(Teesside University Student Union Airsoft Society 2011-2012)

So we’re into May and the final month of Uni is upon me. I’ve got a code handin next week and then after that its report writing, portfolio making and a single presentation on mobile games. I’ve enjoyed this year but I’m really looking forward to having the summer off. My plan is to get some paid work during June before my sister’s wedding, have two weeks doing a little bit of own work but mainly relaxing and then spend the rest of the summer working on personal projects and prepping for my final year project.

Speaking of the Summer, I’ve also just paid to go to a WW2 airsoft weekender on the 18th/19th wearing my new Airborne gear. However, late last week I also decided I wanted I reliable gun for my WW2 kit and sold off my L85 and its mags. I really like the gun – its a nice shape and something about its utilitarian look just gets me. But at the end of the day, its a lump of metal and plastic. Instead, I’ve replaced it with a King Arms M1A1 Thompson, which I managed to get alongside with 6 mid-caps for just less than the money I got for my L85 sale.

Its a beautiful gun, even with the plastic wood effect parts rather than an actual wood kit (already on order on HK). Its nice and light, with a big battery compartment. It also really thin which is something I find rather odd. I’m looking forward to getting it out and going airsofting with it as I haven’t used an AEG for a while. I’m also hoping to get my Garand 100% working – I just need to swap out the hop rubber and then I’ll be ready to run around pinging clips out

In spite of all this work, I’ve also managed to get two more reviews done for This Is My Joystick (actually over the evening I’m writing this). Risen 2 is all done which was pretty great – if you can get it for less than the steam asking price, then its well worth it. I also got a Naval War:Arctic Circle review done. I really enjoyed it, giving a simulation game but with a really easy way of getting into it.

Only a short one for now – I have to go off to the labs to finish off my helicopter game before going to see the Avengers later on. This time next week I’ll be a little more relaxed and I’ll be able to write a bit more.

Meanwhile… AIRBOURNE!

Also before the Easter break I managed to grab the chance of a life time. Someone on Zeroin was selling a gas power Maurshin M1 Garand rifle for the low, low sum of £150 (especially when the new ones cost £600). Robin, one of my airsoft buddies, managed to point it out to me and two days later I had it sat in my house. It did need a part replacing which I had to import from Taiwan but that turned up a few days ago. With it added in, it now works perfectly (except the hop) cycling like a dream. It is beautifully made, the perfect collectors rifle to skirmish with once or twice before hanging it on my wall.

Of course, you can’t own an M1 without owning the US Airborne kit to go with it. I’ve gone out and grabbed a complete set including webbing, helmet and garrison cap. Its a really nice uniform and especially a nice jacket which I’ve worn quite a lot since I bought it. Overall, the uniform is a nice change from more modern kit and I’m looking forward to getting some games in dressed as the 82nd.

Finally, I’ve also managed to pick up some HMV vouchers thanks to being subjected to some VR research. It was pretty interesting to do and although the game they were using to test it was entirely unsuitable it would be pretty cool.

However, I have spent those HMV vouchers on picking up a Blu Ray copy of both seasons of Sherlock. I loved the TV show and really wanted to own it in HD. Luckily, a friend of mine spotted a bundle pack of both seasons for £30 and so I jumped on it, effectively tripling the number of Blu Ray’s I own. Normally, I just like storing videos on my PC so I can stream it out to other systems. However, Blu Rays bring a certain something to the table, with 1080i display and the special features so I’m starting to lean towards buying all my stuff on it in future – like Black Dynamite.

In between my studies, I have also managed to sit down and play a few games. The one I’m most interested in I can’t talk about due to embargo but I did pick up Naval War: Artic Circle. Its a very old style of game, playing much more like the old ‘90’s simulation games like Harpoon. It focuses on a very possible war in the North Atlantic, with the Russian’s and NATO fighting over oil, gas and fish. From a war room, you control air, surface and submarine forces during multiple scuffles. It feels a little bit like Defcon to anyone not playing but as soon as you sit down and start playing your find all different controls makes it a very different beast. Expect a review on This Is My Joystick.

That’s all for now – two more code projects, a report, a presentation and a portfolio and that’s it for year 2. Will write again soon.

So I’m back at home for my holidays (well until Sunday) and its been a quite good time. I’ve got plenty of work done, went for a placement interview, saw my sister and had a meal with her and generally had a chance for a bit of a rest. April is going to be packed full of work getting all the coding projects finished so it may be very quiet round here but once that’s all over, I’ll be just working on a few reports and portfolio things.

One of the things I spent a lot of time doing over the two weeks is driving. From going to the dentist to going to Newcastle for an interview, I’ve clocked up a good few miles in the car. I’ve discovered I really enjoy driving long distances, with the radio blaring out and being able to concentrate on the road.

I’ve also watched a metric ton of films thanks to my Dad getting a new Blockbuster’s membership right at the start of the two week break. Some have been a little hit and miss (Three Musketeers was terrible) but a few films were excellent. Tintin was a really good adaptation of it with spot on visuals. I also quite liked Drive for its style and technique although its a very odd film.

I did manage to go airsofting half way through the holiday which was great. Once again, NAA was perfect. Great players, great marshalling and lovely weather that had us dumping most of our kit while running around. After having had a little play with someone else’s bolt action rifle I’m really looking forward to having my M1 Garand up and working. The site owners at NAA also talked about the UKAPU which is something I’m going to introduce to society. Basically, it is an airsofter’s union which will, among other things, give us legal assistance with matters involving airsoft. I think this is a great thing and so will be signing up asap.

Since my last post, I’ve also played a lot of different games. The biggest has to be Mass Effect 3. I am going to write up a long Thoughts On once I’ve played it a little more of the multiplayer but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The gameplay was like a even slicker version of Mass Effect 2 and there were plenty of points where character stories were wrapped up neatly. In fact the entire game was really an epilogue, adding the minimum of new characters to the universe and really just providing you with the finale you wanted. Right up until the actual ending. I personally had very few problems with – Bioware had a story they wanted to tell and they told it. It was certainly emotional. However, my perfect ending would have been the ending to Shawshank Redemption with Garrus finding my female Shepard and sharing a few beers.

I left my Xbox in Middlesbrough and so spent most my evenings playing more Wargame: European Escalation. I do really enjoy it, with its combination of realism and ease of play. Heck, it even includes that unlock lust you get from RPGs with the units all being locked at the start and you must carefully choose how you unlock them. It is a very fun sim which cuts out all the base building and focuses on some carefully fought battles over some interesting terrain. However, it isn’t all perfect. It is a very punishing game – the simplest slip up in a mission can be next to impossible to get back from. Its compounded in singleplayer where units hold over from one mission to the next. If you loose you multi-million dollar M1 Abrams at the start of the operations, you’re going to feel the pain later. Expect a review up on This Is My Joystick later this week.

The last thing I’ve picked up is Gettysburg: Armoured Warfare. Its an alternative history game set during the Civil War but with the addition of futuristic units sent back in time. Its a little rough around the edges but it has been produced by a single guy who has managed to create a whole engine that allows both RTS gameplay and third person shooting. It does need a bit of work but so far its promising.

Well that’s it for now. I’ve got 3 programming projects I’ve almost finished before the end of year that are all due in for the next few weeks so I’ll be rushed off my feet. I should also know about my placement in the next few weeks so I’ll be able to find out if I’m going to be in Middlesbrough next year or up in Newcastle.

When people talk about Western RPGs, most people think about Bethesda and their free roaming worlds or Bioware and their expansive stories. What most people don’t think of is what Germany has been turning out, in the form the of the Gothic series.

Unfortunately, the development team behind those games, Piranha Bytes, no longer work on them. Instead they are now working on Risen, a new series of German RPGs. Risen came out in 2009 and now a pirate-themed sequel is almost out. I managed to get a look at a preview build and it’s an interesting title to play.

This was a preview build so some things may be tweaked before release.

Risen 2 is set in the same world of the original. You play the Nameless Hero, a member of the Inquisition, charged with protecting the innocent and fighting the titans; the old gods currently coming back to life after the events of the first game. After being awoken from a drunken stupor inside an Inquisition fortress, you head off to help the crew of a ship wrecked out in the bay, where the only survivor is Patty, one of the main characters from the first game.

Through her, you learn about a way of destroying the Titans but in order to get it you must sign up with Steelbeard, pirate king, enemy of the Titans and Patty’s Dad. Because of this, your commander orders you to leave the Inquisition and head off to Ticaragua to link up with Steelbeard and hunt down the weapon. The plot seems really interesting and it really captured my imagination when I was playing through it.

Voodoo Priestess? Check.

As it’s a German RPG, Risen 2 doesn’t hold your hand very much, or at all. In fact, it’ll probably take your hand and set it on fire. Apart from the occasional prompt for sleeping or some other on-screen items, the game tells you next to nothing. In fact, if you haven’t played many traditional RPGs, the game will appear to have a horrible interface. More importantly, it doesn’t guide you through much of the levelling system or skills. This meant I spent half the time playing trying to find out how to improve my skills or locate quest items.

Worse, the game itself is damn hard. All of your upgrades require stupid amounts of gold in order to improve your skills, which means you spend the first part of the game fighting against enemies that can pull off moves you can only dream about.

One of your early objectives is to get a bandana back from one of the guards. In order to do this, you have to challenge him to a duel. However, you can only either attack or defend while he can kick you, power attack you, break your defence or simply throw sand in your eyes. This makes it almost impossible to do, leading to the main quest sitting in your to do list for ages, even if you’ve done everything else. I found it hard to gain enough cash to upgrade one skill to the point where it’s useful. It promises to make the game last a very long time, at least.

That said though, Risen 2 does a lot of things right. Nearly all the various quests have multiple ways of solving them, ranging from punching a guard to just bribing him to get what you want. It nice to see a game be so open to you; it gives you a toolbox of ways to solve a problem. In fact, solving puzzles seems a major point of the game making it feel more like an adventure game rather than the collection of stats and maths that other games soon turn into once you start picking up the loot. This is more about finding ways to solve your problems.

