“Alone in the Dark will provide a complete next-generation, action-packed experience within a highly detailed, free-roaming environment, featuring a mixture of astonishing real-time physics and full environmental interaction.” Was found on some website through google, assuming this was something for the press.

Okay, first things first. This game looks pretty damn sweet, although most of said sweetness comes from deep shaders and cinematic lighting (That is, most of the time, off), so it’s debatable how good it actually looks. suffice to say that they’ve done a good job, and it has a strong polish to it.

The action in the game generally centers around fighting off a number of enemies (read: zombies and other similar creatures) with whatever weapons come to hand, although most enemies can only be killed outright by throwing their body into some flames, or setting it on fire. The number of weapons to use is quite interesting, although they are all very similar (explosives and flamethrowers in essence)

The Inventory system is limited, which has had some negative press but personally I like it. The lack of space often means that you will have to make on-the-fly decisions about whether to take an extra first aid spray or to grab another molotov cocktail - either of which can be just as useful considering that first aid spray is only useful outside of combat.

When the player takes damage in combat, they receive wounds that have to be fixed with either first aid spray or bandages. I’m not sure whether you can die outright from your wounds (although one that is hemmoraging can kill you if you don’t fix it), although as you receive more you are unable to take as much damage when fighting off enemies in combat before being killed (which can make a huge difference)

A feature that is underplayed in this game is the ability to blink (yes, blink) when in first person. If you have acid or steam sprayed at your face, your vision will get clouded or overlayed and you won’t be able to see until you blink it out of your eyes. While a neat feature, most of the game will be spent in third person (guns are almost useless as far as I know) and the result is that you won’t actually notice this cool effect most of the time, which is a real shame.

The agreement will give border authorities the right to search through your laptops and MP3 players for possible infringement and to seize the devices, fine, and imprison you. This puts at threat, almost all Internet users, and certainly anyone between the ages of 16-24 with an Mp3 player.

If it becomes law getting caught with illegal files could label you as a criminal and forcefully disconnected from the Internet. “ACTA is a Pirate Bay killer,” says the team behind the whistle blowing website Wikileaks. Which is where the content of the agreement, first came to light in may.

The speed of pogression is remarkable for an international law. But the lack of depolomacy and public debate has watchdogs and campainers alarmed.

You should also worry about a bunch of amendments to telecoms laws currently going through the European Parliament’s committee system. Several of which have been criticized by those campaigning for a more open net. Which is one thing about the Internet that I like (apart from gaming of course).

Hot damn that looks like fun.

The last Spiderman game I played was the original Spiderman for the Xbox (I think). It wasn’t exactly amazing but this seems to hark back to what I loved doing the most in that game, finishing a web-swing then planting two feet into an enemies face. That’s how I started every combat, it’s still how I start every combat in Marvel Nemesis: Rise of The Imperfects when I play as Spidey. I really hope they don’t include a “web meter” which is a bit like a sprint meter or some such. I hope it has infinite web and judging buy the amount you seem to use in the combat, it’d better have or Parker is gonna end up being scraped off a New York sidewalk.

I’m definitely looking forward to this game and I hope it stays as good as it looks. Though getting better would be preferable. Go dev team! :D

P.M.

Fortunately I’ve bought it for the PC, which makes it immediately better. However, since Microsoft is run by a team of idiots that’s large enough to inhabit the moon, they had to bring their own brand of cocking it up to the table. They had to bring in the “Game(s) for Windows - Live” malarkey. Honestly Microsoft, why do you have to take a good idea and turn it into a device of Satan. The “Windows - Live” part of this game actually screws up one of the most important bits, the main menu. A game should not crash on the main menu, it should crash when there’s a bit too much happening at once, not while it’s just sitting there.This is one of few complaints I have about GoW but it’s probably the biggest. I really hate it when Microsoft do things like this, why can’t they do it like everyone else and just have simple accounts with simple server lists, it makes so much more sense.

Anyway, I should really get to talking about the game rather than about the idiots who published it.

In GoW you play a character called Marcus Fenix who’s been slung in the joint because he disobeyed orders at the beginning of the war against the Locust (who are surprisingly humanoid). Thankfully you’re broken out of jail by your good buddy Dominic Santiago and are quickly pressed back into military service. You’re mission for the first half of the game is to deploy a device called “The Resonator” which will map all the underground Locust tunnels. The objectives in the second half of the game are a little fuzzy and the story seems to meander around for several levels which is a bit disappointing. Of course, you probably didn’t buy/ weren’t thinking of buying this game for the story, you just saw a guy in armour and a gun with a chainsaw on the end of it and there you were, at the counter with the game in one hand, thirty quid in the other and a happy little smile on your face.

