a tree over the edge of the cliff.

Idiots who can't work out the riddle, "three times it falls" when they're on the Amazon River.

Multipurpose Crystal Skull that looks like something you'd buy in one of those creepy gothic decorations shops (there's one in the Trafford Centre...it's a weird shop; they sell goblets shaped like dragons).

Anything and everything else that's good in any other film that hasn't already been listed above.

I'm sorry about the terrible, bullet-pointed review but I got up early because I misread my clock and my mind isn't quite working yet.

Basically though, a terrible film...well, to be more correct it was a bad film until the ending which turned it into a terrible film.

4/10

PS. Incase you were wondering why I woke up early, it was because I was having a scary dream about getting eaten by ants...but then for some reason I ended up in a talent show at school singing Harry Connick Jr.'s Recipe for Love...yeah actually, that bit of the dream wasn't so bad!

...of PC gaming.

For those of you who have known me for some time, you'll know that before I bought my Xbox 360 I was an avid PC gamer with a terrible PC...so I gave up and became a boring console person!

Times are changing though as they did in September 2007 and I'm in the process of heading back into the ultra-nerdy realm of PC's. 'Why?' you might ask. Well, assuming my brother goes ahead with his plan of buying a new laptop, I'll be getting his old one that, even though it is a good three years or so out-of-date (in gaming terms) it's still double the power of my PC. Don't worry console compadres, I'll still be playing 360 mainly but I'll just be doing a lot more PC gaming than I used to.

I'm not too bothered about graphics when it comes to playing PC games, I would just love to have a computer that can play the game I have now without the ten minute loading times, terrible draw-distances and horrific frame-rate.

Mainly I plan to play the awesome Half-Life 2 modification Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat. Insurgency is based around an incredible level of realism that is un-accomplishable in commercial gaming and is easily the most well-made and professional mod I've ever played which really makes you feel like you're playing a retail game instead of some cheap mod a few nerdy individuals hastily put together.

Other games I plan to play (and buy, in some cases) are Battlefield 2 and Company of Heroes (a Second World War RTS from the same people as Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War).

Oh, and in other news that handily ties in with this, Steam, the download software that powers all of Valve's games (Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike: Source ect.) has decided to give me Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2, in other words The Orange Box, free of charge for no reason I can see. I already own these games on 360 so I'm not exactly excited to play them but it's still pretty neat to get free stuff! I just hope they don't disappear for no reason as quickly as they came!

...is probably the best thing in any video game. Ever. No joke.

For those of you who havn't seen the Robert Di Niro and Al Pacino film, Heat (1995, directed by Michael Mann), the famous - and frequently copied, shoot-out scene can be found here.

*Mini spoilers!*

The bank heist mission, blatantly based off the bank robbery and following shoot-out in the movie Heat, is easily one of the greatest moments in video-gaming I have yet to encounter. It's all done perfectly well; you're given an M4A1-Carbine for the first time on this mission (the weapon used in the clip linked above) and it sounds almost exactly the same as in the film, you're not allowed to begin the mission until you have a nice suit, tie and shoes and you're carrying big bags of money out of the bank - just like in the film.

After robbing the bank, the fight takes you outside into the streets where you have to fight so many cops and it's fantastically cinematic with the brilliant animations that GTA IV has to offer (the way the cops go down when they're hit is sadistically great, and even better is the way they try to limp or crawl away from the fight). Eventually the mission goes off-film and you have to escape into a subway.

What happened to me later though (and this was entirely unscripted and purely by chance) during the car-chase segment of the mission was really quite amazing. I stole me and the boys an Audi-****four-by-four for the getaway and, breaking one roadblock onto one of Liberty City's many huge bridges, I felt quite chuffed with myself...until a police car rolled our get-away vehicle which created another large firefight in the middle of the bridge, eventually though I managed to comandeer a police car with a bust tyre and slip away through a multitude of alleyways. It was soooo much fun and really was some of the most 'edge-of-your-seat' action I've ever undertaken in a video game.

Yep, this one mission has pretty much boosted the score of the final review.

...it's good, but it's not the messiah.

