Saturday, May 31, 2008

GameLog 41

FM08 (10h) - Gateshead, season 2, Winners - Cruised to victory with no cup to distract me. The team is looking solid with most rated at Div1 level. The end of year fire sale helped me get 40% under wage budget for next year with some better coaches into the mix.

Another secret to raising cash for low league teams is to get in early to arrange friendlies with high ranked teams. Even in BSN I was able to get Sheffield Utd and other Championship teams to come for a friendly at our place so we can fleece their supporters. +100K in one month is enough to get you into the good books financially.

Guitar Hero III (4h) - It's pretty good filler between tea time and scrapheap challenge, or when cameron needs to be entertained. Played a little into medium mode, but keep returning to "Cliffs of dover" for that really good rockout feeling.

Bladestorm PS3 Demo (1h) - Tried it again to see if it was worth picking up. Didn't get very good reviews, but it looks pretty indepth for the unit advancement. Might be bargain bin material.

Friday, May 23, 2008

DJWheat drops GGL and EG

I was having a hunt for a likely PS3 title and found out the news that Epileptic Gaming had shut up shop when looking for a GTA IV review. Looking back it always seemed funny that DJWheat would do coverage for CGS while still in withh GGL, but I didn't think it would come to this. It does add even more credibility to the CGS that they can drag in talent like Marcus. I've been impressed at the stage production of CGS and it's the biggest threat to WCG of all the worldwide competition formulas.

Marcus also has a B'day close to mine ...

Monday, May 19, 2008

GameLog 40

FM08 (15h) - Gateshead, season 2, 1st BSN - Knocked out of the FA Trophy and Setanta Shield in 3 days. Pity, I was hoping for my first silverware this season. Powering on to the end of the season now with 5 points clear. Should be a shoe-in now that I'm out of all the cup distractions. Sold off Giles Coke for 60,000 to give me some bargaining money, but all my potential imports have vanished. Hope I don't rue the sale later on ...

Guitar Hero III (3h) - Cameron wants 'Guitar' time every now and then. He'll either back me up on his ukelele or jump on the drums. Sandy gave it a go too and went pretty well for a first-timer. Took a while to get it into lefty mode as the controller was registered as number 2, but Guitar Hero had it as Player 1. I gave it a go left-handed too when Sandy took a break and it was much easier with the screen flipped to the left.

Bit pissed that they have you playing in hell though. Wonder if it can be skipped...

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Demo (3h) - With the PS3 connected I finally created a PSN account and downloaded a heap of demos to see what else this thing is capable of. Dynasty warriors translated well to the Gundam world, but I still suffered handcramp from doing the same thing over and over and ov ..

Race Driver GRID PS3 demo (3h) - Incredibly difficult to get into, even with all the driving aids turned on. Once oyu're there its really rewarding though. Spent aaaages trying to get the drifting map right and the effort made the other types of games easier as they need less control. Really good map of San Fransisco too. Was good enough to remind me of my trip over there. Going from this to Formula One CE made me like GRID even more. Disappointing when I found out it wasn't released yet ...

Bladestorm PS3 Demo (2h) - Same type of game as Dynasty warriors, but with more emphasis on the units around you. I seemed to only use one button though. Looks a potential pickup due to the character advancement though.

Other PS3 Demos (4h) - Pulled down a whole heap of other demos. Virtua Tennis III, Tiger woods Golf, Everybody's golf, Rubadub, Sudoku, Formula One Championship Edition

GTA 4 (1h) - Procrastination mode made me pull this out when Sandy gave me some 'free time' to work on the teaching assignment due next week.

FuryBand (1h) - VRBones LXI - Moved from Dwarf Fortress to FuryBand for downtime at work.

Monday, May 12, 2008

GameLog 39

FM08 (16h) - Gateshead, season 2, 4th BSN - Back into Football Manager after a month or 2 hiatus after the sour taste of Gatehead's last season. The team is looking really solid now and a few more additions over the break has hardly anyone in the starting 11 ranked below Blue Square Premier ability. We're 11 games in with a 7-2-2 record to hold down 4th on the ladder. Could be a quick season.

For my birthday Sandy made a soccer cake with little dots as players in their right starting positions (albeit a 442 placement I'd been tinkering with rather than my usual 4312 tactic). The field was pretty much spot on for a copy of the game. Tasted nice too.

Figured out that the current save game has just passed 12 days. 288 hours over 3 seasons. I'm guessing others that get 20 seasons in are playing a little faster than me ...

Guitar Hero III (6h) - Andrew came up for my Birthday this weekend and after trashing consoles on Friday night, Andrew sheepishly offered a console on Saturday. Well I guess it's easy to criticize them without actually owning one, but it was just the catalyst needed to make me jump into the car as we headed off to EB to make a decision on which one to buy.

I'd rationalized it down to a PS3 pretty much purely for the Blu-ray and Gran Turismo in the future, but for now Guitar hero III and GTA4 would have to do. Even though both are available on PC, they are stalwarts of the console fanbase and should give as much chance as any for my attention.

Guitar hero III turned into a great game for a social context. Rocking out over a 4 hour session doing a song each with Andrew was a great way to play / review / learn / encourage. Definitely a game to pull out for the next LAN. I figured out that standing up helped me get into the rhythm a bit more, but it does tire you out more. 1-2 hrs of rocking out is enough when you're doing it solid.

Sins of a solar Empire (6h) - Had a LAN on the Monday with the Graham's to christen Levi's new PC. Eventually settled on Sins as a viable alternative to the other games we usually play. It was way better as a LAN game than a solo game. Very different mechanics are involved when you can collaborate together in a room instead of breaking the AI.

GTA 4 (3h) - Another one for the PS3. The violence and language means it will be only playable late at night with headphones. Sandy was unimpressed I picked it up after hearing how bad it was on GoodGame. Starting credits were straight out of a movie, and seemed appropriate as Andrew and I had jst discussed the emergence of video games as the largest grossing entertainment title ever through Halo3.

Felt a little disjointed between passive movie and active gameplay. Not sure why. I slotted back into the GTA mode pretty quickly, but I think you're supposed to progress the storyline further before jacking cars.

FuryBand (3h) - VRBones LX - persisting with the Favoured Maia Jedi build to get into the ironman version of FuryBand. I've been able to get up to level 20, but barely any depth, maybe 8 levels down. 60th variant is living well and has built up a nice rat army to swamp the enemy.

Overlord (1h) - Pulled it out for multiplayer variant to Fable for the LAN, but the multiplayer was shite. Barely lasted 2 minutes beofre dropping.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Steampunk keyboard

Stumbled upon a funky steampunk keyboard. Now THAT is style!

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

GameLog 38

FuryBand (15h) - I'm back in the roguelike mood. Furyband has a gold release, but playing through the ironman mode as jedi there still looks liek there's some work to be done.

Installed a dev environment at work so I might look into the coding of one to see if there's any simple way of embedding meaning through Temporal ROAM.


Trackmania Nations Forever(12h) - Afternoons and some sessions stretching on through the night as the desire for 'one more track' kicks in.

Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword (2h) - Buggy loading of the mod took its toll.