I am trying to keep this up! I just lead a boring life

I’ll write a big update this week I promise.

World Of Warcraft ‘more addictive than crack cocaine’ as teenager suffers convulsions after 24-hour-long game

Is the title of a article I read over at the daily mail website.

According to the Sweden’s Youth Care Foundation World of Warcraft is

the most dangerous game on the market

The warning comes after a Swedish boy of 15 collapsed after playing it for for 24 hours earlier this month.

Hospital doctors diagnosed an epileptic-type seizure brought on by sleep deprivation, lack of food, and too long a stretch of concentrated game playing. He has made a full recovery.
- extract from the daily mail article

I can totally understand where these people are coming from. I played World of Warcraft for 2 years on and off, and I spent a ridiculous amount of both time and money on it.
I’ve not played for a few months now, and every time I stopped playing before I always started playing again when some new feature arrives or an expansion comes out.
I was always hesitant to uninstall the game from my PC, because of the huge amount of time it takes to install and patch again.
This time I uninstalled it completely, so I could reclaim the hard drive space it was taking up. 12+gig is a lot of space.

In a slightly less addictive, but no less fun turn of events I’d like to share this video of “LittleBigContra” a level created for LittleBigPlanet for the PS3.

I’m going to get on playing though these levels now!

Okay, so I’ve not posted in a couple of weeks.
What have I been up to you might wonder, in all honesty, I’ve been busy as hell during the weeks, and trying to relax at the weekends and haven’t found the time or any interesting content to write about. However it seems like about time I gave my input on something so I’ll start with some recent news articles.

The most annoying of all the news I’ve been reading is the mass coverage on “The Pirate Bay” trials that are currently ongoing. Fair enough it’s a big deal to pirates around the world, but honestly the ammount of press this trial is getting you would think that they murdered someone.
Also some of the quotes I’ve been reading from the courtroom make me feel ill.

“When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the Prosecutor. “We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “We use AFK.” “IRL?” questioned the judge. “In Real Life,” the Prosecutor explained to the judge.
“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK – Away From Keyboard.” “Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”

TorrentFreak

The fact that internet acronyms are being used in courtrooms is just stupid.

In a more heartening story, the EU are currently filing an anti-trust lawsuit against Micro$oft forcing them to bundle 3rd party web browsers with Windows.
Now, at first that sounds like an excellent plan, however if Microsoft opt’s to bundle several browsers with Windows when it ships, that’s going to be a pain uninstalling all those extra programs on a fresh install. However, if you get the option upon install if you want a different browser instead of Internet Explorer then I for one welcome the change.
Microsoft get’s hit with antitrust lawsuit
Mozilla join the fun
Google want some action too

Okay with those out of the way, I have a few other things to talk about – http://www.l4d.com/, Wanted, and some news about me.

First off Left4Dead – I decided that I would take advantage of Valve’s half price weekend, as I was sceptical about the game being worth £30 and I was pleasantly surprised, for £13 I got a good few evenings of fun. The enjoyment of the game varies greatly based on Difficulty and the Skill of your team mates. I’ll tell you now playing Expert mode with a newbie on your team isn’t at all fun; let’s just say there were 38 friendly fire incidents by him, and the rest of the team had 2 each, perhaps just because he was frustrating to play with.
I think the best part about Left4Dead is the art style, it’s far less cartoony than Team Fortress 2, and all of the post processing makes the game look insanely gloomy and dim.
I found an article about the graphic style on the official blog.

From watching many playtests, we found players instinctively moved towards well-lit areas. Simplifying the lighting helped the gameplay (the player is drawn to the warm glow down the street, and not distracted by unnecessary light sources); the fiction (this entire city block’s been abandoned—something’s not right here); and the aesthetics (by simplifying the visual information, we’ve given a focal point for the eye to follow).
Left4Dead Blog

There’s a nice gameplay video for you to enjoy.

Next up, I took some time to watch the film “Wanted” on Blu-Ray. Which contrary to my first thoughts was actually an alright film. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov of Nightwatch and Daywatch fame, and starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie. Some of the action scenes were ridiculous but at the same time so cool you cannot fathom being as cool.

Possibly the best “transformation” of a character I’ve seen for a while. Look closely at the keys flying incase you missed the “hidden” message.

Lastly, I’d just like to say I’m pretty damn happy with how my Graphic’s project has turned out, and that I’ve got an interview at Bournemouth Arts Institute for next year.

Update, according to the UGO Gameblog, one of the control settings is very simmilar to Call of Duty 4, however the couch button has remained R2, which seems weird.

So I just finished the Killzone 2 Demo. The following was my though process as I played the game.
1. Starting the demo – “Holy shit the graphics are lovely”
2. Taking my first step, and killing my first Helgan – “Holy shit these controls are terrible, how am I not dead”
3. Trying to change the controller setup – “Why do none of these control methods make sense”
4. Trying to find the button mapping for the controller – “wait, I can’t change each button to something else?”
5. Finishing the demo – “This looks so good but if only I could actually play”
6. Opening up Call of Duty 5 – “Thank god you have a intuitive control system.”

Seriously, I don’t know what the developers were thinking when they decided it would take holding L2 to lock onto some cover, the left stick upwards to peek over the cover, Holding R3 in to aim (whilst moving to actually move your sight) and R1 to fire.
That’s 4 buttons to preform a simple action.
As opposed to pushing X to duck behind something, pushing X again to stand, Holding L1 to aim, and Pushing R1 to fire.

Picture from UGO’s gameblog

Don’t get me wrong, this game looks beautiful but there is no way I’m going to shell out money for something that is a chore to play.

ps. I regret playing World of Warcraft.

I got my PS3 on the basis, that Metal Gear Solid 4 would be the most amazing game experience ever created, and two an extent it was – It finished of the series well, and tied up many of the loose ends in the story. It had nice graphics, and brilliant MGS style gameplay. However after finishing the game some big things stood out to me as drawbacks.
The gameplay that was put into the game was much more action based than the original metal gear.
On my first play though I noticed that it was easier and quicker to shoot your way though the game in FPS mode rather than sneak around. Another drawback was the extremely long load time, although at the start of each chapter of the game the disc mentioned “installing” when you went to replay another chapter it would have to “install” again.

After purchasing Metal Hear Solid I became addicted to Call of Duty 4, and then Later Call of Duty 5, both of which were great games, albeit the terrible character models in Call of Duty 5 (fuck treyarch you’re damn lucky you put Nacht der untoten in.)

Being a big fan of Killzone, Great story, Great Characters.
The gameplay was also really good – Possibly the first FPS I played that allowed you to “Stealth Kill” enemies when you had not been detected.
It had it’s bugs, and the multiplayer was quite poor (3 maps, what were they thinking)
If you haven’t seen or played Killzone 1, take a look below at the clips.

Killzone 1 Introduction

Introduction of heavy weapons specialist Rico Velasquez

After reading the article and watching the video below I was pretty much in the mode for Killzone 2
The graphics look exceptional, the gameplay however looks slightly lacking – perhaps worth a rent before you decide to buy it.
However if it turns out this is another fantastic game?
I’ll be finally glad I brought my PS3.

Written review by Wired.com
Video review by Gametrailers.com