Still Alive! Laptop took a bit longer than I would have liked to get repaired, I touched on the late collection by the courier last time I posted. Well, after it was collected a week late, another 10 days later they sent the fucker back untouched, claiming that the damage wasn't covered by the warranty (I did have a look in the warranty booklet, and indeed accidental damage is not covered, which gave them a small point in their favour until I realised that they'd given my a Hewlett Packard warranty booklet when my laptop is a Packard Bell machine, derp), despite the fact that they knew what was wrong with it before it even left my house. And to top it all off, some pikeys got hold of our details from the Curry's system and called us twice trying to rob us.

So I ended up getting an independent repair company to do it for me at my own expense, although I won't divulge how much here because they guy was really helpful and did a great job, and, let's be fair, gave me my life back after about 5 weeks of being bored and having to use the Internet browser on my Nokia N97. Moral of the story: don't buy anything from Curry's, they're arseholes.

So, with the gap in posting, where do I start? I've got Dead Space 2, Dragon Age II, Diabolik: The Original Sin, Bionic Commando and Killzone 3 behind me with Red Steel 2, Wii Sports Resort and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in progress. I also wanted to talk about the fantastic Mortal Kombat demo and the not-so-fantastic Motorstorm: Apocalypse demo, a small anecdote about BlazBlue and maybe a mini unboxing of the Killzone 3 Helghast Edition. Thanks to a bonus from work I've also got Two Worlds II, Doctor Who: Return to Earth, Dead Space: Extraction (both versions in fact), Prince of Persia Trilogy, LittleBigPlanet 2, Bulletstorm, Arcania: Gothic 4 and Motorstorm: Arctic Edge all lined up for the coming weeks.

It's also been my 26th birthday in the last week, which has allowed me to upgrade my personal gadgetry with the Samsung Galaxy Player MP3 player and the HTC HD7 mobile phone, powered respectively by Android OS and Windows Phone 7, and both respectable gaming platforms in their own right, especially the phone, which is XBox Live compatible and plays a bunch of XBLA games, achievements and all. That's still on it's way to me though, but watching gameplay videos of Need for Speed: Undercover, Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles HD and Earthworm Jim HD have me very much excited. So it's all go at 24HG towers at the moment.

I suppose I'll start with the games that haven't left enough of an impression with me, less to write about, so I can get more in. Diabolik: The Original Sin wins the prize for the most aptly titled game ever, as playing the point-and-click crapfest was like spending a short time in hell. The graphics are piss-poor, like a high-end PS1 game, the voice acting is primary-school-nativity standard and the logic of some of the puzzles is frankly baffling, and this is from a man who finished Secret Files: Tunguska. Finally, the inventory system is terrible, especially with the copious arsenal of gadgets that your protagonist is equipped with before you even start. Diabolik? 'Dire bollocks'.

Bionic Commando wasn't much better, combining a bog-standard shooter with a rubbish version of the PS1 Spider-Man games. The visuals are nice, a bit Metal Gear Solid 4 reminiscent, but that's the only redeeming feature about the dull, uninvolving game. If you want to fly about on a grappling hook, Just Cause 2 does it better. Come to think of it, it does shooting and melee combat better too, and a ton of other things that Bionic Commando doesn't even attempt. What was I talking about again?

I'm going to leave it there for now, but I'll probably post again before the end of the week with a more in-depth look at some of the bigger games I've played. I think Trev's working on a new video too, so it's business as usual again here at 24HG. See you soon.

Nobody touches Oghren's junk and lives!

Apologies for the quiet spell, my Laptop's gone the way of Old Yeller, and while I'm waiting for the good people of Curry's to repair it for me under warranty (postponed by a week thanks to the efforts of the workshy courier who was supposed to pick it up last week and claims I wasn't home and that he left a card, despite not seeming to have noticed that I live in a flat and not a house), I'm left without the benefit of the Internet. So I'm just checking in using the missuss' Vaio again, mainly to explain why I've already broken my weekly post promise, but also so I haven't got too much to write about when I do get my machine back in a couple of weeks.

Firstly, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. Thanks to the lack of the Internet's temptations to while away hours staring at Memebase or YouTube, I was able to polish this off in under two days. It's a hell of a lot more fast-paced and a damn-sight easier than the base game, and if anything the story is a lot more gripping, and the characters (of which only the Dwarf Oghren returns) are definitely more interesting and charismatic, from the dry wit of an apostate Mage on the run from Templar oppressors to a benevolent spirit trapped in the body of a fallen Grey Warden (for those out of the loop, the Grey Wardens are an elite band of warriors, like Spectres are to Mass Effect, or the Blades to Oblivion). Every party member you recruit becomes a Grey Warden this time around, but that only makes me ask myself why nobody took the oath in the base game, when Wardens were at their most needed and in very short supply?

My main problem with it is that the story is a little too similar to the Legion/Geth side-story in Mass Effect 2, just as the Origins story is very reminiscent of the main story in the first Mass Effect. I hope Dragon Age 2 shows a bit more originality and individuality. Speaking of which, I've played the demo on the PS3, and am glad to report that the combat system, as well as being a lot more fast-paced, is completely real-time in the console versions, which is excellent. The graphics have also seen a major improvement, so that's both of my least-favourite aspects of the original addressed. By the time I next post, I'll have had some time with the full game, so I'll hold my tongue until then.

Split/Second has reached the inevitable point in all racing games (apart from R4, which I was genuinely good at) where it becomes too difficult for me (other racers were using Burnout tactics and ramming me off the road, as well as blowing me up at every opportunity), so I returned to Divinity II, and came to the conclusion that the game is complete, undiluted shite. The gameplay, graphics, voice-acting and everything, top notch. But about 8 hours in, three quarters of the map become covered in toxic gas, rendering them off-limits for the duration of the rest of the game, which in an open-world RPG is absolute bollocks. Not even Two Worlds pulled that one on me, so I'm back onto trying to 1000gp Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360.

Finally, this setback has kinda dashed my chances of doing a video review for MVC3, so I'll give a very brief account of how I feel about it. Well, it's a Capcom fighter, so it's obviously technically sound, it is what Capcom does best after all. But the simplified controls, the poor character roster and the ruinous cell-shaded graphics (of which I have never been a fan, they can be used to good effect, like in The Wind Waker, but a lot of the time, as seen here in No More Heroes, they only serve to dilute genuinely great visuals) just push it down in my esteem, and as a result I still see Super Street Fighter IV as it's superior in virtually every way. I also got a feeling that the controls were quite unresponsive, I was failing to pull off moves that I could perform every time in SSFIV or Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, but I don't know if anyone else has noticed this. I do like how some characters interact with each other though, such as Chris Redfield and Wesker, or Magneto and Wolverine.

And to sign off, I've been very quiet about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim so far. I think this video sums up my feelings on the matter. See you in a couple of weeks.