I'm a 21st Century Digital Boy, I don't know how to read but I got a lot of toys

You know how sometimes life hands you a lemon and you make lemonade? Well, gaming-wise anyway, this last week life handed me a bottle of lemonade. Not that cheap shit either, I'm talking 7-Up. With Vodka in it.

Firstly, there's my new friend Dead Space. HMV, in it's infinite quest to make no profit whatsoever, had the Limited Edition of Dead Space 2 (The one with Dead Space: Extraction) on the PS3 marked at £24.99. I've not really had much time on it just yet, so more on that next time.

Secondly, I've upgraded from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3 on the PC. I played it on the PS3 at the tail-end of last year and was very impressed in the open-endedness of what was essentially finally a true Sims game on a console, but as far as it burns me to say it, the PC version is still far superior. Initially there's the mouse controls, instantly accessible to a long time Sims gamer where the Joypad controls seemed overcomplicated and baffling at times.

Then there's the memory limit, restricting how many items you can place in your digital self's home. It's plagued console Sims games since day one, but was always honest about what it was. It the console version of The Sims 3 it was disguised as a fire-hazard meter, a name which made me wonder if it was prevalent in the PC version too. I was very relieved to find it isn't. Then there's the seamless transition between the neighbourhood and house views, eliminating the need for a loading screen, and finally the already copious amount of free user-made costumes and hairstyles available for download, compared with the EA-sanctioned £7.99-price tagged packs on the PSN store, and I kind of wonder why I even bothered with the console version at all.

The only gripe I have with the game itself (other than that obvious things, such as pets and weather effects, have been intentionally left out to make way for expansion packs later on) is that the aesthetics of the characters themselves are a lot more serious looking, away from the over-emotive, hyper-expressive look of The Sims 2's titular heroes, and in turn make them less endearing to me. Plus, every male Sim I try to make ends up looking like Jack Black, and all the women look like Down's Syndrome sufferers, but aside from that it's great. The Sims 2 isn't quite obsolete yet, one of the big thrills of The Sims for me is having multiple households going, and in The Sims 3 you can only have one playable family in each neighbourhood.

The console version isn't different enough from it's PC sibling to warrant owning both, so my second HMV trip saw me re-homing it for £23 of store credit (they were selling the game new for £27 too, it's as if they don't actually want to make a profit), which I put towards Split/Second Velocity on the XBox 360 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift on the PS3, both of which were on a '2 for £30' offer. Split/Second is excellent, I find myself actually really looking forward to playing it, and by trait I'm not a fan of racing games. It's not as good as Burnout really, but it's still got that same level of over-the-top mayhem, and the adrenaline rush of beating your opponent by two hundredths of a second is incomparable to any other feeling.
 

I haven't tried BlazBlue yet, but I've heard great things and I was a big fan of it's spiritual predecessor Guilty Gear. I've mainly got it to bridge the gap between the upcoming Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, which I bought last Friday. I'm not going to say much about MVC3, as I'm building to a video review that I'm hoping to have ready for next week's post. In true fashion though, me and Raz7el had a showdown over PSN, and just like Dead or Alive 4 before it, I tanned him pretty soundly. I'm just trolling you man, we were pretty evenly matched. At least we both looked like we knew how to play, unlike when we stunk at Street Fighter IV over XBox Live.

Deadpool, as well as being a useful character, also provides genuine comedy to the game

And to bring it all to an end this week, I finally finished God of War: Ghost of Sparta on PSP. Without giving away too much, the moral of the story is that nobody gets to kill a member of Kratos' family but Kratos. Otherwise, he just gets angry. Well, angrier.

Demo-lition - Plowing through the Dragon Age 2 demo!

Downloaded the Dragon Age 2 demo last night on PC and what can I say, it's Dragon Age but shiny and new!

Started off as a Mage, and this game is A LOT faster let me tell you, within the first 5 minutes I had notched up around 30 Darkspawn kills at least! You can still pause the battle though, so you don't really get overwhelmed, I found it more manageable  than DA:O, it just felt smoother giving commands to your party members saying that I didn't have a look at the tactics interface so maybe there will be no need to micromanage your team what so ever if that has been updated too.