I think I would like this game a hell of a lot more if it wasn't raved about so damn much. Generally the game is very good indeed but a few issues have nearly messed it all up for me. One is the cover system that, in open areas, works great most of the time but on one mission in an abandoned hospital that has corridors so narrow they havn't been seen since Doom, the cover system pretty much breaks down and Niko constantly takes cover on the wrong walls and the turning speed is so slow that when you're getting shot in the side from branching corridors you're dead before you can turn to face the enemy.

The phone thing is cool but I don't understand why everyone thinks it's so amazing. The mission are generally fun and even though most of them are "go here, kill this dude and steal this thing" it never gets boring for some reason. Most of the time I like the new cops system that makes getting away on foot much easier but in a fast car it can be way to easy to just drive in a straight line really really fast for a few miles, take a few random turns and hey presto the FBI have completly lost you.

Overall though the game is pretty great and is looking to get an 8.5/10 (pushing a 9).

...for those of you who have LIVE you may have noticed that in the occasional times I'm not playing Call of Duty 4 with Ben, David and Matt I've had a go at Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (gotta give it its proper name!).

So here's the review.

In other news, though still gaming related, I've recently been listening to the soundtrack from Final Fantasy VII and I must say I've always loved it, but listening to what I could find on the 'ol Limewire (around 30 tracks...and that's less than half of the whole score) in chronological order is fantastic. If you can get hold of a few of the tracks they're definitly worth a listen, even if you're not a fan of the game. Seriously, collectivly it is easily the best soundtrack for a game ever (I say collectively because some games have better individual tunes, for example I feel that Metal Gear Solid 2's and Halo 3's theme tunes are better than the FFVII theme tune but FFVII has the best overall soundtrack by far).

You can get some free midi files of the soundtrack here if you're really interested although they're not as good as the originals.

Hey, just wondering what 'yall think of my new banner. I made it at the same time as the previous one but someone told me that this one wasn't as good. However, just this minute Ben told me this one looks better so now I'm using it. What's your opinion?

In other news, check out Ben's profile; he has a sweet new banner and blog header AND user picture courtesy of your truely. Take a look! If anyone wants a banner, blog header or anything else done just ask, I really enjoy doing it.

Sean out.

Howdy all.

Just finished watching the Gametrailers exlusive footage of Gears of War 2 gameplay so here's what I think (please note that obviously I havn't played the game and everything in this blog is impressions gathered from early gameplay footage):

Sadly for me, this game actually looks pretty good. Now I despised Gears of War - I just didn't understand what people saw in it, to me it was a graphically superior game to anything else but the gameplay was slow, boring and repetetive and the game had far too many bugs, especially considering it had probably the most patches out of any 360 game. Gears of War 2, however, looks to have taken my thoughts into account, which is strange because pretty much everyone in the world thinks Gears of War had sunshine shining out of it's big Locust ass.

Firstly, the game looks amazing and in comparison you can see that the original Gears had a fairly horrible sort of glaze over the screen all the time (everything looks paled out in daylight and later on everything is glazed over with red ink...for some reason), this has been ironed out though and from what gameplay I've seen the graphics look far more realistic, sort of like the similar graphical upgrade from Ranbow Six: Vegas to Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 where-by very little was done to improve textures and character models but big changes to lighting made the game look much improved.

More in line with gameplay, Gears 2 looks far more epic, now this might be because I've seen the opening level which is based around a huge assault on a large city (who knows, the game might become boring four on four fights like the preivious game was the whole way through) but I find myself doubting that. There are tanks rolling along the ground, multiple helicopters in the air, giant Locust beast all over the place and sky is full of those nasty things that look like giant exploding sperm cells. At one section, although these enemies arn't really playing in the sense that they don't shoot back because they are more there for dramatic effect, you can see literally hundreds of Locuts marching along. There are definetly some new weapons in the game that look to actually hurt and kill the enemies in under 5000 rounds (unlike pretty much every weapon in the original) and there are some new combat moves, for example a downed enemy can be taken hostage and used as cover and then, when used, can have his neck snapped. Most interestingly, the animations look far improved especially in the famous chainsaw-department - instead of the enemies magically standing up or swiveling round to get chainsawed by you as they did in the previous game, the enemies will be killed depending on how they are standing relative to you. For example, and enemy facing away from you will be stabbed through the back, some enemies will grapple chainsaws with you which results in a button-bashing sequence to knock them back and then some enemies will go down similarily to the previos game.

