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Dark Castles

Published December 29th, 2007 in Music, Heavy Metal and Dimmu Borgir. 0 Comments

In Icelandic and Old Norse, Dimmu Borgir means “Dark Castles” and the reason it headlines this entry is because they are who I am listening to at the moment.

So why am I writing about them then? Well, because I think they are my band of 2007. Now yes, I realise they have been around for ages and I have been listening to them for longer than the year of 07, but it wasn’t until this year that is almost over that I really ‘latched’ onto them and I now really dig them. In the same way as I dig Arch Enemy or Children Of Bodom; I’d definitely put Dimmu Borgir up there as one of my favourite bands now.

That’s a weird call to make when you consider that I only own and have heard two albums - Death Cult Armageddon and In Sorte Diaboli - and a few odd tracks here and there. If I was such a fan of them you would assume that I’d have a few more of their albums than that, but no I don’t and yes it is something I am looking into for the near future.

I can’t explain why I suddenly just ‘ticked’ and started to really dig them, but I suppose I don’t really need to either. I mean, music tastes change, expand and evolve all the time (and anyone who knows me knows that my tastes are eclectic anyway) so it should be no surprise that a band or artist that I only mildly liked at first, has grown on me over time. Reasoning behind it is irrelevant as long as I enjoy it for what it is, which is very good Black Metal. In some ways it has inspired me to get into some more Black Metal (I’ve always been a mild fan but haven’t really pursued it yet) but my priority is definitely to get more of Dimmu first.

You could certainly suggest that their 2007 album, In Sorte Diaboli, helped me get into them a lot more. I mean, I’m listening to it now (after having just heard Death Cult Armageddon) and I can’t help but bang my head slightly (if I did it properly I wouldn’t be able to type would I?). It’s just really in your face, fuck you music and I love it. It’s the sort of music that you don’t necessarily think about (although you can, as is evident by the fact I’m writing this) and can just lose yourself in while banging your fucking head. It’s awesome, I love it and I guess I just needed to say so.

I haven’t figured out my top albums for the year yet, but In Sorte Diaboli is definitely up there and I would not be surprised if it ended up being number 1 either. It’s got some tough competition in Arch Enemy and a few other artists, but when you listen to it as I am now and it gets you in the mood, it’s very easy to consider it the best of the year. I guess we’ll see when I finally decide, eh?

Currently listening to ‘The Fallen Arises’ and it’s perhaps the most ‘quiet’ track on the album, and yet it’s still ever so cool. I guess you could call it a ‘filler’ track in that it fills in the gaps between two other brilliant songs and it leads into the next one brilliantly, with the horse sound effect and it galloping away before you get into the song ‘The Heretic Hammer’. Which also has a pretty rocking start. Infact, that’s one of the things I love about this album and indeed the band (from what I have heard anyway), they’ve got brilliant openings to their songs and/or leadins into the next tracks. The opening song to In Sorte Diaboli is a perfect example of this; ‘The Serpentine Offering’ has one of the best openings in a song I have ever heard and it instantly it puts you in the mood for the awesomeness that is about to come from the rest of the album. I may be repeating myself now, but it’s just awesome and I fucking love it.

Before I end this entry, which do I prefer out of the two I own: Death Cult Armageddon or In Sorte Diaboli?
From what I can tell, most Metal fans seem to prefer the former and for good reason as it’s a bloody brilliant album but you know what? I think I prefer In Sorte Diaboli. There’s just too many awesome songs for me not too. But hey, I don’t compare albums and they are both absolutely brilliant so all that is left to say is bring Dimmu Borgir’s next album the hell on!

Hmm…

Published December 29th, 2007 in Pointless. 0 Comments

Hmm. I intended to post regular entries to this blog and even managed to for a few days before just suddenly stopping again. I can’t explain why I stopped and while I could try and use excuses (such as I was too busy gaming, or time was my enemy (and it really is)), the truth is that I have no excuse for it and I just don’t know why I stopped. I still intend to do regular entries as anyone who knows me (well) knows that I like to rant and/or have an opinion on things, but at the same time I don’t actually know whether I can motivate myself to keep posting entries here. I mean, it’s not like this blog is a Kotaku or something with millions of visitors and hell, I don’t want it to be. I would like some visitors though and well because I’m such a boring person, I don’t think anyone reads these things. Which means that all I’m really doing is just wasting my time, writing entries about random shit (and let’s face it - it is shit) with the off chance that maybe someone is reading it, or, that I’ll go back and read old entries some day and remember the shit that I’ve said for various reasons. Maybe I could use this as a place to rant and then revisit these rants at a later date, analysing how I was as a person back then and how I felt at the time on various subjects. Not to mention seeing whether I still agree with them or not.