Graphics are (Like I said at the start) shiny and new! Effects are more spectacular now, and characters now seem to have emotion on their faces too, plus the main character has............found a voice! I find you get more connected to a main character if they are more animated and involving, instead of just silence when you pick options from a list, in fact you can look at it more like Mass Effect now conversation wise, things aren't so grey anymore as in the first game, you can choose Nice - Funny/Sarcastic - Evil/Aggressive and investigate through conversation trees.........JUST LIKE MASS EFFECT. So you have a main character who has personality, and a beard.

So to sum up, I played the PC version, loved it, no slowdown or glitches that I found, played as a mage and it was very enjoyable. The ONLY problem I had is that everything I killed with my magic just exploded, which is great at first, but when EVERYTHING is exploding, you lose the novelty. Saying that it was the first 5 minutes of the game, and if you play the demo you will understand too that it won't be like that for the whole game.

I have recorded some footage from the demo for your viewing pleasure below, I was going to make it into a video commentary (I am thinking of creating a feature called DEMO-LITION where it is a commentary through a demo, just have to see how it would work) but alas my computer crashed when writing a summary of the review on notepad last night, then this morning when I actually recorded some audio the best describing words I used were "Good" and "Better than the first one" so I scrapped it, I was mucho tired!

Yo Dawg, I know you like Dragon Age II, so if you play Dragon Age II, i'll put more Dragon Age II in your Dragon Age II!

So I heard that if 1,000,000 people download the Dragon Age II demo, we all get free stuff for the game when it comes out. So it's win win WIN! Win because you will play the demo, win because you will have the game and WIN because you have free stuff.

Oh Bioware, like you had to bribe us to play the demo...You guys!

Return of the Prodigal Son

Hi guys and gals!

Sorry I haven't been here for what must be ages, but someone struck me down, and now I am back more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

I bring to you a gift, a gift of video! Hopefully you will enjoy the first video I have ever made....on the computer!

Let me know what you think, and also ideas on future videos, because damn, this shit is fun!

ENJOY!

In your bedroom at night with the lights off and your headphones on... everyone can hear you scream...

Like I said last week, I've grown tired of Fantasy RPGs of late, and felt that the well-above-average Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga deserved my attention at a time when I can bestow it fully upon the game. I even tried the simple, accessible Fable II (not a typo, I've just played Fable: The Lost Chapters and intended to play the three of them in sequence), but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. The heroic adventures of Nobhead (descendant of Arseface) will have to wait.

All the while, the soundtrack to my RPG lethargy came in the form of The Smashing Pumpkins' whingey teen anthem 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings', a song (and band) I absolutely abhor, yet one that worms it's way into your subconscious like the T-Virus. The vessel for this song? The TV advert for Dead Space 2, a game that was so far off my radar it might as well have been Women's Murder Club or something. I've had the original Dead Space for so long, and it must be said I have never liked it, I just haven't ever gotten rid of it because of it's poor monetary value (I bought it for a tenner a couple of years ago, I'd be lucky to get £3 back on a trade-in). The reason for my disdain was the lack of positive reinforcement for your actions as a player, every little thing you did had a negative impact on the story, and every cutscene was just one of your companions telling you to go somewhere and do something, and the other, a bratty annoying bint of a woman, telling you it won't work. Then you do it, and it doesn't work.

But the TV spot for DS2 made me want the game so badly, for no reason other than that I couldn't get Billy Corgan and his group of misfitted pricks out of my head. And I felt like, as it is such a major player in the still fairly niche Survival Horror genre, I should really like it. So Divinity II took a temporary bow and my trusty 360 Elite became the subject of nightmares for a few days. And I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Bulbasaur used Vine-Whip! It's not very effective...