Nobody expects the Inquisition! Also nobody expects them to have guns

I do also like the combat system, once you’ve unlocked some skills. It makes combat look and feel like something from the Pirates of the Caribbean, with a mixture of sword play and gun-fighting in a single fight. It is also challenging, making the fights long, tense affairs, especially when you are up against another human. I decided to focus mainly on guns and so by the end of the preview I was running around with a musket that I could kill most things from a long-range. The game does also include a form of magic in the shape of voodoo, but in my playthrough I didn’t have the chance to try it out.

Risen 2 is a beautiful game as well. It isn’t full-on photorealistic but the lightning effects can very dramatic, dabbing light across the jungle floor and creating some of the nicest beaches I’ve ever seen. Character models are also full of detail, although some of their animation can be a little off, especially when the conversations turn into an arm waving contest where everyone waves their arms the same way. The music ties in with the onscreen action and set the scene just right. The voice acting, though, changes between excellent in the case of the main character to rather less than perfect for some of the incidental characters.

I enjoyed this little preview of Piranha Bytes latest and I must say it has piqued my interest in the full game. This is a story RPG you can happily sit down and play for hours, and it doesn’t just rip off the Skyrim model. If you want a game featuring pirates or the desire to buckle some swash, Risen 2 might be worth your time when it comes out this year in April.

Well, Alan Wake is now back on the menu it seems. The PC version has just come out (reviewed here) and now Wake is back fighting the darkness on Xbox Live.

This version takes more from Tarantino than Stephen King, and is way, way shorter.

The nightmare continues
American Nightmare picks off from the end of The Writer DLC, with (spoilers) Alan still trapped in Dark Place and his evil doppelganger Mr Scratch breaking out to bring his own taste of darkness to the world. American Nightmare actually takes place inside an episode of Night Springs that Alan had written when he was on the writing team, long before the events of the original game. Wake now has to find out what Mr Scratch is doing in the dirt around Night Springs, Arizona and stop it.

First of all, this isn’t Alan Wake 2. Whatever happens in the story, it isn’t the main way Remedy is taking the franchise forward. However, the story is, much like the first game, excellent. It just keeps pulling you forward, teasing you along with the plot.

However, you visit each of the three areas really quickly and then a plot twist makes you go back to them a total of three times each. Admittedly, you aren’t doing exactly the same thing each time but it’s still a little boring and feels a bit cheap, especially on the final go round. However, it is a downloadable game and so the amount of work makes sense. In addition, I kind of like the idea they were going for.

Alan is back; his writer’s scarf isn’t.

I also love all the little side bits such as the manuscripts, tv and radios shows. I love Mr Scratch as a bad guy; he is filled with a sense of evil and mischief that the Dark Presence in the first game never had. The acting of the FMV sequences around the plot is great and a real reason to play through the game.

Back to the Flashlight
If you’ve played Alan Wake, you will instantly get the gameplay. In fact, it will probably feel like putting an old glove back on. You still need to burn off the darkness from enemies via a torch before attacking them and you still can use flares and flashbangs as area effect weaponry. The main gameplay changes only really affect your weaponry and your enemies. I also noticed that the game seemed to never really limit the amount of pickups. Unlike the first game where some levels had you carefully using your allotted weapons and batteries, this game doles out ammo frequently, with combined ammo/battery pickups in every area. This game really lays on the combat and so adjusts itself to include that.

Many people’s greatest issue with the first game was the enemy variation. You only really fought three different types and all were defeated the same way, just changing how much darkness you had to remove and how many rounds it took to bring them down. American Nightmare adds five more enemy types which forces you to fight against them differently.

The swarmer, for example, will split in two if you hit him with a concentrated torch beam forcing you to deal with a horde of enemies if you try and take him down the normal way. The Birdman takes the bird swarms of the first game to a new level, using them to get around before sneaking up behind you.

Another new enemy type takes your flashbangs and instead uses them against you, forcing you to get up close and personal. The final bad guy is a huge hulking behemoth who will send you flying if he hits you.

They also added some spiders, because no game is complete without some evil spiders. None of the new enemies are too hard but they present a bit of variety to all the combat scenes.

Once you check in you can never leave…

Another huge increase in variety appears with the new weapons. Alan Wake used a very small, select set of guns to make it fit into the setting of a small town in the Northwest. It was a great idea for the setting but was a little limiting in terms of the gameplay. American Nightmare adds in a ton of new weapons, ranging from a 9mm pistol up to assault rifles and combat shotguns. These help to make the combat much more interesting and nearly all of them are super satisfying. They also provide another incentive to replay the game and find all the manuscript pages, as many of the better ones require unlocking to use. It isn’t vital to unlock all of them as many of the lower end weapons can be found everywhere.

One of the main reasons for adding so many more guns has to be the new arcade mode. In it, you play as Alan in a selection of different arenas where you must last 10 minutes until dawn breaks. The Taken are merciless in this mode, moving quickly to flank you and hit you hard as opposed to the bad guys in some other survival modes. You need to dive around looking for weapon boxes, which are all unlocked by finding manuscript pages in the campaign, so make sure you play through that first or else these missions will be quite difficult.

There are four of these at normal mode, but each is also available as a Nightmare variant, where the area is crawling with Taken rather than the usual waves. Overall, the combat changes make these a rather fun addition, but the fact it’s a single player experience means there is less inclination to replay them.

Nightmare-ish visions
Remedy has once again used the same engine that Alan Wake ran on. It does the job very well, the game looks good overall with a focus on the lighting and shadows. Like the first game, the characters that Wake talks to during the missions have some animation problems, which can break the immersion. Worse, because the game repeats the same three areas three times, the game even uses the exact same animations for the characters Alan meets three times, not bothering to sync the voice-acting on them. Personally, I think this is terrible.

However, the visuals used in the rest of the game make up for it. As I mentioned before, the cut-scenes is as good, if not better, than those used in the original game. It’s a joy to watch Mr Scratch and his madness.

Yep, add this to the list of games featuring Spiders.

Balance slays the Demon
Sound played an important part in the original game and that’s the same here. Voice acting is stellar for Wake and Mr Scratch, although many of the other characters are infinitely forgettable due mainly to their terrible voice acting. The Taken also murmur at you as they attack, much like in the first game and some of their lines can be great. There could be some more of Barry Wheeler’s voice actor, though, who only appears in the radio show, which is one of my favourite parts of the game. Another voice actor I love is the narrator, who perfectly captures the whole Twilight Zone idea this episode aims for.

The music is integral as well. Kasabian’s Club Foot is a vital plot point and suits its role to a tee. Other music is also great from the background soundtrack, to the new licensed tracks, including a brand new Old Gods of Asgards song, which is just fantastic.

Is it truly a nightmare?
I really enjoyed my time with American Nightmare but it was pretty short having burnt though the campaign in a single afternoon. That said, there is quite a bit of additional gameplay if you enjoy the arcade mode.

It’s a great game but I’m not so sure about recommending to people who didn’t play through Alan Wake. As such, while I personally think it’s a must buy, I find it hard to recommend to everyone else. I recommend giving the demo a try before you buy it.

When Alan Wake was eventually released after many years in development hell, it only turned up on the Xbox 360 (as reviewed here). However, way before it even saw launch, it was being paraded as the game to show off DirectX 10 and Windows Vista for several years, presumably before they realised it may not be such a good thing.

Luckily for all us PC gamers, Remedy have finally managed to bring the game to PC via Steam and let me tell you, this is the perfect way to play this gripping story all the way through.

Got ourselves a Stephen King here
The main focus of Alan Wake is its story and this really shows. You play Alan Wake, a bestselling author who is suffering from a severe case of writers block. To give him some time off, he and his wife travel to the town of Bright Falls, a tiny town in the Pacific Northwest where he intends to relax and hopefully get his groove back.

Unfortunately, this isn’t to be, shortly after arrival, he wakes up a week later in a car accident with no memory of how he got there or where his wife has disappeared to. Soon he is avoiding the police while also trying to fight off shadowy figures clad in darkness.

Alan needs to stop going for casual walks at night

The writing in Alan Wake is phenomenal. I love all the little details they wrote into the town that links both to Remedy games and also to its two big influencers; the TV shows Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone. However, it’s not just a collection of references stuck together, the story is well written by its own measures and is paced perfectly to fit into an episodic structure. This feeling is improved even more so with the recap at the start of each chapter and the closing song at the end. It feels like you’re playing through a variant of Twin Peaks and I love it.

I also love the manuscripts you can pick up throughout the game, which are torn from a novel Alan was writing but has no memory of starting. These manuscripts help the player to know what’s going on elsewhere in the world and also provides hints for the future.

The PC edition also includes the two DLC packs. They are not quite as well written as the main game but they do help set up the story that is referenced in American Nightmare and will presumably be the starting point of the sequel when it arrives.

We are all but players
In Alan Wake, you control Alan through a variety of nightmare scenarios. Most consist of Wake having to travel through an area to get on with his quest to find his wife. Along the way, he will have to fight hordes of The Taken; humans possessed by the dark forces. Unfortunately for Wake, they are protected by darkness and so you need to burn it off before you can harm them, and this is done by using your flashlight or some other form of light.

The system as a whole works pretty well thanks to the inclusion of flares and flashbangs, which are act as a quick “get out of jail free” card if you are ever surrounded. Flares are also good for cutting enemies off as you struggle to get some generators working. Light also heals you and acts as save points, so they are pretty damn important. Of course, you can try and avoid being hit by using the dodge key, which rewards you with a cool slow motion dodge move. In fact the game really likes the slow motion, from downing a horde of taken or showing you when they pop out of the woods behind you.

