Dark Void. Heard of it? Probably not, this Capcom published title has been in development for a while, and early footage (back in early 2008) looked fairly promising. But this game is a text book example of being “sent out to die”

As the release neared, Capcom slashed it’s sales projection for the title to 600,000 units, and pre-order prices were starting at less than £30, which is unusually low. Signs were bad that this was a stinker. A lacklustre demo was released which failed to impress anyone, even people like myself that were looking forward to the game. Within weeks of it’s release it could be had for about £12… Oh dear

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So with the disappointment of Bayonetta out of the way, I really needed something decent to play. Thankfully I had Bioshock 2 waiting in the wings.

There has been a lot written about the first Bioshock both for and against it, and this isn’t the time or place to add to that debate; but I will say I adored the first game.

Damn it’s been good to go back to Rapture! As settings in videogames go, Rapture has to rank up there as one of the most interesting, detailed and well conceived. It’s a joy to simply explore the place, looking for audio logs, taking in the exquisitely designed art-deco environments or simply being in Rapture is a reward in itself. Gameplay wise it’s very similar to the first game, nearly identical in fact, with a few tweeks and improvements. That’s no bad thing of course. It can be unforgiving at times, so you really have to plan ahead, laying traps, hacking security and using your plasmid’s intelligently if you want to have any chance of surviving

Some reviews and people have mentioned the game’s short length (reports of 5-6 hours). Something I’d like to dispute; I’ve been playing this for a week, a few hours per night. I’m close to the end now and it’s evident that’s a much longer game, 10 – 12 hours or thereabouts. You probably could rush thought it, heading straight for the next objective ignoring everything there is to do and see. But doing that you’ll be missing so much of the game you might as well not have bothered playing it at all.

Anyhow it feels good to playing something that makes me feel positive about gaming again, yay!

Is fucking shit

Obviously very late to the party with this 2009 horror themed FPS, but it’s sub-tenner practically everywhere now.

I enjoyed the first FEAR game, it was a bit lacking variety and had a odd, practically monochrome visual style. But it was a decent game and not without a solid dose of scares.

FEAR 2 is pretty much all you could want from a sequel, much improved visuals, better combat, environments which are more than the same endless office building. Still more or less the same game – only better. I’m kinda shocked how good this game is actually. I’ve found myself drawn in and playing it far more than I expected. It really hits its stride a few levels in, once you start exploring the ruined city and get to use a ridiculously overpowered mecha-power armour suit. Reducing enemy soldiers to a red mist with a high powered mini gun, actually put a big grin on my face.

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I completed Darksiders last night. One word summary: Brilliant

It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a game this much, and all the way through. Now the game is by no means perfect, there’s a lot I could pick on: fiddly controls, underutilized powers and areas, frustrating in places. The game is also a shameless rip-off (or homage, depending on how cynical you feel!) of many other games: Zelda & God of War are the main influences, with a smattering of Panzer Dragoon, Portal & Prince of Persia. However it’s not really a problem, as Darksiders takes all these elements and blends them exceptionally well, it never feels like a hotch-potch.

“Greater than the sum of it’s parts” is a terrible cliché, but it describes Darksiders so well. Taken in isolation any of the game’s elements are fairly unexceptional; the graphics, the level design, the combat, the story etc. Each examined alone they probably average. But they somehow combine into an excellent and solid experiance. Be it: riding across The Ashlands on your horse, brutally slaying countless demons & legions of angels, exporing one of the games dungeons, or trying to get your head around some of the puzzles.

Special mention needs to go to the final dungeon which is a non stop barrage of mindf**k puzzles & huge battles. The puzzles are of the “spatial” Zelda kind, and come close to being up there with the best Zelda dungeon. In fact the game improves as it goes on, and I only fully appreciated it all at the end. It also has a curious backwards difficulty curve, so the game gets easier as you go on (the first boss is by far the hardest). It was also nice change for a game not to have a lame or ‘WTF?’ ending – they’ve set things up nicely for a sequel or two.

Anyhow, I know it’s only January but I think this is a strong contender for my 2010 GOTY

I buy a lot of my games cheap, by hunting out bargains and waiting for price drops. I used to buy a lot pre-owned, but these days games are often cheaper online and  brand new, than they are second hand (and scratched) in the likes of GAME.

Here’s a recent haul, which landed through my letterbox (apologies for the crummy pic). All for the princely sum of £42 which is about the RRP of a new title these days.

Now this post isn’t to brag about my amazing new games or my bargain hunting skillz. I thought I’d take the chance to highlight some of my favourite sources of gaming deals:

• Gamestracker.com – Couldn’t live without this site. You can use it to find the best price for practically any game. It also supports “watchlists” where you can keep track of stuff you’ve got your eye on (even games not released yet). So I maintain my ‘to-buy wishlist’ on there. Another good feature is email alerts, when a game drops below a specified price you will receive an email. Brilliant.

• The rllmuk “Bargains” folder (Note. You’ll need to be a member, sorry!) – An excellent source of all kinds of gaming & non-gaming cheap finds

• There are quite a few sites out there that post gaming bargains on a daily, even hourly basis, here’s some good ones, I’ve used in the past:
- Frugal Gaming
- Postabargain
- Cheap Ass Gamer

• Twitter. Some of the sites also have twitter feeds which is a really good way of spotting the deals as they arrive, as often these bargains are very short lived. For example: @frugalgaming & @postabargain. In fact this is becoming my main source of impulse buying

It’s been a while since I’ve published or updated any of my Google Gadgets. But I have been sort of busy…

I’ve turned to the darkside!

What this means in slightly less dramatic terms is; I’ve stopped using Google Desktop and Google Gadgets and I’m using the built-in gadget system in Windows 7 (and Vista) called “Windows Sidebar Gadgets” or just Windows Gadgets. There are various (boring) reasons for this, but the upshot is I won’t be able to use all my lovely Google gadgets that I developed! It’s slightly heartbreaking to leave all that hard work behind, but I’m looking at this positively as an opportunity to re-write & improve them

The first one I couldn’t live without was my Squeezebox gadget. I listen to all my music at home via a couple of Logitech Squeezebox players, subsequently  I used my gadget for controlling all my music. Well it turns out that developing a gadget for the Windows Sidebar isn’t all that different from a Google Gadgets. Both are Javascript based using a sub-set of HTML for display, this meant I could re-use a fair bit of my code, and this is the result…

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