Look, I dunno. As I said I’d like to keep posting here and do intend to. Is it a waste of time? Probably. Do I care? Well this entry certainly suggests that I do, but at the same time I’m also inclined to say otherwise. At the end of the day I’m an opinionated fuckhead and if using this blog means that I don’t embarrass myself elsewhere by possibly saying something I’ll regret later, then so be it.

I suppose I should learn how to use this thing a bit more then, in case I want to add pictures and/or videos or whatever else to some of my posts. Eh, I’ll get around to it.

Woman in gaming

Published December 5th, 2007 in Gaming. 0 Comments

A lot of big sites and gaming blogs have had articles recently on women in gaming. This comes as no surprise really when you read surveys and stuff suggesting that female gamers are increasing and of course the Wii is appealing to more people now too, male and female. And let’s not forget that there is a growing base of females actually making (be it producing, working on the sound or whatever) games these days too. Jade Raymond of Assassin’s Creed fame is perhaps the most popular one and with good reason too. Obviously her good looks (and she is fucking hot) attracted attention to her, but I think she’s respected by gamers now because she not only helped make a reasonably awesome game but also because she’s expressed her passion towards our industry as a whole. She’s very down to earth and seems to love being among the game industry and that can only be a good thing.

Anyway the reason I’m writing this entry is because of Gametrailer’s latest Bonus Round which focuses on women in gaming and interviews two people within the industry. The typical stuff is being discussed in this Bonus Round - stuff like what attracts female gamers, why they’re getting into gaming more now and so on - so I won’t be dwelling on that, instead I will be writing from a more personal experience.

You see, both my recent girlfriends (ex and current) are gamers. Not just casual gamers who may play Animal Crossing every now and then either, but gamers in a similar way to what I’d be - open to playing a wide variety of genres and willing to share their experiences through discussion and so on. It’s because of them being gamers, that I find the articles questioning what I alluded to above - the increasing userbase of female gamers and what’s attracting them and so on - weird to read. I mean sure I can understand it, it’s obvious that our industry is pretty much dominated by males but at the same time it’s just weird because generally speaking, a female gamer is made out to be one who wouldn’t play games anywhere near as much as say, I would and that they don’t have the same passion for gaming that we would as well. Perhaps I’m just lucky in the sense that I have had the privilege of having relationships with girls that have similar interests in me. If nothing else, it gives us something to talk about because we both love gaming (referring to my current girlfriend here although it applies to my ex too considering we’re all good friends) and can have a bout of Soul Calibur II, round of Gears of War or whatever and just plain enjoy ourselves. Which is exactly what gaming should be about in the first place, having fun regardless of gender.

I guess what I’m trying to say though is that while yes, it is obvious males dominate the industry still, it is completely irrelevant as well. From my experience, gender doesn’t define whether you’re a gamer or not - your individuality and therefore your interests do; Whether it’s the guys I play with over Live, or my girlfriend and our best friend - gaming is our passion, something to be shared and ultimately, something we should all be enjoying.

If we’re not enjoying our passion, then it shouldn’t be our passion. Plain and simple.

Dashboard update arrives

Published December 5th, 2007 in Xbox 360, Xbox, Halo, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live and Achievements. 0 Comments

Well as everyone else who owns a 360 (well almost everyone) knows, the Fall (Spring for Australia - or rather Winter/Summer for this particular update) update arrived earlier this evening. Because I’m an opinionated idiot, I thought I’d post some impressions.
The big features touted were Xbox Originals, Friends of Friends and for some users out there, the ability to watch Xvid and DivX files on the console. I personally don’t really care about these functions but I still welcome them into the 360 stable anyway. Xbox Originals is a good idea in theory and it will be a brilliant service (or rather, option) to some 360 users out there but for me personally there is no real point to it as I still own my original Xbox and therefore can still play half the games that have, or will release with the service. However, because I’m lazy I won’t go out and find retail versions of old games that I don’t own but may want to play, so I think I will still end up using the feature eventually. I say eventually because these games are reasonably big and it would be better to download them onto a 120GB hard drive rather than the 20GB one that I have now. Anyway there is already some games on the service that I’m interested in playing, namely Psychonauts (I own this on PS2 but for some reason my PS2 has hassles reading the disc) and Fable. I’m considering downloading them at some point although obviously I still haven’t decided. As I said, the idea is great in theory and we could eventually see the entire Xbox catalogue up on the Marketplace at some point. It’s too bad then that they’re not being updated (online play for example) or including achievements as that would be even more incentive to download them.

