innovacious

FINAL EDIT BEFORE PUBLISHING: Holy crap thats a massive wall of text, did i type that much? Im not even finished, i think that will deffinetly do. I was getting carried away because this game made me fall in love with the stalker series again, i dont know why i stopped playing Clear Sky.

tl;dr – this game is awesome. And not the crappy “awesome” that has been thrown around for the past 20 years… Crisps are not awesome, they are crunchy! (holy crap, never thought i would make a dylan moran reference). The proper awesome, where something leaves you in awe. Anywho, now for the main event -

So, the third S.T.A.L.K.E.R game has been with us for a while now and ive already got 40-50 hours playtime under my belt. Been trying to write some sort of review for it but im finding it difficult. It keeps just turning into some kind of crappy walkthrough or a list of anecdotes. So i thought i would just stick with the anecdotes, the best thing about stalker games of course is the free roam and the way the world around you is dynamic. Anything can happen the weather and day/night cycle can also add alot of atmosphere to certain situations.

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<incoherent rant>

Your videos are not fun when you spend 50% of the time complaining about the youtube time limit and spending the other 50% making sure you are still below the time limit and commenting when you are near it. Just play the game, nobody cares about the time, play for as long as you want, when it goes over 11 mins (yes, the limit is actually 11 mins, not 10) then you ignore it and keep playing, you can split the video into 11 min segments at the end.

Dont edit the video so you do everything perfectly, and dont do test runs, thats just a video walkthrough, not a let’s play and are often less entertaining.

Dont act like its the first time youve played the game or the first time youve seen something when it clearly isnt, ive yet to see a lets player that can actually act and do it believably, it’s just annoying.

Dont drown out the game’s sound, the game is a major part of the let’s play, obviously, and it sucks when the viewer has to turn the volume up three times higher than usual to hear the actual game then get deafened by your voice, you need to find a balance between you and the game.

One of my fav Let’s Plays at the moment is gixG17’s Morrowind Let’s Play.

• It’s an awesome game
• He just plays, no being held down by time limits
• He talks about the game, his views, ideas and opinions on it, not about whatever you did last Tuesday
• He dosnt edit anything out. spending a whole 10 mins reading the quest log? May seem boring to some but he provides running commentaries and its nice to see all this from a different persons perspective
• He does this cool thing where you can see him in the bottom corner while he is playing the game. One thing you lose with just audio is body language, which can say a lot on its own.

</incoherent rant>

Ive probably missed something. That was fun though, been a while since ive had a proper rant. I still watch and enjoy a lot of Let’s Players that do the bad things i mentioned above, but its really annoying. Anywho, back to watching Let’s Plays! Enjoying ThatEnglishDude’s FEAR 2 Let’s Play at the moment.

This is awesome

That is all

Quick update, added a new page about the firefox add-on called stylish, you can get to it via the navigation at the top of the page… Alright, here, lazy people! Its basically gonna be a place where i can dump any styles i create for it, just a twitter one there at the moment. Anything i do use is purely made to suit my needs and tastes though so it will probably end up being useless.

In other news

Stopped playing oblivion, not really a big fan of a pure mage class, probably wasnt the best idea like i said. Went back to morrowind, started a stealth/theif/marksman like character. Its going pretty well considering this is the first time ive ever actually managed to get past seyda neen before getting bored, and ive had the game for god knows how long, a couple of years before oblivion was released. Im up to level 20 something (havnt played for a day or two now) and im really appreciating the game this time, i can deffinetly see why alot of people preferred it over oblivion, the depth and variety is so much better.

Anywho, thats it for now.

‘Splosion Man was released on XBLA today. Its a sidescroller where you control a “man” who “splodes”. Most of the buttons make you splode, which acts as a jump and an attack, if you havnt figured it out, splosion=explosion. It only costs 800ms points (about £7) but has 50 single player levels and multiplayer levels. Im not sure if multiplayer is co-op, or how levels differ, but the less than half of the single player ive played already is more than worth what ive paid for it. You should just watch this trailer, hosted by Giantbomb.com

There is also an amazing song in it, about donuts. He will also randomly say things almost incoherantly as you run around. Including “Get to the choppa”, plane noises while running with his arms out, monkey noises and insane laughing

Also, ive been ill, turns out its probably NOT swine flu, but needs to be treated the same just incase, so im quarantined in my home til friday. So, sods law, today i get a phone call about a job that starts tomorrow…

Old, i know, but still an amazing game, started playing it yet again. I own both the PC and 360 versions. I have all the expansions on the 360 version because thats the version i use to take it seriously, its too easy to fall into using console commands and modding the crap out of the game on the PC, so i use it just for that. So, this playthrough is gonna be on the 360.

I could carry on with these other saves, because (believe it or not) im not finished with them…

…but decided to start a new mage. Gone with an Altmer with the Mage sign and all the magic skills as major, probably not the best setup, some of the magic skills are so easy to level its not really worth having them as a major but meh, ill see how it goes.

;

sidenote: i really need to get a capture card so i can take screenshots/record videos on the xbox.

Been doing a quick catch up on a few games i missed and some new ones.

Tales of Monkey Island

Went back and started Curse of Monkey Island again, getting ready for the new one. Still probably the best art style of all the MI games, came across a few problems running it on Vista, but, the game is worth it, still not finished that yet because Tales of Monkey Island arrived. This game deffinetly still has the Monkey Island charm, although, it is easier than the previous games. Im still not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. There also seems to be less interaction and dialog than the old games although, there is still a hell of alot there, and its all top notch. This is also just the first chapter of five, and seems like it could just be an intro, things may pick up more in the following chapters. A package of all 5 chapters is available on steam, the other four unlock every month up til november.

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So, over the last month or so ive started playing WoW again, stopped playing WoW again and played Prototype (PC), Red Faction: Guerrilla (X360), Fallout 3 (PC) expansions/patches (or DLC as they like to call it these days), Americas Army 3 (PC), Sims 3 (PC), ArmA II (PC), Trine (PC), Overlord II (PC) and *shudder* Free Realms.

Free Realms was pretty bad, i decided to try it out because of all the publicity it was getting. Its an MMORPG, not really focused on fighting like most since its aimed at kids, one of the first skills i learned was about how to train a puppy. I guess, it is aimed at kids though, maybe if i was 6 years old again… one of my friends may have had a younger sister that might have enjoyed it…

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UPDATE: Finished the game.

Need more visitors to fullfil the attention whore in me, so lets do a mini review type thing.

Trine was released on the steam store yesterday, i highly recommed you try the demo and/or buy the full game. Apparently it can be found on PSN on the PS3 aswell. For the PC you could actually buy the disk, from a shop, but everywhere seems to be alot more expensive than steam.

Anywho, to the game. First of all, i havnt finished it, didnt start playing til very late and stopped at 1am so this is just a review of how its going so far. The game itself is a 3D sidescroller, you know, 3D graphics but you can only move on a 2D plane. Theres fighting with a variety of weapon (more on that soon), basic platofrming and some physics puzzles. It also has some RPG elements, with little green bottles you pickup for experience which you can upgrade skills with, you can also find useful equipment to boost stats and find new skills in chests throughout the game.

To begin with you get to play 3 characters, one after the other.

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