Don’t mind me, just having a nice day in the woods…

Wake himself is an author, not a soldier and so acts like one. He can’t sprint very far and he doesn’t have much health. He can carry three weapons (revolver, flare gun and either a shotgun or a hunting rifle) and each has its purpose. Due to the light based gameplay, the humble flaregun is in fact the BFG of this game, triggering a slow motion explosion when you fire it. The gameplay does manage to show Alan’s frailty without going into over the top madness.

There are also a ton of collectables. These range from the manuscripts mentioned before to radios and TVs playing Night Springs (think Outer Limits/Twilight Zone). Most you will find along the way, but others will take you a while to find. There are 200 thermos’ of coffee to go hunt down and find, so good luck!

Overall, the gameplay hasn’t changed during its move to PC, however it is a little easier as the PC controls make aiming much easier. This in turn means there were fewer cases when I ran out of ammo than when I played it on the Xbox 360.

I did have some issues with the vital dodge command, mapping it to the shift key makes it harder to pull off when you are sprinting around, leading you to being hit as you attempt to run past people. It doesn’t feel quite as natural as simply tapping the right button to duck out-of-the-way.

Welcome to Bright Falls
Alan Wake already looked great on the Xbox with its huge areas, beautiful vistas and (as it’s a game based around light) a truly great lighting system. However, bringing it to the PC has truly taken it up another step. Thanks to the ability to have higher resolutions, the game truly looks stunning. The character animation does still look a little odd during the speaking sections but the rest of the game makes up for it.

It can be a bit of a system hog if you knock everything up to very high, but even on medium settings it looks on par with the Xbox. You can choose to toggle the UI on or off, which makes the game look tons better and stops you from being dragged out of the immersion.  In fact, if there is one issue with the graphics, it’s the fact the UI appears to be a little stretched, which is just a minor niggle.

I’m also a big fan of another visual tweak to game. As well as subtitles, you can now toggle a visual commentary on as well. This means that at certain points, members of the development team will pop up in the bottom left corner of the screen and talk about what’s going on and what lead to this arrangement. It is a better system than Valve’s Hit Node and Listens, although the fact it replays every time you respawn at a checkpoint is rather annoying. They are, however, very interesting to listen to, especially if you have any interest in how games are made.

A soundtrack to rival FIFA
If you are looking for a game with great voice work and music, look no further than this. Sound plays a vital part in the game, from Alan’s narration to the music cues telling you enemies are coming. In terms of voice acting, Alan’s voice is perfect throughout. Your agent, Barry, has a grating voice but it’s the only downside in what is otherwise a spectacular game.

The scenery is literally breath taking

The game soundtrack is also great and the included tracks (in the Steam directory) are perfect both in the gameplay and on my mp3 player. My favourite tracks are from the Old Gods of Asguard, an in-universe band that pops up as a major plot point but the rest of the licensed soundtrack is also perfect. Most are used as the end of chapter tunes, which help to shape your emotions as the game carries on. The others pop up on the radios you keep running into and are a nice touch.

Write a good ending
Alan Wake was already a good game on the Xbox 360 and this PC re-release is the definitive version. If you’ve already sampled it, you can go back and play through the complete story of Alan Wake, while also seeing the visuals in a way you haven’t before. Personally, I love the gameplay in spite of one or two issues and I think this is a must buy, whether you’ve played it or not.

So another week of university, another week of work. I’ve got plenty of work to be getting on with and I’m slowly cranking through it. My networking is well on the way, my GSD is sketched out with some example code sat waiting to be used and tools is most of the way done.

The deadline closest is my mobile games programming. I’m most of the way along with it and I’ve managed to get it on my iPhone and working in terms of music and loading/saving to PLIST. I still need to get the Bluetooth and accelerometer sorted out (the main part). I really enjoy iOS programming, especially using Cocos2d has it makes the main things (such as menus) so simple to do and get working fast. I’m going to look at mobile programing for Android and Windows Phone over the summer so I have at least a passable knowledge of each as they may form part of my final year project.

However, it hasn’t just been work…

So I may have mislaid a HMV voucher I received from my cousin as  birthday present. I thought I had left it at home but I discovered it in Middlesbrough amongst a pile of stuff, again proving I need to clean up my room. However, I finally used it this weekend to pick up a nice new set of over the ears headphones. I normally use in ear which are great for wearing when you’re out and about, as they don’t entirely prevent you from hearing peoples conversations or traffic which in turn prevents you from having to hear the inside of a hospital ward. However, I like listening to music while I work and being in a house with seven people the ambient noise can often be louder than my speakers can allow. I have a over the ears headset used for my PC but they are Creative Fatality brand which are great for gameplay but less for music. They also have a huge cable complete with two connectors which would look odd if I was in the labs.

After some consultation with my friends on Facebook, I ended up choosing a set of Sennheiser 419 which promised (and I quote) punchy bass. Now, I do have to admit, the bass is pretty punchy and I love the sound of them. Its like entering a brand new world after only using sub-£10 in ear headphones for so long. I won’t use them for going to uni but they are great for slapping on in order to crack on with some work.

In between my work, I’ve managed to set some time aside to play a few games some for review and some just for the fun. First up is Alan Wake American Nightmare. Having just come off playing Alan Wake again for the PC review, I was in he right frame of mind for another trip round the block with Alan Wake and his light based combat. The review should be up on This Is My Joystick by the time you read this. Put simply – if you liked Alan Wake’s story but not the combat you’ll probably like the new and improved version of the combat with more guns and enemies. If you preferred the story, then you may find the downloadable version a bit of a let down. However, at the same time it does have some great manuscript pages (and a much better way of finding them) and also some great acting for Alan and Mr Scratch. In fact, I really liked Mr Scratch as the villain. Even though you don’t see him in person very much, his TV appearances more than make up for it. He presents not a insidious evil but, like the Joker, and evil who is evil because its fun. He represents a part of Alan that goes and gets what it wants. Also the game has an awesome Old Gods of Asgarrd song that is perhaps even better than any from the first game.

Next up is Risen 2. I’ve only just hold of the review copy and the embargo goes up today so I can say a little bit about it. I’m enjoying the game so far – its a very odd game that feels like a light weight action adventure/RPG. I do think it would be more helpful if I had played the original game. I’ll be playing some more soon but its hopeful so far. Also the letter from PR was perhaps the funniest I’ve seen in a long time.

I’ve also finished off Gears of War 3 single player after a big break from it to play other things including, but not limited to, Lego Star Wars 3. Gears 3 actually has a really good single player story that nicely ties up the trilogy while also tugging at the heart strings. It also had some damn good set pieces especially in the final chapter while inside some of the best settings I’ve played through in a while. No other studio quite does destroyed innocence as well as Epic. My only issue was that the armoured Kantus are among the worst designed enemies in the game seemingly to take damage at random. Oh, and that Adam Fenix looks an awful lot like Walter from Breaking Bad. Apart from that, I loved the game.

However, my main time sink at the moment is Wargame: European Escalation. I quite enjoyed the beta but I stopped playing when I realised that all the progress was going to get wiped as soon as the game launched. Now its out for real I’ve dived into the single player with gusto. I’m so happy that the singleplayer gives you command stars to unlock more units which means I’m currently a level 3 player online rolling around with the SAS and Apaches supporting the Challenger 1s. I’m mainly buying NATO units to support the first operation but since that’s down and out of the way I’ll start investing in the Hind-Ds and T80s pretty soon.

When I first started playing, Wargame felt very much like RUSE with a few tweaks to make it more realistic. However, after playing quite a bit I now realise its a very different beast. There is a heavy focus on supply and ammunition conservation which can lead to new players leaving their heavy battle tanks stranded after attempting to drive around the damn map and just waiting for a helicopter to come and put their lights out. The game also hates you if you make mistakes and will mercilessly beat you over the head with if you buy the wrong unit and then drive them into an area. I’ve had to restart several missions by simply messing up a few tiny things at the start of the game. That said, the game makes you feel like a sodding genius when you finally drag an enemy into you trap after an hours worth of planning. There will be a review coming up soon on This Is My Joystick.

So that’s all for now. I’m still working on my university work but I’m nowhere near as worried as I was at the start of this term. I am also sorting out some placement stuff this week so I may have some news saying what I’ll be doing in the next year or so. I’ll write some more soon.

Also look at this Chibi version of the main character in the new Avatar series. LOOK AT HER!

Bizarrely enough, I quite enjoyed the original King Arthur Roleplaying game. When it came out in in 2009, it felt like a different take on the Total War formula, with the addition of magic and elements of a text adventure. Admittedly, it certainly had its issues, and it was nowhere near as polished as Creative Assembly’s offering.

Nevertheless, I was more than slightly intrigued by the announcement of a sequel. Unfortunately, King Arthur II has quite a few problems that almost cripple it…

Let me tell you a tale…
King Arthur II takes place after the events of the first game. Arthur himself lies wounded in Camelot and around him his kingdom is starting to fall apart, not helped by the fact Merlin has vanished. It is up to you, Arthur’s son, to go out into the world and find a cure for your father’s aliment and also reunite your broken nation. However, pitched against you are a huge number of foes ranging from the common banditry up to traitorous Knights of the Round Table, and even foes not of this world.

No holding the pages open while you choose!

I actually really enjoyed the writing in King Arthur II; it makes you really feel like you are part of an Arthurian legend as you move from town to town and quest to quest. Later on you meet many of the major characters from Arthurian legend, and each feels like a properly rounded character rather than just the entry point to a new set of quests. The ending of the campaign is a little rubbish, but the choices you can make during the game can affect the ending and so there is a reason to go back and play some more.

Using magic is playing the game
Like its predecessor, King Arthur II is split into two parts. The first is the overworld map, which presents you post-Roman Britannia steadily falling apart. In the original game, this map was as deep as it could possibly be, with units needing to be bought from specific places and some in-depth tax management and diplomacy. In the sequel a lot of this has been cut down, and so the map feel a lot more like some pretty wrapping over a mission select screen. It feels odd that they took this step back, and to be honest it really turned me off part of the game.

