Archive for the ‘Tom talks too much’ category

Why I no longer have any money

July 12th, 2010

If you are a PC gamer, you will probably use Steam, Valve’s digital distribution platform which is kinda known for occasionally having insane sales. Well, One such sale has recently ended. As well as reducing near everything in the Steam store, if you checked back every day you could get your hands on some even further reduced games. And that I did, here’s what I bought and what I think of them so far.

FUEL was my first purchase, at around £5. I’d read the hype that was happening before it’s release, with it’s ridiculously huge open world and the like, but for me the game was a let down. After banging my head against the wall whilst the necessary Games for Windows Live installed and updated itself (Closing the game around 4 times in the process, I mean, what the hell GFWL, why would you do that?), I leapt into the game. Well, no I didn’t, because I needed to adjust the graphics options, which you can’t do ingame. Sigh. Another restart of the game later and FINALLY I can start playing. And.. well.. I really didn’t like it. The actual racing felt clunky and rigid and the way of accessing races, whilst probably the best way to do it with such a large world, took you out of the game. Ditching races for the moment I decided just to explore, and whilst my surroundings looked nice, everywhere felt kinda samey.. Even climbing to some of the game’s Vista points just got me to see the same stuff in a prettier way. Having said that, the weather and light cycles were really enjoyable. Driving along a clifftop path whilst the sun is setting was the most fun I had in the game. What really killed it for me though is the poor GPS, if you’re going to have a game hyped up because of it’s huge gameworld, you might want to make sure it’s usable.

» Read more: Why I no longer have any money

Beat Hazard – Super Happy Seizure Time!

April 26th, 2010

I wouldn’t call myself a particularly rabid fan of Rhythm Action games. I do really enjoy a good game of Rock Band with friends and I’ll be damned if I didn’t spend hours upon hours sitting on my own in the dark when Guitar Hero II was released, but when you take a step back the genre looks a bit… well, less interactive with the music than the finely tuned note charts of the aforementioned series’. Instead of the game directly influencing the music, the music just has some effect on how the game plays.

That’s the problem part of me had with Audiosurf. As I followed the hype before it’s release my head was picturing something responding perfectly and clearly to any song you popped into the game. Of course this was impossible, and whilst Audiosurf is still an enjoyable game it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Neither was Beat Hazard, a recently released rhythm action game for the PC and Xbox 360.

» Read more: Beat Hazard – Super Happy Seizure Time!

On the topic of badges

March 26th, 2010
Kongregate
Image via Wikipedia

Kongregate is quite a large flash gaming site, so odds are if you’re reading this then you’ll probably have visited it many times before, because hey, it’s generally a nice site to play on. Quick, clean and with a large collection of games. It’d say it’s definitely my first port of call for any procrastination more interactive than hitting F5 on Facebook all day.

» Read more: On the topic of badges

And I mean anything…

March 23rd, 2010

One of the more recent social sites to do the rounds has been Formspring.me, where you can ask members questions anonymously (or with your user info attached if you’re registered) and they answer them, the responses being posted up on their profile for the world to read.

Now, I’d been pretty intent on absolutely ignoring Formspring, because… well… lets just say, the people I saw using it were exactly the sort of person you’d expect to want people to question them, who’d want everyone treating them as the centre of attention. It gave across a rather bad impression, and the question I saw answered (via various other social networking sites being linked into it) the most was always along the lines of “do u fancy x lol?” or the inevitable “HOW BIG IS YOU’RE PENIS? ROFL”. Clearly riveting reading.

» Read more: And I mean anything…

Gaming away from home

March 14th, 2010

Recently I’ve had to temporarily take leave of my main sources of gaming joy, namely my PC and moderate collection of various last gen/retro consoles, to move somewhere sans gaming equipment. Sadface. Luckily, I’ve been lent a laptop (Thanks again Rhys) for work and there’s a couple of lovely unsecured wireless networks hanging around, so I’ve managed to remain online. Fine for everyday use, but for gaming?

I’ve lost my specs, any games on my hard drive… my Steam list! All I could bring was my external hard drive.. so here’s my guide to gaming without your usual gaming equipment: » Read more: Gaming away from home