Marvel’s The Hood…
I decided that I was sick of staring at that picture from Gmod. I also started reading about The Hood – a Marvel comic book character I’ve not read much about before. Luckily, the two events combined at the exact moment that I finished eating my cereal and so I was able to right a blog post about it.
For my next trick I’ll be writing a best mans speech.
Joe, Out.
Schoolgirl Boobs…
This is part of a gallery of some Garry’s Mod 10 poses I’ve made and put up on my bit-tech.net blog. There’s lots more of them that aren’t nearly so boob-ridden, but I thought it would be funny to post this one up here because it’s slightly inappropriate and my distant relatives might read it and get all stuffy and uncomfortable.
I heard something funny today. I was at a SKY press event with some people, several of whom I didn’t know. One of them worked for What Satellite? magazine. He offered his hand and I shook it, proclaiming myself.
“Joe, from Bit-tech.net.”
“Stephen. What Satellite? magazine.” He said.
“No, it’s not a magazine – it’s a site.” I replied.
He sighed and explained that, no, he works for a magazine called What Satellite?, not that he was asking what magazine I worked for. I blushed, apologised, blamed my hearing and admitted I’d never ever heard of them. He baulked somewhat, I think. There was a silence for a minute and then he introduced himself to someone else.
“Stephen. What Satellite? magazine.”
“Um, I don’t work for a magazine actually – I’m from Videogamer.com.”
Joe, Out.
The British Summertime Begins…
Someone get me some fucking sandals - the British Summer has begun!
Games that made me cry…
Beyond Good and Evil
There is also this today, which I feel like pointing out. Oh, and I’m moving to Reading.
Joe, Out.
Moving or Not…
The Path
I’ve been busy lately. Like, insane. I have a two hour commute (each way) every day, while also trying to look for a new flat and carry on doing more work for other sites. As well as my work for bit-tech.net, I’ve also been doing all the games work for Custom PC Magazine and some movie and game reviews for Den of Geek. I’ve been far to busy to blog lately, sorry.
Below are some review links I’ve done, just because I want to show off right now. Then I’m going right back to stressing about stuff. If you only read one thing I’ve done then go with the review of The Path, which is in Custom PC and online at Bit-tech.net. It seems to have gone down quite well. I also saw Tales of the Black Freighter the other day, for a review. That’s worth watching.
Tales of The Black Freighter review – Den of Geek
Splinter DVD review – Den of Geek
Stormrise Xbox 360 review – Bit-tech
Games I Own: The Thief Series – Bit-tech Blog
Games I Haven’t Played – Bit-tech Blog
That is all. Go play Thief and The Path, watch Tales of the Black Freighter, rent Splinter, and laugh at Stormrise.
Joe, Out.
50 Cent: Blood on The Sand review
50 Cent, done British
I reviewed 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand the other day, plugging the Down Trodden String Band in the process. I’m actually quite proud of that review, so go read it and then tell me how great I am.
Yesterday I went to see Frost/Nixon with Hannah. When I came back my stomach was hurting. Hannah, knowing me, thought I might have eaten something rotten. She asked me what I had for dinner, but I couldn’t remember. I then realised that I’d not actually had dinner; I’d done that thing where I’m so busy doing something I forget to eat. Hannah called me a silly bear and then I had some toast and a waffle, felt better and went to bed.
That story was about as interesting as picking my nose, I know. Slightly more interesting is me blogging about What I Learned from Deus Ex on the bit-tech.net blog.
Joe, Out.
Is System Shock 2 Free…
Is Dune 2 Abandonware? I explain, boringly.
I’ve not written on here in a while for two reasons. Firstly, now that I’m working at Dennis I just don’t have the time – huge commute, more work. Secondly, we’ve launched our own blogs on bit-tech.net.
On the bit-tech blog I’m running a continuing feature on Games I Own, as well as a few other things. So far I’ve covered Baldur’s Gate, Call of Cthulu, The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain, No One Lives Forever and a few others. Some future posts I have coming over the next few weeks look at what’s more important; good graphics or good presentation, specifically looking at grafitti in popular games, and What I Learned from Deus Ex.
You can keep track of all my blog posts at bit-tech.net by clicking here, filtering out the rubbish the others write.
I also wrote a feature recently that looks at Abandonware, discussing the ethics and legality of it all, as well as pointing to some good free abandonware games. It makes mention of System Shock 2, Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis, Syndicate and so on. Link: Abandonware: The Ethics and Essentials.
That’s all for now. I have to go look at flats, then I’m heading over to Ubisoft for a bit.
Out, Joe.
Gun, Scalping and the Wild West…
So, I finishedGun today. It took me about five hours and I got through it in four or five sittings, with me dying a total of six times. It wasn’t at all challenging in other words.
Gun - better than I thought, but still not great.
That said, the game was more enjoyable than I originally said. It’s just that the tutorial section for the game goes on way too long. It isn’t until about an hour in that you actually get to do some free-roaming and horse-riding. Then the game picks up dramatically. The controls were still clunky, but managable and I grew to really like the gunplay in the game, despite the fact that it was so easy to engage bullet time and kill swathes of enemies with headshots.
As time went on though, more faults emerged to replace these ones. The game is pretty repetitive mainly and the quest themselves are very easy – it’s always a case of just shooting someone once, grabbing them and knocking them out. That or running errands.
The world itself is pretty small too, with only two towns to go to and nothing much to do in either of them. There’s three types of quest, plus poker, but you can only do so many of them before you have to advance the story and unlock another set. That ends up feeling really contrived.
Scalping bothered me also in that there was no need for it and, while I saw comments from developers saying it was supposed to be an easter egg, I highly doubt that. You buy the knife in the first shop you go to and are prompted to do it on every wounded enemies, so it isn’t exactly hidden. The publishers themselves threw up what I expect is a very false controversy about scalping being featured in the game when it was originally released. Seems to me that they should have either let you do something with it, or cut it out altogether – but instead they left it in needlessly to try and give the game an edgy, gory feel when you look at the feature list.
The story was pretty good and there were a few moments I got shocked or drawn in, so that was cool – but it was held back a bit by the graphics. Ah well. It isn’t a bad game and was probably worth £10, but no more than that.
Hannah and I went out looking for places to live yesterday. We liked Walton-on-Thames.
Out, Joe