Actually, that's a lie. There's this bit where you have to shoot asteroids out of the sky before they hit you, and that had me on the verge of snapping my controller in two through sheer rage. But apart from that, it was excellent. None too original (Think Half-Life's Gordon Freeman complete with Gravity Gun, fused with Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland, on board Red Dwarf, fighting Zombies, directed by Ridley Scott and you're pretty much there), but that hardly matters when you are so preoccupied with being terrified that you daren't take your finger off the aim button to press a switch. Later in the game, the developers seemed to have forgotten that the game was supposed to be scary, with the whole endgame taking place in broad daylight, but that's just cleverly there to lure you into a false sense of security before chucking the ending at you, which had everyone I've spoken to who's finished the game collectively shit their pants.

So I'm on board for DS2 now. I'll no doubt pick it up in a month or so, I was planning on getting the 360 version to continue my night terrors, but the prospect of a single disk, a free copy of Dead Space Extraction and some armour for Dragon Age II (which my wife is to purchase on the PS3), I'm being swayed to the PS3 version, but I'll see. Speaking of Dragon Age, the Archdemon finally fell last night. I've got Awakening, Witch Hunt and The Golems of Amgarrak to do before DAII, but for the minute I'm enjoying the light-hearted and simple Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Here at 24HG, if you ask us what the manliest game in the world is, chances are you'd be told Ghost Squad. Sega's Wii Shooter does have you high-five the President after rescuing him from the clutches of an evil homosexual terrorist after all. but this week it's been surpassed by... EA's girl-friendly casual gaming champion The Sims 2?

Now, Ghost Squad may be manly. But it will never be Pyramid Head, Kratos, Barry Burton and The Punisher in a Hot Tub talking about Baseball manly.

Finally, I was asked over Formspring what I have against Bayonetta. Good question. One that I will answer the next time I don't have anything better to do, like oh, go and buy Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is what I'm going to do right now. Bye for now.

The Fate of Two Worlds...

No, I haven't got my grubby paws on an early copy of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, before you ask, you'll have to wait another two weeks for that. The title is in fact referring to the game, Two Worlds II, and it's fate, the reason it got pushed back again, as detailed here. This is the latest (although arguably unavoidable) setback in a long line, which keeps pushing the UK release further and further back, slowly earning the reportedly redeemed and quite well-received by critics sequel the same kind of laughing-stock reputation of the first. The release date of Two Worlds II (or Two Worlds Forever as some people have started calling it) now rests tentatively on the 25th of February, but if I was going to get any game that day it would be Killzone 3, or failing that The Conduit 2. Two Worlds II wouldn't get a look in. As it happens I'm going to hoover all three of them up (Plus LBP2 and maybe a couple of minor games) come April, when my real job grants me my end-of-financial-year bonus.

So, I took all of my TWII money (all £32.89 of it) and skipped merrily off to Blockbuster like a gay (happy) child on pocket money day, determined not to be left gameless on this dark day. Ten minutes later I left the shop with chief Two Worlds substitute Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga on 360 for £19.95, Bionic Commando on PS3 and Diabolik: The Original Sin on Wii for £4.95 each and Sega Superstars Tennis on 360 for the bargain price of £2.95, with 9p change and a feeling of relief for having something new to play.

The only game I've had a go on so far is Divinity II, which is very good but hard going. Happily in the middle between the expansive, open world Oblivion and the closed in areas of Fable, DII sees you in the boots of a Dragon Slayer hunting the last of the Dragon Knights, powerful beings with the ability to take the form of a Dragon. The Dragon Knight, in her dying breath, transforms you into one yourself, and teaches you of their apparently noble quest to save the world from the demonic 'Damian' (original name for a demon).

I'll admit, I'm still getting to grips with the game, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. The levelling up process is simple, gain XP from killing enemies and completing quests and pile them into different aspects (as a warrior I'm diverting it all into Strength and Health, but there's also things like Magic and Archery), then level up a particular skill, like dual-wielding or regenerating health. The only problem I'm having is with the difficulty spikes, one minute I'm wading through enemies taking barely a scratch as they crumble beneath me, the next I'm dead at the hands of a single Goblin, because he's two levels ahead of me. I think I'm a bit tuckered out by fantasy RPGs at the minute though, I'm still plodding through Dragon Age, so maybe Divinity will have to be moved a bit further down my pile to be rejoined at a later date.