The gameplay in GoW is actually pretty refreshing, even now. The third-person perspective was a great idea and so was the interactive cover. You can hide behind practically anything in this game, and you actually properly hide. One quick push of the Space Bar and Marcus is up against a wall like a cheap hooker, though without the lady parts. A little thing that bugs me about the whole “One button to rule them all” thing is that if you’re “Roadie Running” (sprinting) and you pass too close to a bit of cover, Marcus will suddenly stick to it and you’ll either have to waste precious seconds getting him off or be killed by something large and ugly. Like most action games, Gears of War also contains a shitty vehicle section which can get pretty infuriating when you play it on your own and it’s almost as bad when you’re with a friend but it’s only one level so it doesn’t spoil the game too much.

Unfortunately I seem to be running out of things to say about this game. I guess it’s because I last edited it on June 4th, it’s now June 13th 0_o Oh well, lets talk about whether I enjoyed this game or not. Truth be told I did enjoy it but at only 18 to 20 hours of gameplay it’s a little on the short side, especially if you play it solid for a couple of days. The multiplayer isn’t as fun as it could have been with a pitifully small amount of servers with most of them being spawn-camp-tastic. There really needed to be larger multiplayer modes with a focus on more players, you really need more of everything in the multiplayer for it to become interesting. The Co-op campaign, which can be played online or offline is a fun aspect though as it means you can kick ass and take names with a buddy rather than just playing with yourself. The A.I. isn’t exactly smart so bringing along a friend is a better way to play the game and you can always chat or have little competitions like “Who can stick the most grenades” which can end in hilarity.

Overall, a good game with a weak story but fun gameplay. Also, be prepared to get pissed off by the Windows Live part of things, if you can survive that then you’ll probably do alright in the game. Buy it, if only to tide you over till a release your really looking forward to.

P.M.

I was a little dubious at first about this fourth instalment in the Indiana Jones series, mainly due to George Lucas’ poor attempts at finishing off the Star Wars saga using only CGI and Green Screen. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg has managed to keep Lucas on a short leash and there’s minimal use of CG in this film. It’s a good thing too since most films that are released now consist of mostly fake backgrounds that are a little hard on the eyes.

When the film finished I was left a little confused and I think this was due to the fact that I haven’t seen a film in this style for quite a long time. Crystal Skull actually went on a journey across half the world, there are always new environments and situations for the characters to encounter, not just the same stagnant places. There was actually an interesting story to follow and all the characters had their own motivations for being there, though the story could have been a little stronger.

The acting was great by everyone, except perhaps Cate Blanchett who’s accent slipped from Russian to English and the end of some of her lines which kind of impacted on her character and didn’t make her seem quite so evil. That was the one thing that irked me about this film, the baddies weren’t as dark or as evil as they could have been, there wasn’t the same sense of malice from the Russians as you got from the Nazis in the originals. Ray Winstone (Mac) kind of steals the show from Blanchett as the main evil character, though his motivation is purely selfish he just back-stabs so well. Harrison Ford has lost none of the charm that fits so well with Indy and the fact that he’s still doing all his own stunts brings more realism to the film. Shia LaBeouf was a great choice for the role of Mutt Williams and does much better acting than he did in Transformers. Karen Allen makes a return as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders though doesn’t add too much to the film.

Overall, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a good film, it’s not quite as good as the originals but then sequels never are. It’s a solid addition to the series and isn’t the total let-down that some critics said it was. Apparently Lucas wants to make more Indy films, though I think they should quit while they’re ahead. I’d recommend Crystal Skull but only if you’ve seen the other three as you might be left a bit confused by its return to “classic” sort of film making.

P.M.

These are a few videos now available of the creature creator.

Euroga

mer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9l02Ker0il0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GAHjDUlwEyk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7xJXpbjqahQ

IGN: (with commentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKYEmnElxY8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLg3VHFkGtc&eurl

There’s really not much more to add to Yahtzee’s thorough raping of this game in his review of Clive Barker’s Jericho.

I’ll give you a quick run down of the basics though, just so I have something to talk about.

You basically control a team of 7 retarded and obnoxious twats who are members of, and I quote: “An elite military team who specialises in the paranormal.” So they’re a bit like the F.E.A.R. team only less under-funded and without a guy who can slow down time and nail enemies to walls.