The game loves giving you choices. As you go through your quests, all begin as a text-based adventure, giving you a problem and two or more choices to go through. These allow many quests to be completed without even fighting a battle, as long as you use the correct choices. These choices affect your hero giving him buffs or penalties, and they also alter his alignment. This alignment is a complete axis, factoring in both good or evil and magic or Christianity. This affects the units you can build; good Christians can go to war with hordes of pilgrims or Templar-esque nights, while evil pagans can roam around with the fey helping them butcher their enemies. However eccentric these units are, at the end of the day most of the lower-level ones are simply standard units with slightly better stats.

On the other hand, you have the real-time battles which play very similar to a certain other franchise. These are a much better than the first game but at the same time, they’re still not quite as good as they should be. The first problem comes with morale. Such a simple thing that is so well presented in other games and easy to gauge is so inconsequential here. It’s hard to know who is going to win a fight, as there is no bar or meter to tell how the fight is going. Its also a little vague when you go into a battle. It gives you a quick flyby to show the map, but it doesn’t shout out just quite where the enemy are, or what they are, until the battle has started.

Man, it looks like there is a ‘total war’ going on here

On the other hand, magic and the aforementioned magic items can make the battles really fun to play as you bring the full might of the elements down on your opponents. Victory locations on the map give you a few more things to play with such as new spells or effects, which make the battles more than just two armies clashing. The A.I. (a vital factor in a game like this) is also pretty wicked; they have been known to get the jump on you a few times yet it’s not such a constant event that it becomes unfair.

A really cool feature is the ability to outfit your heroes with some cool and outlandish artefacts, as suits a time of myth and legend. These actually show up in battle and can make your heroes easily able to hold a flank by themselves, which can be great to watch. Overall, the gameplay can be fun but it has some major flaws which can get in the way.

How best to show you my Lord?
If there is one thing that Neocore has done well, it’s that they’ve made a technically good-looking game. King Arthur II looks excellent, especially when knocked up to DirectX11. The art style of units and appearance is distinctive with environment looking very dramatic; dark castles cast shadow across the land when you fight underneath, while magic lights up the environment. In fact, shadows are something they have done very well, making the world look menacing and grim.

Of greater concern is the performance level. Even on my machine which runs most things with ease, King Arthur II really struggled along, even at the map view. It was still playable, but the game appears to be horribly optimised. A little bit of a settings tweak is needed to get it running perfectly, but when it does work it looks rather good. It doesn’t match up to some other games but it’s not horrible to look at.

Listen to me as I spin you a tale
King Arthur II sounds great; in fact the sound is probably one of the main plus points. The backing music sounds epic, lending itself easily to stomping around the countryside being heroic. The narrator is good, with the right sort of tone for this style of story. I did have one or two issues with where the game cut off the narrator suddenly or I lost sound altogether, but when it worked I quite enjoyed the music, and it helped to conjure up a land of mystery and magic.

Look at that land… it’s brooding at you!

A clash of Good and Evil?
I really want to enjoy King Arthur II. It has a great deal of promise and when it’s good it shines through. However, the rest of the time, the game feels like a legendary struggle against its deficiencies, such as the controls or its frequent crashes and bugs. If you are a fan of Arthurian legend or just want some more King Arthur, this game might be for you. For everyone else, maybe wait for a few more patches or until it inevitably hits the Steam sales.

The name Futuremark should be one that most people who like tinkering with their PCs should know quite a lot about. They make 3D Mark, perhaps the most famous benchmarking tool for the PC to date.

What most people don’t know is that Futuremark also make games; their first was a PC first-person shooter called Shattered Horizon, which looked fantastic but was deeply flawed at launch. Then they made Hungribles for the iOS, which was a little more successful, and is supposedly quite fun. Now they have returned to Steam with the Unstoppable Gorg, a new and different take on the good old tower defense genre.

Suddenly… ALIENS!
Unstoppable Gorg is heavily inspired by ‘50’s style sci-fi films, and this is evident from the off. The story starts when humanity discovers Planet X, lurking beyond Pluto. Miss Solar System herself, along with the dashing Captain Adam, travels off to this world to act as peace envoys for humanity. However, the aliens turn hostile and it’s up to you to defend the human race’s hold on the Solar System from the Unstoppable Gorg!

Yep, that’s two different motherships you have to deal with

Now, I’m a sucker for in-game FMV with terrible special effects, and Unstoppable Gorg is packed full of this. From the cheesy between-level briefings to the terribly-acted live action scenes with all their home-made props, it perfectly hits the vibe of films like The Day The Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet.

The best form of defence is rotation
Gameplay is very similar to the standard tower defense; place turrets to prevent waves of enemies from reaching your base and destroying it. However, Unstoppable Gorg changes this through the use of orbits.

All the turrets you place are positioned at different spots on the orbit surrounding the main base at the centre of the map. These act like the standard placement points used in most tower defense games. However, you can also rotate them, allowing you to move your turrets when they are not in use or when the enemies shift their path. It’s a great idea and makes it a little more hands-on than other tower defense games, which can just turn into you watching the enemies get minced up by your perfectly arranged turrets.

Apart from that, though, it is very much a standard tower defense game… except for the fact that it is really, really hard. There is an awful lot of trial and error, which increases later on in the game when new races pop up and require different strategies to defeat them.

Visions of space
The best way to describe the visuals of Unstoppable Gorg is that they are perfectly serviceable. There is nothing terrible about them, but they really don’t have any lasting impact. However, they do the job well; from unit cards to the little enemies winding towards your base, they all do the job they are designed for. In contrast to Shattered Horizon that prided itself on its graphics (to the point that it broke the rest of the game), the aim here was obviously to create great and compelling gameplay, rather than just look fantastic.

Welcome to Earth!

The sounds of the stars!
Unstoppable Gorg is great as far as its audio is concerned. Both the effects and music tie into the ‘50’s sci-fi style, sounding simultaneously really good and terrible at the same time. I should also bring to light the terrible voice acting as well; it’s perfectly kitsch and helps to tie everything together in a ’50′s nostalgia hit.

Can you stop the Unstoppable Gorg?
Overall, I really enjoyed playing The Unstoppable Gorg. It’s a very interesting take on tower defense with a great aesthetic, and despite its punishing difficulty, it is still fun. I would recommend you try it though; as much as I enjoy it, the tweaks it makes to the regular formula may not entice everyone.

Tower Defence is one of the ‘in things’ at the moment. From Gears of War 3 to Assassin’s Creed, games are forcing in moments where you place traps to defend your favourite buildings from the angry hordes.  Double Fine has tried their hand at this with their latest game, Iron Brigade, or do I mean Trenched?

Thanks to a Portuguese board game maker, Trenched had to have its name changed and its European release delayed. Unfortunately for a co-op game, this has affected its gameplay. This is a damn shame, as it is perhaps one of my favourite games of 2011.

Evil television? Sounds like the Jeremy Kyle Show
In the world of Iron Brigade, two men left disabled by the first World War hear an alien signal which affects their mind. While one creates stompy mechs to help soldiers walk again, the other creates television. However, this isn’t good television; it soon becomes an evil group of machines seeking to hunt down and kill humanity, otherwise known as the ‘Tubes or Monovisions.

This game has a lot of explosions in it…

The story is all presented via the front covers of ‘30’s style ‘Man’s Own Adventure’ magazines, which suit the world perfectly. They also have some pretty funny in-jokes slid in via the front page titles, which are just another thing that marks out the game as a Double Fine production.

Trenches! Roll Out!
In Iron Brigade, you control your very own walker (or trench). You must defend your base against various waves of ‘Tubes, ranging from the default Resistors that attack your base up to the terrifying Volt Dropper bomber that can soak up punishment. The variety of enemies is great, especially as different types go after your base, your turrets or you.

In-between waves, you build up your defences by putting down emplacements wherever you wish. You have direct control over your mech and do battle with a large variety of weapons, ranging from standard machine guns up to huge artillery cannons firing magnets that suck in enemies. The basic shooting gameplay is fun, and I’m more than happy to just use my own guns and not rely on placing turrets.

Turrets, on the other hand, don’t feel quite right in my opinion. Partially, this is to do with their placement; as opposed to other games that limit you to certain preset locations to place your defences, their free placement makes it very easy to spread your turrets too thinly. However, the turrets themselves all have their perfect role and it never feels that any turret is useless. Turrets are built using scrap collected from destroyed Monovisions, which can be easily vacuumed up by simply walking near then and pressing in the left bumper to grab them all up.

Iron Brigade feels very Diablo-esque when you aren’t playing the missions. As you battle and complete missions you collect loot, ranging from new and exotic weapons and chassis to new paint jobs for your trench and items for your very own trench marine. In addition, challenges track your progress through various stats, which in turn unlocks more and more stuff. This constant progression works as good, if not better, than the system which Call of Duty 4 first pioneered.

On top of that, the game keeps track of your regiment stats. These are the stats collected from various other players, either from games you have joined or from your friends list. These unlock even more kit, some of which is only unlockable via the regiment system. All of these unlocks combine to keep bringing you back for more and more.

The different chassis, weapons and parts all mean the walkers can be customised to the players own specification; if you would rather just roll around placing emplacements, you can do. It works better in co-op, as in single-player it makes more sense for players to follow the handy hints given out at the start of each mission before you deploy.

War is grim… but not for Double Fine
The graphics in Iron Brigade are stylish to say the least. They don’t stand out technically, but they do give the game a great look. The designs for the good guys look great, really fitting in with being World War I era gear taken to its extreme. The Monovisions have their own distinctive looks which really helps to identify them at a glance, while also just making them look cool. It is very obvious that the development team at Double Fine had great fun in designing everything in the game.

Hmmm… what to use today?

The sounds of the Trenches
The primary standout for me in Iron Brigade’s sound is the voice acting. From your Commander’s great cigar-chomping lines to Vlad’s proud boasts about his new creatures, the game delights in being as over-the-top as possible. They both fit their roles perfectly.