All in all, Gears of War 2 looks like a huge improvement on the original game, I wouldn't say I'm exactly wetting myself for the November release date but if I've got some money at the time I'll definetly be picking this up.

So there you go, I like the look of Gears of War 2, there, laugh at me Ben. But don't say I'm not a fair gamer.

PS. Find the footage at www.gametrailers.com

Howdy all, it's been a while.

Firstly, I've finished Condemned: Criminal Origins in the company of Ben and Tom. Yes, we played it in one night...and a morning, from about 2215 hours until 0400 hours! Yeah, and I played the whole damn game, apart from little bits towards the very end. Yes, it appears a game gets scarier and freakier the longer you play it, the more tired you are and the less you have to distract you around the room. I found that when I played the first few levels on my own at home with the lights on and MSN beside me, the game wasn't scary at all. However, at Ben's house I was practically so on edge that at some bits I was just like "golly, take this Tom - you can play!" except with some stronger language.

The game its self is obviously a fantastically scary game. For that reason alone it gets into my good books because, not since playing F.E.A.R have I felt a game to be truly scary: I never found Silent Hill to be scary, it's just to weird to be taken seriously (I found myself just literally laughing at it most of the time) and Resident Evil hasn't been scary since the 3rd installment. In comparison to F.E.A.R, Condemned has far less jumpier moments (I can still remember when I nearly fell of my chair when that corpse smashed through the office blinds and windows), but what it does do is create a terrible sense of something scary going to happen and this mood is retained consistently throughout the game. This is where I felt F.E.A.R fell done for me; the game followed a perfect trend of combat, "dark corridors, combat, dark corridors, pant-wetting scary bit, end of level, repeat until story is finished". In Condemned however, even something so simple as a cluttered, poorly lit corridor can provoke you to turn the console off, or at least give the controller to a faithful companion. Now this may sound ridiculous, but the terrible feeling of impending fright can really mess you up...and this can only be a good thing.

Gameplay wise, the combat is at first fantastic (for those of you who don't know, Condemned is far more about using everyday industrial and domestic objects to smash your way through clever enemies rather than using the conventional first-person-shooter's firearms) but can get slightly repetitive as the game goes on, for example, later on in the game I tended to find myself throwing blocking out of the window and just going for the mentality that if I hit the enemy enough and quickly enough I'd kill him before he (or she) could do to much damage to me. This is me on "Easy mode" though, so I doubt I would be able to use the same tactic on any other difficulty. That said, the combat is still worryingly satisfying and suitable gory which is always great in a horror game. The only really annoying things in the game are that it can be unsurprisingly easy to get lost in a lot of the environments, especially when they are really dark. The other irritating feature in the game is that everything seems to be based on looking for a particular type of weapon to open a particular type of door. This makes sense if all you've got with you is a metal metro-station sign covered in the blood of psychos and you need to get through a locked wooden door, but being told to go and find a fire axe when you've got a pretty hefty sawn-off shotgun in your hand that could more than easily blast the door into splinters is just plain annoying.

Overall though, if you can find a cheap copy of Condemned somewhere, which isn't difficult at all, I think you should defiantly give it a go...especially if you hate horror games - that makes it even better!

8/10

My next (and much smaller topic, you might be pleased to know) is that I've played a rather dull level of Army of Two while at Ben's the next morning. Now don't get me wrong, I played it the way it's meant to be played; Coop, but it was still an unsatisfying experience. As the game loaded up I was worrying that I'd actually find it fun, or at least funny, but almost sadly I didn't. The level we played took us to those good old Afghans who needed to be completely wasted by our PMC friends. Now, the first thing I noticed about the game was that it appeared to be almost an advertisement for making your own, or joining a mercenary group; you get to be muscular, you get to be cool, you get golden "pimped" weapons that look like something from a Sci-Fi film and all those poor (in the money sense) military bone-heads do is bark orders and then give you huge sums of government cash for killing Arabic folk. What a job! Despite their huge sums of cash though, the Army of Two seem not to have the funding to buy two parachutes between them...as such they ride in a rather suggestive position on a single chute. How...um...manly?