Friends of Friends is the other main feature and is basically trying to appeal to the Facebook/Myspace crowd. What it enables you to do is when you’re looking at someone on your friends list, you can then choose an option (providing they’ve allowed it) to view who is on their friends list. Again it’s a nice idea in theory if you want to use Live as a social network or something but really, most of us have our friends lists reasonably full with people that we want on our list so there’s no real point to searching through other people’s lists to find more friends, or whatever. I admit, I spent a few minutes perusing my various friends and their lists and while it was interesting for a little while, it’s not something I’m going to look at regularly so the feature is a bit of a hit and miss really. Makes me wonder if we (as in anyone) are going to start getting messages from random people who are browsing their friends lists and are finding you on there. Might prove to be a little annoying…

Some Arcade games had a price drop as well which is pretty cool and I may buy some of these in the future, although the next purchase I make with MS points is definitely going to be Shivering Isles - the expansion pack for Oblivion.

I had a weird time when I first got the new update actually where my Marketplace, Xbox Live and Games blades were taking forever to show up (had that spinning loading thing). It took like 5 minutes for these blades to show up which I found odd considering not much had changed. The Media and System blades worked instantly, so why didn’t the other 3? I also found it strange that we (as in Australians) don’t have the Inside Xbox feature (a small feature which will have updates from Xbox.com and have little sections from community people like Major Nelson). Looks like Australia misses out on a (small) feature again as signing into my US account reveals it on the dashboard. No real big loss but it is something that Aussies miss out once again - I’m sick of this region bullshit.

Anyway overall the update was a welcome one but didn’t really bring anything too interesting to the table. I got excited when I read that Xbox Live Arcade trial games were going to be deleted from our Gamercards but it turns out that only applies to any Trial game that you play after the update. Meaning I’m still going to have games like Bejewelled 2 and Galaga sitting on my Gamercard with 0 score because I won’t be buying them. LAME!

Hopefully the next update brings us something a little more worthwhile and exciting but still it’s nice to see that we are getting updates reasonably regularly, even if they’re only average.

Slip Slop Slap

Published December 5th, 2007 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

No I’m not trying to warn you about the evil sun and how it can damage your skin if you don’t use sunscreen or whatever, I’m instead referring to a certain forum member/Xbox Live friend of mine.

Slappeh is a whore who loves to obtain as many achievements as he can. That suits me fine because I too am a whore and as such we spend many a night whoring a lot of games to the best of our ability. It can get tedious, extremely tedious but we do it anyway because we can. Do we do it for the boost to our Gamerscores? Well I can’t answer that for him but I personally do it to get my completion percentage/s in games as high as they can be. I’ve always been a completionist and always will be and if I’m not mistaken, this is one of the reasons why Slaps also is an achievement whore. I mean hey, why else would the both of us dedicate like 8 months to Gears of War to get Seriously…?

Anyway Slappeh the whore thinks he is cool enough for me to have a blog entry about, so here it is in all its (pathetic because I can’t write) glory. You’re an awesome whore Slaps, well worth the price of admission and I look forward to future exciting sessions in the future. <3

Oh and for fuck’s sake, can we get Aegis Wing out of the way already? :P

Tander-rific

Published December 4th, 2007 in Motorsport and V8 Supercars. 0 Comments

For the third year in a row, the V8 Supercars has a brand new and first time Champion. 2005 saw Russel Ingall take it, last year saw Rick Kelly controversially take it and this year has seen Rick’s teammate, Garth Tander take out the championship. And what a championship it was too going right down to the last race (like last year) and seeing Tander win by only 2 points.

2 points! That’s almost unheard of. For the record, the win was over Jamie Whincup who also drove absolutely brilliantly all year and deserved his second placing. Lowndes took 3rd and deserved and Rick Kelly 4th, who also had a chance at winning the very close championship but alas it wasn’t meant to be for the second time.