The rest of the game sounds great. The music is full of bombast as if it was from a ‘30’s Man’s Own Adventure, or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In-game, the screams of the Monovisions will set your teeth on edge, while all the other effects such as gunfire sound pretty good. Overall, the sound in general is nothing to write home about, but it is still very solid.

Bring a friend into your Trench
It is very obvious that from the beginning that Iron Brigade was designed for four-person co-op play. The levels all become a little more straightforward when you have at least one other player helping you out; as well as taking off the some of the strain, it also allows one player to focus more on heavy weapons rather than having to build emplacements. The levels do scale, so you will have to deal with more enemies than a player by himself. Additionally, you lose the infinite lives feature of the single-player and must instead get a team-mate to pick you up. Co-op is definitely the way to play Iron Brigade.

Have Double Fine done it again?
I love Iron Brigade; it’s a fun game, great with friends and full of the loot lust that keeps bringing you back for more. It is such a shame that unfortunately the game lost out on its big bang introduction due to some copyright issues. Grab a group of friends, buy Iron Brigade and shoot some of those damn Monovisions, marine!

So I enjoyed my week back at home and managed to get a load of work done. Unfortunately, some of what I did wasn’t quite so good so I have still have quite a lot of work left to do. As much I enjoy being at uni, it was really nice to go home. I’m planning to get as much work done as possible before to Easter holiday before spending it relaxing… and playing Mass Effect 3. Fem Shep has a world to save god damn it.

In other gaming news, I’ve also had a huge jump in the number of review copies I have sat on my PC. I’ve just managed to get my King Arthur review done and its now up on This Is My Joystick – in short its pretty good but it has some serious flaws that might get in the way. However, that isn’t the only code I’ve got in my lap. First up is Real Warfare 2: Northern Crusades. It sounds and looks like a pretty generic clone of Total War but has the potential to be really good. That isn’t all I’ve been playing.

The other game I have to review is Alan Wake on PC. I really enjoyed it when I played it through on the Xbox and the PC has the potential to be the definitive version. It is a beauty to behold and I happily got down to a solid 30 frames a second if it means everything looks perfect. With a game that focuses so much on light and shadows, the lighting engine is spot on. I’ve loved going back through it, especially once you start getting to points where you really realise its easier just to duck and weave past the hordes of enemies in order to reach the light. I still don’t love the combat but that so far is the only thing I dislike. This really makes me excited to realise that on Wednesday, Alan Wake American Nightmare comes out. This next chapter of Alan Wake supposedly sorts out some of the combat problems but at the expense of taking away the air of using normal guns you’d find in the community, one thing I loved in the original. I’ll be reviewing both of them for This Is My Joystick so look for their reviews over the next week or so.

Also keep your eye out for a Wargame: European Escalation review also coming soon. I’ve been dug into the beta and I’m loving it. I won’t say much due to the NDA and the fact it is a beta, but it simultaneously feels very similar to RUSE and very different. Having played 11 hours of it, the fact all the battles play very differently should tell you just how good it is.

On a non-game related side, I’ve had a very nice weekend. My Dad came up to visit on Saturday morning to go for a walk around Teesside and bring me a nice shiny second-hand iPhone 3GS to develop on for my mobile game. We went for a walk entitled “The Bridges of Middlesbrough” which went from the Tees Barrage to Middlesbrough’s Transporter bridge and then back to Stockton via the train. It was really nice to get out and see Middlesbrough rather than just living there – having a car obviously helped out. It was also nice to go for a walk – I haven’t done that for ages and its good just to walk and have a casual chat. The nice meal at the Tapore Inn helped as well.

So speaking of my new iPhone, I’ve been getting out devices to use for development. Sat on my desk at the moment, I have three phones:

- The first is my old HTC Hero. Its running Cyanogen mod 7, which is a pretty clear Android build with none of the HTC bull crap eating up resources. I’m not personally using Android for my assignment, but I am letting people use it to test on.

- The second is a new iPhone 3GS. Its an old one from my mum’s work that they couldn’t sell on due to a small crack on the back. Its a nice introduction to iOS devices (having not owned an i device since the 3rd Gen iPod). I actually much prefer the shape of the 3GS to the 4 – it just sits more naturally in my hand. I’m going to get it linked up to a development account at some point this week and then I’ll be jumping backward and forwards on testing.

- Finally, I have my Lumia 800. It is still my favourite of the three. Having just reset it, it now has really good battery life and runs perfectly smoothly. I love everything about it. I will write something in depth at some point over Easter with a full review.

I do kind of feel like a drug dealer with all these phones.

That’s all for now – I have about four weeks until my next break and I have a load of work to get done by then. I ‘m going to try and write some more blog posts but my main priority is work, closely followed by my games writing for This Is My Joystick. If I have some free time, I’ll try to write. See you on the other side.

Read on to find out what I’ve been up to at home.

So I’ve had a ton of work to do and luckily this week has just been what I’ve need. I’ve spent most of the weekend working on my Java and getting my chat client further on. I’ve managed to get most of it working now, thanks to some help from my Dad who did some Java coaching, but I’m going to get the rest of it finished pretty soon and ready to hand in. I’m going to spend the rest of the week working on both my iOS game using Cocos2d and my C#/XNA level editor, both of which I’ve started. Before this week, I’ve been feeling really worried about my work but thanks to a bit of teaching I’m now more on top of it.

I’ve also been looking at my choices and deciding on them. I’m really disliking my AI module this year and so have not interest in doing more LISP next year. Instead I’m more interested in learning a bit of web development to add to my toolkit which I can do thanks to be on the BSc Computing Course. You can use HTML 5/Silverlight/C# to develop for Windows Phone (a platform I love and still need to write about ) and its something I’m very interested in. In addition, creating a game that runs on multiple different platforms like mobile, desktop, console and web would be a pretty cool project to do and would be a potential final year project. In addition, I’ll also be doing multiplayer games programming (self explanatory), games device programming (programming for low end devices – in this case a linux based handheld) and advanced games development (working in groups to make a XNA 2D/2.5D game). There have been a few points this year where I’ve really been down on my work but I’m looking forward to finishing this year, digging into the final year and getting my degree done.

Also being at home has allowed me to sort out this new Xbox 360 that turned up thanks to a great Orange offer that came with buying the Lumia 800. I wasn’t planning to upgrade to a new Xbox but getting one for free kind of pushes you towards it. So I ordered a 320GB (use ALL the space) and spent a few hours getting all my stuff moved over. I still think the Xbox 360’s license transfer stuff is a little archaic and at points idiotic but now everything is moved over and ready to go.

The new Xbox style is beautiful compared to the clunky old ones. Its also massively smaller, quieter and missing the awful bulge where the hard drive used to be stored. It is however painfully obvious that the hard drives they sell are literally just laptop hard drives. However, my hard drive came with a download code for Lego Star Wars 3 which is a nice addition. Its actually a pretty good game – I haven’t played a Lego game since the first Indiana Jones game and I was really happy to see that many of the little problems that have plagued them from the start have been fixed. I’m also a little worried about the sheer size of the game – it seems like I might be spending a rather long time on it.

I’ve also done a little bit with the Zune Pass. For those of you who haven’t used Zune or Windows Phone, the Zune Pass is a premium service that allows you to stream or download music to your Windows Phone/Zune/PC/Xbox 360. I’m interested in the service and so I’m trying out the trial. So far it seems pretty good. It is similar to Spotify but as someone who would download more than stream it is slightly more useful. I’m going to give it a go but I’m not sure if I want to spend £90 a year on it. It would make getting music more legal for me.

So that’s all for now, I’m going to spend the rest of the week working on stuff, playing a little on my Xbox and getting started on some review code that’s waiting for me. When I have some free time I’ll get my Windows Phone writing up.

So the first month of university is almost over. I’ve handed in one assignment fully, done part of enough and I have several more well on the way.  Hopefully I should be getting some marks back in the next week or two which should show if I pass the first module or not. I’m confident that I have but we will see soon enough. Once it is marked, I’ll put it up on my portfolio so it is available to download and try out. I’m also going to go through the exercise of converting it over to C#/XNA  in order to demonstrate the advantages of XNA over developing an engine from scratch. I’m also making an iOS game for another of my modules which I’m rather excited about making.  Finally, I’m still struggling through a making a Java TCP/UDP chat server. I need to do a lot more work on it before its ready but I’ve luckily got a week at home where I’m going to be flat out working 9 to 5 every day on all my various pieces of work. However, I’ve not just been working all the time. Read on to find out what else I’ve been up to…

So on top of the coding for uni, I’ve started looking at another of my own projects which I will start when I have some more time. The plan is to a make a game all about controlling a merc company on the world stage. The player will recruit them, choose their equipment and general operating procedure (going all Blackwater may get stuff done but it won’t be long before the population hates you) and then attempt to guide your company, surviving its way from new starter to juggernaut of the PMC world. It is heavily inspired by Uplink both in terms of idea and hopefully presentation. I’m planning to write this in C# and XNA and I’m looking to start soon. As part of it, there will be a call out for Merc names to use in the recruitment database but more on that later.

We also finally got everyone in the house all wired up with Ethernet rather than relaying on the sometimes dodgy wifi. As a side effect to this, we’ve managed to get the ground floor Xbox hooked up and so have started playing some games with 3 other house mates. The main two games we’ve been digging into have been Bungie’s Halo Reach and Epic’s Gears of War 3.So I’m personally not a huge fan of Halo games – I find the controls a little floating and the weapons don’t have much kick to them. However, I won’t disagree that its a fun game just to jump into. Its quick to get in, fast paced and with plenty of players it still pretty fun. However, the campaign is a little lacking in co-op. It’s fun but not satisfying. Gears of War 3 on the other hand is a game I far prefer in single-player or co-op. I’m actually really enjoying the storyline and with four players it really tactical. Epic truly know how to make cover based shooting good and solid. The multi-player can be a little slow online but a greater problem is that it seems that most of the people online really know how to play themselves some Gears of War. I’ve also played a bit more L.A. Noire and I’m going to try and 100% Bastion but I haven’t done too much of either of those.