Now I know I'm not supposed to take this game seriously because EA are trying the whole, "look, we're cool; we can make funny games" thing on us (take a look at Battlefield: Bad Company if you want another example) so I'll talk about the game from a gameplay point, rather than moaning about the hidden government message or the military inaccuracies. Right...gameplay...gameplay...what gameplay!? This game plays like a PS2 shooter; I've seen a better cover system in Operation Winback (N64 and PS2)! The shooting is dull and un-involving - basically all you have to do is point and shoot and that's all there is to it, which might be fine as this is a funny light-hearted game (yeah right) but it's just plain boring.

So there you go, Army of Two is a boring and pretentious game.

6/10 from what little I've played.

Finally, just today I saw Iron Man which, especially seeing as Iron Man is a Marvel comic (and I absolutely despise Spiderman, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four), is surprisingly good. I won't reveal any secrets but I didn't really enjoy the ending, however the rest of the film was fairly decent, fun, and definitely worth my £5 and 2 hours time. Strangely for a Marvel comic, the hero in Iron Man has no superpowers (and therefore he wasn't caught up in some experiment or nuclear explosion like every other Marvel hero was) but only a lot of money, much like Batman's Bruce Wayne (a DC superhero, and my favorite). The special effects were really quite special, the dialogue was good enough and the acting, although nothing special, was decent enough for the film. Also, the film was surprisingly funny, especially to an adult audience with most jokes being about business and sex. Most of all, I enjoyed the themes the movie explored, chiefly weapon research and development, weapon sales and the morals of it all. Interestingly, the logo of the protagonist's weapon company, Stark Industries looked very much like the logo of Northrop Grumman, a major fighter aircraft manufacturer (creators of the recently decommissioned F-14 Tomcat series and the now famous B2 Spirit, more commonly known as the Stealth Bomber).

All in all, a decent superhero film that is definitely worth seeing. Yes, even you should see it, Joe.

7.5/10

Yep, I've redone my profile, still keeping with the Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway theme though.

My new profile-style uses much more recent screenshots and has an overall brighter feel. Much less depressing than my previous style!

I hope you'll agree that these in-game screenshots are really quite good; perhaps this will be the first game to have truely better graphics than Gears of War (and need I mention that this game is hella more complicated, design-wise, than Gears)?

Regardless of what you think of the game though, post your praise/recommendations/love/hatred/mad ramblings here. All feedback much appreciated.

...Grand Theft Auto IV?

Sure, I'll probably steal...*ahem*...borrow this game off somebody when they're done but to be honest, I don't see what the fuss is about. Obviously I'll HAVE to play it at some point or feel like I've missed out on the most important thing in my young life, and I'll admit that the online play intrigues me (though like most online games it might well suck), but I didn't really like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas all that much.

Grand Theft Auto III was amazing, one of favourite games ever and, although it might be down to the fact I was young, I played that game solidly for months...and I didn't even do any of the missions in the game! Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was similarily very good and with a fantastic sound track to back it up (and the addition of aircraft, which those who know me well will know that I believe that to be a boost to any game) made for a great game. San Andreas, however, will never stand out to me as the perfect 10 that everyone seemed to believe it to be. Although it had an amazing soundtrack like the other titles and that, I'll admit, it was a better game as far as the shooting and scale of the game was concerned, the whole "yo yo well 'ard gangster" theme never appealed to me so I never thought the story line was as funny.

That's just my reasons for not expecting my mind to be blow by GTAIV (although I do have a great soft-spot for Russians) but I'm sure you'll all go crazy at me now for suggesting that I would review San Andreas has a 7.5, but that's my opinion.

Sorry about the overly long title for this blog!

I recently succumbed to the extortionately priced Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack which, although they've extended support to the game-modes I like, is a big disappointment.

Firstly, as I've already mentioned, you only get four maps (one of which can only be played on a game-mode nobody goes on), which is no way near the value of 800 Microsoft Points. You might say, "Well how does money affect this review of downloadable content"? But I figure that a very good piece of content should also have good value for money, which this map pack certainly does not.

The first map I played, Broadcast, is easily the best map in the pack. It is set in the television centre from the first mission in the campaign (not counting the SAS prologue). It features a fairly large outdoor car park area and a few outlying buildings, a high roof section on the main building, a huge central room full of office cubicles and televisions and many smaller rooms around the interior of the main building. This map is fantastic for the Counter-Strike style Search and Destroy game mode, with the bomb locations being cleverly placed, one of them below a skylight allowing for defensive fire from the roof. Also, it is a very balanced map that is as easy to defend as it is to attack, and that's the key to a good Search and Destroy map. The only issue with that gamemode is that people tend to avoid the central office room like the plague thanks to its flimsy cover which can make the map feel a little wasted. The map is equally good on Team Deathmatch as well for those who aren't fond of the more tactical gamemodes.