Moving away from the championship and onto the actual racing,  I swear the V8s get better and better every season. While Bathurst (until the last 20 laps or so) wasn’t as exciting this year, the rest of the season has been absolutely brilliant and I can’t think of anywhere else where I have seen racing [i]that[/i] close. I really can’t wait for season 2008 now which is only 12 weeks away. That will fly and then the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide will be upon us again. Man that is going to rock hard.

Anyway the future is bright for the V8s, not only because of the brilliant racing the category continually brings us but also because we’re heading to two new tracks in the next few years. Next year will be the Hamilton street circuit over in New Zealand, replacing Pukekohe as New Zealand’s round of the V8s. I love street circuits so I can’t wait to see the design of this new one. Another street circuit will be added in season 2009 too, this time up in Townsville. Again, it will be great to see the design of the track and who knows, I may even venture up there to see it. I’d prefer to go to the Gold Coast Indy as my next event but yeah who knows.

Anyway, brilliant season this year and if you can’t half tell, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Bring on 08.

Le Bloggingness

Published December 4th, 2007 in Xbox 360, Gaming and Playstation 2. 1 Comment

It has been almost a year since my last entry. I’m consistent then!

Anyway thought I’d start posting in here again to rant/ramble about whatever takes my fancy at the time since I don’t really do it on forums anymore. It’s somewhat ironic actually, I used to check every thread at the forums I attend and I probably posted in the good majority of them too. A few months ago however I had a time where I was just ‘over’ all things the internet. Whether it was my daily routine (forums and all) or something like Youtube - Absolutely nothing was holding my interest and I rarely came online because of it. That has since changed again and I’m now back into a relatively good routine with my forums/everything else again but I just don’t approach these sites or my routine in the same way that I used to. I find myself just reading threads at forums now with maybe a post here or there, rather than posting in almost everything. I skip a lot of threads that don’t interest me anymore and I find that my mind goes elsewhere quite quickly too. I don’t know what changed or why it changed, but things are definitely different with regards to my internet usage these days.

Gaming on the other hand hasn’t changed at all. Infact, I’d say that it keeps on getting better and better as months go on. Well I would be saying that under normal circumstances but alas, I’m currently going through a period where I’m not playing games that I want to be because my 360 is freezing a lot (and therefore need fixing) and obviously games become unplayable when they’re freezing every 5 minutes. I also don’t really have a lot of spare cash at the moment so that means I am missing out on quite a lot of the big name releases that I’d love to be playing. Games like Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero III and so on - it’s quite hard seeing my Xbox Live friends list and seeing these games being played while I sit there playing Arcade games or whatever due to the freezing console. If I absolutely had to choose one more game to own this year, it would be Mass Effect and I would have the game if it weren’t for the freezes. As I need to pay for repairs (due to my console not being covered by warranty as it’s not red-ringing) my money goes to that and alas, Mass Effect and indeed every other game has to wait until I get some spare cash. With Christmas almost upon us as well, I have no idea when that will actually be.

So what have I been doing gaming wise lately then?

Well, I recently went back to and finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Gamecube. It had been almost a year since I last played that too so it was good to get back into it and furthermore, finish it. Previously I had made it to Lake Hylia and as I’ve mentioned on various forum posts, I think I stopped playing the game because of the combination of me going for the Seriously… achievement in Gears of War and also because I didn’t find the opening moments of Twilight Princess all that compelling. Returning to the game however showed me that the game improves immensely as it goes on and I’m now really glad I did return to it. I wouldn’t put it as the best Zelda of all time, but it was a pretty damn decent entry into the franchise. Oh and Midna is awesome.

Other than Twilight Princess, I have also been playing quite a few of my Xbox Live Arcade games; namely Carcassonne, Hexic HD, Hexic 2 and Tetris Splash. After well over a year playing the game on and off, I finally got my last achievement from Hexic HD - Grand Pearl Pooh-Bah - and therefore got 200/200 from it. Ironically I also managed to do the same with the much easier sequel, Hexic 2, on the same night so yeah that was quite cool.