I’ve also started watching Hawaii 5-0 (the new one). Its a dumb police procedural but it blasts the fact it is in Hawaii straight into your eye balls at every opportunity and I am totally okay with that. I really first heard about it by my Mum and Dad raving about it so I then decided to pick it up and start watching. It nicely combines an ongoing plot about the lead character’s Dad and a case he was working and also the weekly cases which range from terrorists to crimes of passion. It is well worth the watch. I’ve also heard that Channel 5 has also started showing Sons of Anarchy again so I’ll have enough show to watch soon enough.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got another week up at Uni but hopefully on Thursday I’ll be heading home for for a week while Teesside hosts Animex. I’m not attending this year and so I’ll spend the week at home, getting on with my pile of work and sorting out moving my stuff from my old Xbox to a newer, slimmer one. Will write some more soon, including a look at the Lumia 800 after using it for a month. Preview? Its pretty good.

Read on to work out why I’m looking like a mad man in the photo above…

With it being January, I’ve just had my birthday leaving me at the ripe old age of 20. It is odd to think I’ve been alive for two decades but hey that’s how it goes. I had a fun trip down to Reading to go airsofting at the Mall over my birthday weekend. It was great fun and the site was different though I am slightly annoyed my L85 was misbehaving meaning I could use it. Instead though I got to run around most of the day using two M1911s and feeling all cool. I’m tempted to buy another 1911 and make this a permanent loadout but I need to get rid of my L86 first. Anyway, it was a fun weekend and I got kitted out in a silly t-shirt you see above. Oh Airsofters.

As part of Christmas and Birthday, I also got an upgrade to my phone and a contract extension for another two years with Orange thanks to phoning them up. I also apparently got a new Xbox as well which I didn’t expect. However, the main thing was that I got my phone upgraded to the new Nokia Lumia 800. I chose it over an iPhone or Android phones primarily due to its design and its Windows Phone operating system. After a few weeks I have to say I love the phone. I’m going to write a little more at some point but the Lumia 800 is well worth the asking price.

At the time of writing I’m really busy with work. We are starting to receive ICAs that count as the main part of my modules for this year. However, I have managed to hand in my Games Engine Construction module before the date to give me my birthday weekend off. It was finished and I’m hoping for a 2:1 or better for it. Its a simple top down shooter demo but the game engine supports features such as bullet management, animation and collisions management. It was hard working but worth it in the end. By the end of this year, I also have to write a Java chat client, an iOS game with a rather interesting premise, a game editor and a 3d game. It is going to be hard work but I’m looking forward to it

Finally, I’m right in the middle of enjoying the return of Sherlock. I loved the first season – it was an intelligent and well written update to a series of Victorian stories that shows off Sherlock as an eccentric badass and Watson as more than a bumbling helper and closer to being the character he should be – an ex-soldier who is Sherlock’s other half and is as vital to solving the case as Sherlock. The two stories so far update tales which would be out of place in the modern world to fit with modern themes while keeping the core tale the same. Bendict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman work together perfectly and feel like character you’d love to just sit back and chill with. I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the final episode on Sunday.

So that is all for now. I aim to write some more but unfortunately I may be prevented simply by the sheer amount of work I’m being snowed under with. Or I could just be more organised and make time to blog.

Ah, its that time of the year. The time when Steam takes EVERYTHING from my wallet,  the time where it is now the norm for me to be working on uni stuff all the way through my time at home and the time where everyone writes top 10 lists.

Well, 2011 has been a great year. So rather than limit my choices to ten, I may as well give you a list of all the games I’ve really enjoyed this year and just why you should give them your time. Before I start, I need to say I have missed out a couple of key releases that probably should end up on this list. At the time of writing I haven’t played Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2, Gears of War 3, Halo Anniversary or the Witcher 2 so they will sadly be absent from this list

So, on with the list!

Magicka

So lets start in January with the release of Magicka. Buggered to hell at launch, its quirky humour, combined with developers almost as mental (they made a Vietnam expansion for it) and super powerful spell system made it a great game to play in co-op with a group of friends. Just make sure you don’t have any deep seated resentment of them – the existence of friendly fire will lead to arguments faster than you can say “Rainstorm + Lightning”

Overall, the game is pretty good but it is vital its played in co-op – it can be a little unfair sometimes to a lone player.

Stacking

The second of the downloadable games Double Fine made during the Brutal Legend development hell, Stacking is smart, funny and well crafted puzzle game as you might expect from Tim Schaffer’s studio. The multiple ways of solving each puzzle makes it a little bit more involving than other games of the type and the humour is witty rather than outright laugh out loud.

Dawn of War 2 – Retribution

Next we have the latest Dawn of War game. Carrying on the gameplay of the other Dawn of War 2 games, the small scale RPG is now expanded with some army building. Don’t want a useless hero in your party? Swap them out for a honour guard unit!

Most important though is the addition of the Imperial Guard to both single-player and multi-player. As a fan of the underdog and anything that’s human in sci-fi, the Guard are just the best from the extravagant moustache of the colonel to the Rambos of the Catachan Devils to the huge Banebalde.

Retribution is now, after a few months, my favourite of the Dawn of War 2 games.

Total War: Shogun 2

March brought the release of the next game in the Total War series. As befitting its epic scale, it weighs in at about 20gb at launch and was packed full of content. The return to Medieval style warfare makes the combat very different to Empire and Napoleon, instead requiring you to be a bit more active than just lining your guys and waiting. On the campaign map, the change to a single nation makes it simultaneously feel more comfortable and more epic. It leads to many more cases of the stories and tales these games generate.

Personally, I don’t like Shogun 2 as much as Empire. It primarily because with Empire, I know the period of history it is taking place in, so I know how it all works. However, as a learning tool, Shogun 2 is still a fantastic game. I’m looking forward to what CA do next.

Portal 2

Hey guess what? I like this game. LIKE EVERY OTHER INTERNET COMMENTER. BECAUSE ITS GOOD. I CAN’T EXPRESS HOW GOOD THIS GAME IS. BECAUSE ITS SO FANTASTIC.

The only issue is that it makes me feel like an idiot when I get stuck. But that’s nothing compared to the elation you get when you solve a puzzle.

Brink

In contrast, next to no one likes this game. Which is a real shame as it has some very good ideas and is constantly being improved on by the development team. It was a disappointment but it is still worth playing. All weapons useable by all classes, the changes to medics, the customisation of both guns and people are just so good. Find some friends, find it for cheap and jump in.

L.A. Noire

If you don’t want to grab some friends, sit down and play through L.A. Noire. The great detective story may start to fall apart if you mess it around too much but it is a great single player experience.

The story is a gritty noire style tale, taking Cole Phelps through the 4 desks at the LAPD. Each desk has an over arching plot (especially the murder desk) but the overall tale shows the downfall of Cole as he stumbles upon a conspiracy and discovers just how corrupt LA is.

In terms of the game, it can be very simplistic. But the setting, the style and way it carries it self (look at that facial animation. LOOK AT IT!) is just great.

Frozen Synapse

As PC Gamer put it, it’s turn based Counter-Strike. I’ve been on board since the beta testing. Simultaneous turns lead to an unusual style of play. But the thing I love the most is the fact I can play a long game over several hours – playing a turn, walking away to do some work before coming back to watch out how each of our plans worked. It is normally catastrophic but watching a completed game play out is sublime

Bastion

Greg Kasavin is part of a group of games journalist who worked at Gamespot that really got me interested in games (the others include people like Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, Rich Gallup, Jason Ocampo and Carry Gouskos). I’ve kept track of him and was very intrigued by the dribs and drabs of information that leaked out about Bastion.

When it was shown and it was released, I loved it. The beautiful hand drawn art style, the haunting music and the dynamic narrator all work together. Look too closely at one thing and you miss that the whole package works together like a machine.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

“I didn’t ask for this”

I was never a huge fan of Deus Ex. I saw it’s great idea’s but I’ve never seen Hong Kong. However, I could not put down Human Revolution. It is a beautiful game in terms of its design (both game and art) that presents such a great look for the future. In terms of gameplay, it a smart combination of the freedom you were given in the original and a modern shooter like Rainbow Six Vegas. It is a great game to sit down and embrace the story.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Warhammer 40,000 is in fact one of the best fictions to set games in. The universe is so large that you can have a huge galaxy changing event in a game that doesn’t affect the tabletop, the different races are varied enough to fit the story and its so outlandish it sits comfortable in your brain making it fun.

Space Marine is Relic doing something different. Rather than an RTS, it gets you down and up close to the bad guys. It makes the player feel like a Space Marine as you chop, chew, charge and explode your way through Orks and other nasty things in the universe (hint – it’s Chaos again). Add in a multiplayer mode with co-op and customisation and you have a perfect package for Warhammer 40,000 fans.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

I will punch a man who calls Battlefield realistic. If you want realism, Red Orchestra 2 is the place to go. With fancy Unreal Engine graphics and physics, Red Orchestra is a great bit of fun. It can change from immensely satisfying to horrifically unfair in a single map. And when it works it is great fun.

Its such a shame it was broken at launch and still has a few issues with the server browser. Now excuse me, I’m just delighting in the sniper scopes.

Batman: Arkham City

It is more Arkham Asylum! More of the same combat system that allows button mashing but makes you feel better when you do it properly. More of Batman being Batman. More of his foes being dastardly (at last! A Penguin who isn’t silly). It’s packed full of stuff to do, from the main story to all the Riddler challenges to a huge selection of side quests.

Arkham City is a ruggedly beautiful place – on my PC there have been points where I have just sat down and watched the world go by – from the thugs patrolling to looking off to the distance. I’m looking forward to playing some more.