The story is apparently atrocious but fortunately I couldn’t experience any of it because the demo instantly thrust me into brown castle number one and gave me no explanation as to why I was fighting un-dead gladiators. 0.o

In this particular section of the game I was only controlling three members of the team, thank God. For some reason you have the ability to switch between your team members, which takes more time than I’d like it to and when you’re finally seeing through their eyes all they were looking at was a wall. The first character I started as was a female with a reasonable sized…gun. “Ok”, I thought, “I’ve got some kind of assault rifle here.” Oh how wrong I was. It turned out I was armed with a sniper rifle that had an under-slung grenade launcher.

“Wait a minute, we’re inside a building, a sniper rifle will be totally useless” I thought to myself. It was. I could have got more use out of a soggy ice-cream cone. Anyway, after figuring out the controls to switch characters, I chose the guy with the mini-gun. Memories of Team Fortress 2 flooded my mind as I walked through brown corridors hosing the un-dead with hundreds of round a minute. That is until I was inexplicably killed by a fire-ball that was apparently hurled by a set of stairs.

The first person camera is terrible, it’s constant bobbing means that half your shots go wide and the other half hit your team-mates who seem to always be two feet away from the enemies. Also, when you get hurt your screen gets covered with blood, dust, muck and fire for no apparent reason. It’s just an infuriating distraction that will most likely get you killed faster as you run blindly about looking for cover. The lack of any kind of health indicator doesn’t help this situation at all, it just makes it all the more frustrating.

Overall, this was an atrocious game. I can’t recommend it, I can’t even give it a score (for what little that means anyway). My advice, stay away from it. It has AIDs.

P.M.

This is just another great and free tool for webmasters to use. And while I wont be using it in its current form, its invaluable for someone without coding experiance to add ’social’ to their website. However I wonder sometimes when its going to come back to haunt us, perhaps if Google gets bought up and and everyones tools become pay to use. But I prefer to be optimistic, so I cant wait for Google to bring out more tools. The way things are going we’ll soon have every website interconnected and able to share friends from each one of them. I’m not sure this is something I’m particularity looking forward to, as I prefer to keep my real-life friends separate to my Internet friends.

I use a range of tools from google, all of which have helped me improve the website. These are some of the webmaster tools I use.

Analytics

Webmaster Tools

Website Optimizer

Custom Search

Iron Man

It’s amazingly hard to not like this film, it’s excellent.

I could stop there and let it lie but I wouldn’t be a very good reviewer if I did so I’ll have to soldier on. It’s really hard to critisize a film which has almost no faults. As this is also my first film review it’s probably going to meander a bit anyway and should be pretty short, thankfully.

Robert Downey Jnr. plays an excellent Tony Stark, his line are delivered with great timing and he really fits the part well. Man, this all sounds corny but seriously, he’s a great actor and does complete justice to the Tony Stark character. The visual effects are brilliant, Stark’s suit gets chipped, dented and broken which makes the film feel alot better because in the end Stark is just a man. A cool, rich, wisecracking man but a man none the less.

I’ve always been a fan of Iron Man ever since I watched the cartoon series, he’s a really awesome character because, despite not having super powers he can still has super strength, super speed and the ability to fly aswell as having some really cool gadgets in his suit. Seriously, what other superhero has a cell-phone in his suit?

Anyway, back to the review. I went into Iron Man hoping it wouldn’t be another terrible Marvel film (see. Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spiderman 3) and I came out knowing that it was one of the best Marvel films to date. This is probably because it was produced independently by Marvel and that’s great. The only thing that niggled me was the cameo by Stan Lee (he appears as Hugh Hefner of Playboy). That’s the one thing I don’t like about Marvel films, the Stan Lee cameos. Yes, we know you helped create all the Marvel characters but I don’t want to see you in every damn film, it was cool in Spiderman, now it’s just annoying.

So should you go see it? Well, I can’t tell you whether to go see it or not, that’s your decision. What I can do is say that I thought it was an excellent film that’s really enjoyable. I also think you should go see it ;)

I just hope that “The Incredible Hulk” is just as good.

P.M.

I blame my low marks on the fact that it is a physics module, as I hate physics. A lot. While I like the subject, I hate how education teaches it, as all it entails is remembering formula and lots of facts. I wish they would explain whats going on, rather than have you blindly following what they say.
In other news I have a Technorati Profile.