So that's that then. I've been in talks with my cohort Trev, who will be returning to the site imminently, and both of us are working on some exciting new features for the site. We'll keep you posted. Once again, please 'like' us on our Facebook page, there's not only news about the blog there but news about our friend's sites and blog postings and general gaming news. See you later.

No trust, all I got is lies, boring, alright...

Once more, such is the peril of playing RPGs, I haven't had time to play anything new and interesting. In fact, I only finished Fable last night, and I'm still knee-deep in Dragon Age, my newly acquired Angry Birds addiction has further hampered my productivity.

To avoid abandoning my weekly schedule and slipping again, like I did last year, I began planning this week's post almost immediately after uploading the last one. I had thought of possibly doing a 'what if?' post, detailing games I would like to see, however unlikely (my favourite of which being Batman: Shattered Dimensions), But scrapped that as the list became dominated with crossover fighting games. Then I had the idea of a look into the upcoming games that excite me, which initially seemed like a great choice, until I realised that between Mortal Kombat, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim, I could write and speculate for about a week without even considering the other impending releases.

I've been thinking about what I would consider Game of the Year for the years before I started this blog, so I decided to try my hand at Game of the Decade, taking the single best games from each year and ranking them against each other, only to abandon the idea when some of the games I wanted to include were far outshone by better but more obvious and boring games released in the same year, case in point: Animal Crossing and The Sims 2 were both released in 2004, unfortunately the same year as GTA: San Andreas. Piss. It was going to go to Oblivion anyway.

All is not lost though, I finally got around to downloading the Kane and Lynch and Legacy of Kain character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which were simultaneously better and worse than I thought they'd be, if such a thing is possible.

They failed to live up to my expectations in regards to how they operate. You can't just use the character to your content, pairing up Lara with Raziel, or, amusingly, Kain and Lynch. Kain and Raziel have to be together, Kane and Lynch have to be together, Lara and Totec have to be together. I was also hoping the characters might play differently, like the Vampires having their respective Reaver swords and being able to use Telekinesis, but to be honest I expected reskins of Lara and Totec and wasn't too underwhelmed when that's all I got.

But the great thing about the character packs is that they aren't just reskins. They have their own stories, which is why they can't be paired off with other characters. Starting a new game plays the ending from the main campaign, cleverly spoiler-free, as Lara bids farewell to Totec after a job well done and comments that the ruins she's leaving behind will likely never be found again. Famous last words, as the fantasy realm of Nosgoth shares an identical temple, and a meddling duo of Vampires once again releases the villainous Xolotl, who drags them to Earth with him, meaning that they must work together to return to their homeland. Or, if you like, Death Row's favourite miscreants Kane and Lynch will stumble on the temple a meager two days after Lara's departure, once again unleashing the demon unto the world, and adopting the heroic role to save the day.

The characters are fully voiced, bringing back the iconic double-act of Simon Templeman and Micheal Bell as Kain and Raziel, and Brian Bloom and Jarion Monroe are back as Kane and Lynch. There's also an air of humour to the game too, as every sentence that spews from the mouth of Kane or Lynch is littered with bleeped-out expletives for comedy effect, and Kain and Raziel's introduction is instigated with the Star Wars style line: 'Meanwhile, in another world... And kind of in the past...'. Made me chuckle anyway.

I personally can't wait to play through the LoK story, it's the closest I'm going to get to a new Legacy of Kain game for a while anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that they just re-used the character models from Legacy of Kain: Defiance, I was hoping to see how a proper, current generation Kain might look. Oh well, when it comes to being a Legacy of Kain fanboy, you get what you're given.

Last off, a glance to the right will show you our new Facebook page. Be sure to 'like' us on there. See you guys soon.