Payday: The Heist

So those steam sales are pretty worth it. Picked this up only a few days ago and love it. It feels like a janky Left 4 Heist but with some cool touches that just make it. Constant progression keeps bringing you back while the maps are cleverly thought out. It carefully balances on the edge between being broken in its difficulty and being fun – its just right, even in single player. I also get the feeling the developers are in the for the long run with plenty of patches and activity from them. It is well worth the buy.

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 is the true heir to the Battlefield name from Battlefield 2. It brings staples like jets and lying prone crashing into the world made in Bad Company 2, taking the destructibility and unlock systems. Add in the fantastic new engine and you have my game of the year. I love the multiplayer – always tempting me forward with more and more unlocks to get. The singleplayer is relatively forgettable although two levels really stand, one of which feels like the design team of Mirror’s Edge was picked up and told to make a super slick, super fun scene from a Michael Mann movie.

Modern Warfare 3

It’s the end of an saga stretching from the glory days of Infinity Ward down to change of Call of Duty into a household name and the basic destruction of IW. It ends the story of Price, Soap and Makarov properly, wrapping it up in a mad game that never stops for a moment. Unlike the quiet moments of the last two games, there is no slow down. Its a constant noise that makes some truely amazing sequences. The rest of the package is usual but I did enjoy the Survival mode if its you’re sort of thing.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Few games quite reach the same level where everyone (including normally non-gamers) you know is playing them on launch week. But when Skyrim came out, everyone in my student flat (all 7 of us), most of my Steam and Xbox Live friends and most of the people I knew in real life were all chatting out hunting dragons, exploring Skyrim and being sent to the moon by giants. It is everything I loved about Oblivion with most of the last game’s flaws

Saint’s Row: The Third

It is hard to imagine that the first Saint’s Row was a simple rip-off of GTA, especially once you’ve played the latest game. While other games may wait a while before giving you predator missiles and helicopters, within a few missions you’re handling just that. Its a game where ripping off the National Guard of a few rocket launchers is standard, fighting a gang of Luchadores is common place and hacking into a Tron-esque world is taken all in its stride. I say this quite a lot but this game does not give a s***.

Iron Brigade (Trenched)

Sadly delayed since its actual release in the summer due to a Portuguese copyright claim, Iron Brigade finally came out. It missed out on the fan fare that normally accompanies the release of a Double Fine game due to its fractured release which is a massive shame. Iron Brigade is a great combination of 3rd person shooter and tower defence which pits you in a mech against waves of TV inspired monsters. I love the World War 1 aesthetic and the ‘30’s man’s magazine style of the game. I love it and if you want to play some co-op pick up. After all, there is that bear on Mars we have to hunt down.

So those are the games of 2011, I hope they have interested you and give you some ideas about what to play next year. But that’s all from me so have a Happy New Year!

Ever since EA stopped making good versions of Sim City, several companies have tried to make their own versions of the popular city building game to saté the demand of all the mayoral wannabes.

Perhaps foremost among these is the Cities XL series, which has been digging out itself a niche. Now, Cities XL 2012 has just been released. Does it add much to the series? Or is it more of an incremental upgrade not worth the planning permission?

This is how Cities are made
For those who don’t know about the Cities XL series, it was originally a massively multiplayer game designed for players online to build their cities and trade among themselves. Unfortunately, the servers were shut down and so the latest version is devoid of any multiplayer content.

Instead, you are presented with an area based upon real world terrain (chosen from a globe view) and from there you set up the road system, zone out areas for residents, industry and retail, and then watch the people roll in. There is a huge number of unlockable buildings, ranging from varying densities of housing up to landmarks, with every service in-between. I’m not keen overall on the way these games limit you to certain tiers of workers and industries by population, which seems a little counter-intuitive.

The cities start out pretty normal…

Each city requires resources to survive, but not every map includes all the fuel or food resources you need. This is where the multiplayer lineage is apparent as you can trade between the various cities you have made via trade buildings. It is a very strange system, which is cool, but does very much feel like it was the developers fixing a system that had most of its back-end ripped off.

Despite all of this, the city building still feels really powerful; if you had the time and inclination you could quite happily build model versions of most of the world’s cities. Cities XL includes several real world landmarks just to add a little extra to your starting city. However, these are the end-game units that take a lot of time and resources to build.

The main thing that 2012 adds is a huge selection of new buildings complete with new models to include in your city. Many of these are part of the various location packs, which allow you to customise your city to have a certain look, be that of a traditional medieval European town or a snowy hotel complex up in the mountains. It does certainly make your cities look more visually themed as opposed to the generic American towns, but overall they are simply alternative models for other buildings.

Another new feature that will make all the budding architects glow with pride is the inclusion of a tool that allows users to import models from their favourite 3D modelling programs, to make your own custom models into brand new buildings. It is a great feature that is perfect for this sort of game.

Towering buildings, microscopic framerates
Although 2012 adds some brand new objects, the engine it is running in is starting to show its age. It does the job alright, but it’s not exactly beautiful. The buildings, cars and terrain are all realistic, but the characters are stylised monstrosities which does break the immersion a little bit. The day/night effects look pretty good but they play no part on the gameplay, which is a little disappointing. Overall, don’t come to this game for its looks.

…but can end up sprawling for miles and miles.

The real issue with Cities XL is the fact the game can run horribly even on powerful systems, due to the old engine which doesn’t support multi-core systems. On both of my machines it randomly hitched up at various points, dropping down to single digit frames per second. It gets worse when you eventually get to huge metropolises, which can make the game nigh unplayable.

The sounds of the city… quieter than expected
To be honest, the sound in Cities XL 2012 is nothing really to write home about. It is a nice ambient sound, which works well when tinkering with your city or waiting for citizens to move in. For the rest of the time it’s barely noticeable. Thankfully, we are spared any questionable voice acting.

The city goes on
Cities XL 2012 is perhaps the best city builder in the past few years. It has a solid core but the outer edge is a little rough. It is very easy to pick up and play and be building your own metropolis. However, I think it is a little overpriced when bought as an expansion; it doesn’t contain enough new stuff for its price tag.

So as a brand new game, try it. As an existing player, though, only the hardcore Cities XL players should pick it up.

I woke up after having spent most of Friday in bed being ill. I’d discovered someone had eaten half of my very tasty (and expensive) chorizo. I looked at my work which I had been struggling with before getting on the phone with my parents. Within minutes I was sobbing down the phone about how I wanted to leave the house I’m in this year, how all the work is hard and other things. Its probably the first time I’ve properly broken down while at uni. It wasn’t pleasant and I definitely gave my mother a fright, especially as I’ve been sounding pretty happy ever other time I’ve called home. However, a day spent out the house with a group of advice giving bros and another airsofting has me feeling a lot better. Uni is a hard time and have talked to both third years and my parents, Second Year is probably the biggest change in terms of both work and life in general.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom, so read on…

My minor freakout, followed by a two days not looking at my work, has meant today I’ve managed to come back to my main project at the moment. Its the hand in for one of the two half year modules I have this year. Games Engine Construction, or GEC as everyone calls it, gives us programmers a basic API called HAPI, and tells us to make a simple 2D game. To pass the module all you need is some animations, clipping and good code practise but I’m aiming to make a complete demo of a game, including Xbox 360 controller support and win/loss conditions, in order to be hitting a little higher up the marks list. I’m making a bullet hell style game, although less bullet-hell and more bullet-slight-annoyance. I’m not totally confident in C++ despite studying it for more than a year but its a struggle that will be worth it when I finish as it will be one of the first proper demos on my portfolio site.

I’m also working on a Java chat client for Network and Concurrent Programming – its only a formative hand in but I’ll use it as the basis for the actual hand in at the end of the year. In terms of Java, I need to relearn a large amount of it but I still like it.

Lisp can go die in a fire though.

So I am at home for Christmas. To be honest, most of it will be hard work and hard eating of delicious food but I’m also planning to play a good few games. Back to Karkand for BF3 comes out tomorrow (at the time of writing) so I’ll be eagerly jumping into that, in order to grab the new L85 and to shoot up some people on the best maps in any FPS ever. I also want to dig a little deeper into Skyrim and play some more. I feel like I have only dipped in my toes and not really experienced very much.

TV wise, I want to sit down and watch through the rest of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and finish off The Shield. Both are really good but I haven’t quite got round to watching all the episodes. I also need to watch more 30 Rock as I have two more seasons downloaded but not watched through. And of course the various films my Mum will have bought on DVD without us all knowing that we then suddenly realise we actually really want to watch.

And along with all this there is the promise of delicious home made food. Although I enjoy my cooking, nothing beats the food Mum cooks. From stuff that I can’t make up here due to facilities (such as homemade pizza) or things that I don’t make to the same standard. On top of that, there is also Christmas feast and the chance of a New Year’s Eve dinner at my Nanna’s. Hopefully, it will be a nice and relaxed time.

Finally, all that airsoft. After the terrible trip to the Stan (a real shame), everyone was looking forward to our outing to NAA. Just going to say now, NAA (Northern Airsoft Alliance) is perhaps one of the most fun sites I’ve been to. It is excellently run by a team who are more than welcoming of Teesside’s extravagant play style. You also get a nice dry area to store all your kit and a free lunch (Morrison’s pastry, chocolate bar, apple and a drink) with your walk on.

Game-wise it was a great day, really fun with a group of fair players. Some of the locals complained we weren’t taking hits, but that because they were trying to shoot us from out of range. One of our guys borrowed my L85 for the day and he thoroughly enjoyed himself which was good.

I too had a great day but I have come to a conclusion about my kit. I enjoy my L86 but its a little annoying. Its back heavy for it length and I much prefer rolling with the shotgun or L85. So in January, I think I’ll be selling the LSW and swapping it out for a long battle rifle much like a G3, mainly after running around . I’m really wanting a SLR to match with British kit but they are fiendishly expensive and very had to find. I may settle for a FAL and just get a wood kit but I would rather have the better match to Britishness. However, I will have to sell the LSW first in order to afford it.