The second of the maps, China Town, is by no means a bad map but it's hardly amazing. The map consists of a small open area that leads into the district and then a really quite random assortment of buildings with an excessive amount of alley ways. There are some wider roads and some courtyard areas but a prolonged stay in those areas demands death. This seemingly maze-like layout (coupled with a very basic map that shows little of the interior of buildings) quickly gets you lost, especially if you play the Hardcore game modes that gives you no Heads-Up-Display. The map does have some fantastic windows perches for defence in Search and Destroy but you better bring some Claymore mines with you or you'll find yourself stabbed in the back frequently. These great spots may be great for defending but they can make the attacking really too difficult and the defending far too easy which can ruin this map for Search and Destroy. Team Deathmatch is far more fun on this map but with the lack of direction that is found in Search and Destroy the map can be even more difficult to navigate than it already was.

The final map (I don't count Killhouse because I'll never probably play it) is Creek, this map looks amazing with its lush vegetation and beautiful waterfall. Snipers will love this map and pretty much everyone else will despise it. The map was promised to include an extensive underground cave system for those who prefer assault rifles and machineguns but in reality this turned out to be a ten meter long cave that leads from one spawn into the creek...hardly the frantic underground arena I was expecting. As a result you're forced above ground, but you better crawl because the moment you pop your head up above the grass you're going to get sniped. Every time. Search and Destroy can be fantastic on this map with some really decent teamwork and use of smoke grenades, but judging from past experiences with all the bone-heads playing Call of Duty 4 this will very rarely happen. In such frequent circumstances attacking is nearly impossible, also owing to the fact that all of the defending snipers know exactly where and what to keep there sights trained on but the attackers have absolutely no idea.

A low point of the pack is that, at the moment, the maps are not integrated with the current game modes and you have to search for them individually, this means you play the same three maps over and over again which can quickly get boring. Luckily, the maps are soon to be integrated into the rest of the game though when this happens there will be lots of people getting kicked from game lobbies for not having the maps. Perhaps this is why they are being integrated, not to help us who have already bought the maps but as an incentive for the people who are yet to buy them. How low.

Value: 4/10

Quality: 7/10

Longevity: 5/10 at present, a probable 8/10 when the maps are seamlessly integrated.

Overall: 6/10

...are pointless and extortionately priced.

Four maps. Three maps that can only be played in Team Deathmatch and Tactical Game Modes. One map that can only be played in Team Tactical and Cagematch. 800 Points. Ridiculous.

First off, for the equivalent of 800 Points I could almost buy the whole of Tekken 5 on PS3 or the new Mass Effect expansion pack.

Secondly, the maps can only be played on a specific "Variety Map Pack Team Deathmatch" gamemode or a "Variety Map Pack Tactical" (where a random tactical gamemode is chosen) gamemode. The forth map can also only be played on a random cycle with all the other maps on Cagematch (one on one deathmatch) and Team Tactical (three on three game with a random tactical game mode chosen). Also, you can only pick these searches if everyone in your party has forked out the 800 Points. So, one map you'll probably never get to play because no one pays Cagematch and with Team Tactical (which is designed to be played with close friends) you'll have to make sure all of your mates have got the maps.

My biggest problem with the maps, however, and this is why buying them would be so pointless for me, is that Hardcore Team Deathmatch (Team Deathmatch with far less health and no HUD) and Hardcore Search and Destroy (Counter-Strike style gamemode based on attacking and defending with no respawns with far less health and no HUD) aren't supported by the new maps and those, along with the occasional game of Team Tactical if the circumstances fit, are the only game modes I play.

What a disappointment.

UPDATE: The maps now support Hardcore gamemodes! Yey! They might still be overly priced, but at least now I've got a reason to play them.

UPDATE: The new maps will now be integrated into normal gamemodes as of next week. Why this wasn't revealed upon release I don't know, I'm sure a lot more maps would've been sold if that was the case.