So that’s all for now. I’ll be writing more over Christmas, probably a little more about coding itself. Of course I will also be writing my Top 10 games as well before Christmas Day. See you guys soon.

From XKCD

Yep, don’t worry I’m still here. Just been doing some more programming to get ready for a few hand ins. At this point they are mainly milestones although I do have a presentation on a LISP problem to show on Tuesday which will be great fun.

At the moment, the main two projects I’m working on are a C++ game using HAPI, a API (or framework) developed by my tutors at Teesside University and a game for iOS (hence the horribly mangled bit of Objective C in the title bar). I’m finding coding hard work but its oh so satisfying when you finally solve a puzzle.

But you people aren’t here for coding talk, you’re more interested in games! So here what I’ve been playing for the past few months:

Battlefield 3: If you don’t know me, I got pretty hard in Battlefield 2 over the Summer of 2006 going so far as to join a clan and play in clan matches. I love Battlefield with a passion and although the Bad Company games were good, they weren’t proper Battlefield.

Battlefield 3 is proper Battlefield. Its like jumping into a small scale war with jets flying overhead, choppers hovering at treetop level, tanks crashing through trees and explosions raining down bits of buildings everywhere. The singleplayer is a fun distraction with some cool set-pieces and a plausible setup for the US vs Russia multiplayer warfare although an over reliance on quick time events and cheap deaths mean I don’t take it too well. However, the Russian missions are exceptional, even if its down to just the Paris level having an aesthetic ripped out of Mirror’s Edge.

Going into the multiplayer and Battlefield truly shines. There are some major flaws (don’t play Operation Metro on Conquest unless you enjoy a stationary battle) but overall its fun. I still can’t fly choppers or jets, but I rip stuff to pieces in the mobile AA and as a shotgun wielding Assault class I run around capping points and reviving dudes.

Battlefield 3 is great and I heartily recommend it.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Its pretty good.

No, scratch that. Its brilliant. It fixes nearly everything that was wrong with Oblivion, wraps it in a world I can happily explore for hours, adds some new systems which add to the game without making it feel bloated and makes the graphics not scare the crap out of me every time I play.

It also feels much more natural and exciting. As enemies don’t do too much levelling up to you, there are points where if you don’t tiptoe past a sleeping monster it will rip you to shreds. Most people think this applies to the dragons but in reality, its more the giants or hag ravens that worry me. Speaking of levelling up, the new system is just great to use. It doesn’t force you down a path at the start which is so useful. I mainly used two handed weapons at the start and although fun, I’ve soon realised that single handed and shields are far more useful.

This is the defining version of the Elder Scrolls games – just make sure you set aside a week or two to play it.

Saint’s Row: The Third: Oh Saint’s Row you. While GTA IV took the series in a very serious direction (somewhat at odds with some of it in universe jokes), Saint’s Row 2 and 3 are the true heirs to the GTA: San Andreas name. They are wild, corny, hilarious games that do not give a single care in the world.

The opening sequence of the latest game just show how mental the game is – after robbing a bank dressed as one of your gang members, being captured and jumping out of a cargo plane, you then proceed to drop a girl you have rescued, fly through a plane killing three people, grab a parachute off a man you beat up and then catch the falling girl. From there is goes off the chain, leading to you fighting gangs of luchadores, going into a tron like world, brining tanks and guns back from said tron like world before fighting a military force led by a guy who was obviously designed after someone watched a bit too much Avatar.

Some parts of this game are broken. But when a game is so much fun, I honestly could care.

Modern Warfare 3: So I’m going to own this for the grand total of a week. I’ve only picked it up as we are running a tournament using it at the AGE on Thursday and I wanted to get a feel for the subtle changes if has over MW2. There isn’t much.

I’ve played through the story, touched the multiplayer and played a bit of survival mode. Its fun, no doubt but I’m not gripped by it as much as MW2. I think it wraps the story up pretty well, has some cool moments and nice ideas but there isn’t enough to keep me sticking around. Multiplayer wise, I’m more a fan of Battlefield then Call of Duty.

So that’s what is going on. I’ll be going home for Christmas on the 15th/16th but before then there is more airsoft and the AGE VI is this Thursday! Everyone go to it!

So I keep saying this but once again I need to write some more on this blog. Been a little overwhelmed with the whole "going back to uni thing”. Bit of a crappy excuse but here are all the things that have happened since the last blog entry which was on the 2nd of September also known as 74 days.

• Finished work at Mamas and Papas
• I got back to my flat in Middlesbrough
• Moved all my stuff into the flat and decorated it
• Got my desktop upgraded to i7 and memory – runs games like a dream
• Went back to uni and did some work
• Went airsofting three times (last one was less then good)
• Found a whole bunch of new shows to watch thanks to Anicom, Airsoft and other uni things such as Adventure Time and the Amazing World of Gumball
• Started writing for This Is My Joystick again (Currently have two sets of review code to review)
• Started swimming again
• Wrote a CV to start looking for placements for next year
• A whole bunch of lovely games cam out for me to review
• Airsoft did some midnight launches. Surprisingly few idiots asking questions
• And I grew a small beard. Its pretty beardy.

Sorry for how short this is, I’ll write some more in the future when I have a bit more time. And I’m not taking a five minute break from coding.

So the great Ground Zero was the last weekend and boy it did not disappoint. If you haven’t been reading the rest of the blog (and if not, what the hell), Ground Zero is a weekend long event of airsofting which is basically a music festival if you shoot each other rather than listened to music.

The airsoft side of the weekend was great with one or two exceptions. I managed to wreck my feet on the first day so I limited how much running around I did on the second day and my batteries on my L86 died halfway through the first day but apart from that it was really good fun. I’ll put some more pictures in a gallery and link to it below but I heartily recommend it to any UK airsofters.

Red Orchestra 2 has had its beta released on Wednesday and I’ve had a little play on it. For those not in the know, Red Orchestra is a super realistic take on the Russian front of World War 2. Originally a Unreal Tournament mod, it then became a retail product and now the sequel is about to be released in mid September.

I’m going to write an in depth article on it straight after I finish this update but put briefly it has a quite steep learning curve, even if you’re used to playing the original. The new progression system in multiplayer is one major point but also parts of the gameplay. I do rather like the cover system though – seems to be the most well done first person system I’ve seen. Also I’m a huge fan of the weapons you have to deploy – using the MGs last night was great fun, especially when you provide a proper base of fire. Overall, I’m looking forward to the full release, even if it is just to use the anti-tank rifle on people and see them gib.

Having received my latest paycheck, I’ve finally bought myself a Kindle. For a long time, I realised I needed an ebook reader of some description, in order to save me money on text books and have them readable when I’m away from my PC or doing something full screen. It also is space saving, so I can jump on the train and have something to read without a load of paper shoved into a bag. I eventually decided to get a kindle over a tablet due to its simplicity – Kindle’s have great battery life, a good screen (although lacking in a backlight) and the ability (if you pay for the 3G version) to buy books on the road.

It has literally just arrived (I’m writing this at work on the 1st of September and my Dad turned round and emailed me when it dropped through the door) so I haven’t got round to looking at it yet. But I already have several Kindle books sat ready to read. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a book I started reading when I was using the kindle app on my Hero (before I realised it was not a good idea) so I’m going to start it again. I also have a trashy sci-fi novel to read and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which is surprisingly readable.

However, most the books I’ll be reading will be Black Library (Games Workshop) ebooks. They are a little more expensive than most of the books on the kindle store but I love them. Although I have never really got round to buying an army for the games, I love the setting and the backstory. The Black Library gave away five books (including the first Gaunt’s Ghost book) last year when they first opened their online store last year. I’ve also grabbed three other books.

Blood Pact is the latest released Gaunt’s Ghost book. I’ve only read a chapter or two but supposedly its the final part of the story arc that started in Traitor General. Its a rather different start than many of the other books but its an enjoyable read. However, I’m going to wait a little bit before digging in to it.

For the Emperor is the first part of the Ciaphas Cain series. If the Gaunt’s Ghost books are Sharpe, Ciaphas Cain is Flashman, the bounder and cad of the Victorian British Army. Its present a non-GrimDark version of the world, where rioting guardsmen are put down via simply ordering them to clean up the mess. Its presented as a collected autobiography written by Cain with a few others adding articles to help set the scene. Even the very first section is great fun so I think I might be grabbing the rest of the series throughout the year.

The final book of this first batch is Double Eagle. I ended up reading this at work while watching some task work themselves out. Its an air combat novel set in the Sabbat Worlds (the same area as the Gaunts Ghost’s books) and actually features several characters from earlier novels which nicely links them together. Its heavily inspired by the events in Northern France in 1940, and with a few tweaks could be a novel about the battle of Britain. It also presents a side not normally seen in the 40k universe – that of both air combat and the home front. I thoroughly recommend it.

I really wish the Black Library would put their stuff straight onto Amazon as it means it could be included as part of the Whispernet sync stuff. But for the moment I’m just glad there is a easy way to buy all the boxes without taking up a load of space. I’m also going to fill my Kindle with PDF RPG rulebooks as well. This is an easy way for me to turn up to gaming and play one of many different RPGs and saves me having to drag a huge bag of rulebooks and source books around with me while still letting me pass it around to players. The Kindle is going to be a very handy tool to have for both studies and free time at Uni.

Finally, I’ve got most of my stuff for my uni flat sorted out. The internet has gone in and, after a few teething problems, seems to be working fine. Its stupidly fast compared to my home internet as long as you’re using the wire. Wireless on the other hand is as fickle as a stoat and twice as annoying when it suddenly cuts out. However, I already have a plan to sort it out involving powerline (something that I may write something more about as it needs the press) so it should be all good in time for the start of term.

I’m also going to slowly start taking more of my gear up there, starting with my airsoft stuff and continuing with my desktop PC and other oversized items. It means I can easily move in on the 17th ish and be ready to go pretty quickly.

Thats it for now, more news and writings coming soon (once work finishes)