Just recently I returned to Ridge Racer 6 after having a small break. Finished the Xploration mode a few months ago took quite a bit out of me because it’s such a big game and it does get a bit repetitive. Not to mention that the Final Route was an absolute bitch to finish off, purely because it’s not skill based but rather luck based. Definitely one of the harder things I have done in racing games that’s for sure. Anyway I’m now gradually working towards the No Nitrous Single Races achievement. 150 races using absolutely no NOS whatsoever. It’s quite easy actually but rather time consuming. I’m unsure as to whether I will go for the full 1000 points or not in the game yet though. If I do, I’ll have to do those 150 races again only this time not crashing into anything. The opponents, walls and anything else - I can’t touch them and as such this achievement (if I go for it) will be a little harder than the no NOS one. After that, it’s just driving 16000kms. Considering I have only driven about 5600kms even after doing the Xploration mode and doing 400 online races, that’s a looong way to go. No Nitrous and No Crash will help towards it, but there will still be quite a fair bit of re-doing races to make that extremely long distance driven.

I’m also playing through Okami, having restarted my file after such a long time without the game due to my girlfriend stealing it. I still can’t get over how goddamn beautiful she is…, er sorry, the game is and I know I’m going to enjoy playing through this one again. Also playing the two GBA Metroid games: Fusion and Zero Mission.

And that’s it for what I’ve been doing recently, if all goes to plan I’ll be using this thing reasonably regularly now as it will be my ‘outlet’ (so to speak) to comment on various gaming (and other) things that I no longer really do in forums for whatever reason. No one will read this so it’ll just be wasted time on my part but hey, I’m good at wasting time so it is right up my alley.

Or should that be arse?

Either way…

And so I ramble once more…

Published January 2nd, 2007 in Random stuff and Gaming. Closed

It’s been a while since my last entry so yes this one will probably end up being rather lengthy again. Not that it matters since no one reads this unless I tell them to.

So what’s Nismo been up to lately? Well, nothing too spectacular really. Obviously things are reasonably quiet given that we’re in the Christmas period, or break as it were. Thankfully this has allowed me to spend more time with my girlfriend which has been awesome. Before the break we weren’t seeing each other much due to her being extremely busy at her work, plus she had a few family issues to sort out as well. So obviously I have been really enjoying all this time with her lately. It has been awesome.

Ever since the Motorsport seasons (F1, V8s and so on) finished there hasn’t been much to watch on TV. Infact, sweet fuck all to be precise. That has been a good and bad thing, good because I can spend the time playing games or whatever instead and bad because I miss watching my shows. I have been watching a show though, Battlestar Galactica.

Near the end of season 1 I stopped watching it for a while, not because I was uninterested (quite the opposite actually) but because I suck at managing my time to do all of the things I want to do. Anyway I decided to start cracking down on the show. It is borrowed after all. I watched the remaining episodes of season 1, saw the ending to that and immediately had to watch the beginning of season 2 and from there I’ve been hooked on it. I can’t believe how awesome this show is and it is really going to suck when I finally finish the DVDs and will have to wait for season 3, but I will finish it anyway as it is too damn addictive to pass up on. Anyway, impressions of the show will be done at a later date (read: when I’ve finished season 2). Once BSG is done I’ll probably start watching season 1 of Prison Break and the first two seasons of LOST again, as I got them both for Christmas.

On the music front I have actually been catching up with some of the 2006 releases I missed out on, as well as trying out some new artists and whatever. It has been awesome to get back into music again, I definitely regret neglecting one of my favourite forms of entertainment last year due to lack of money and whatever else.

Gaming then and holy crap I have too many games to play. Not that I am complaining mind you, compare my childhood to now and I definitely prefer having too much to play rather than absolutely nothing. That said, I’m not getting through the games I need to play in the way that I’d like to and yes, a lot of that is my fault. I’ve been playing too much Gears of War multiplayer (not that it is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually) and I’ve been wasting a lot of time in Test Drive Unlimited too. I’ve finished that so technically I shouldn’t be playing it at all, but I still have been so I can upgrade my cars and whatever else.

Anyway, I’ve got the following that I’d like to play through:

Zelda: Twilight Princess - Gamecube

Stranger’s Wrath - Xbox

Super Metroid - SNES

Devil May Cry 3 - PS2

BLACK - Xbox

Far Cry Instincts: Predator - 360 (still haven’t opened this one)

and now:

Prey - 360

Oblivion - 360

Viva Pinata - 360.

I’ve been wondering whether I should put off those last two or not (I don’t want to put off Viva though) so that I can get through these other titles, but yeah knowing me I’ll start them and they too will be added to the list of games that I need to complete. There’s more games that I have that weren’t listed too, so yeah I’ve got plenty of gaming ahead of me. I just need to learn how to manage my damn time a bit better so that I actually play them and get through them.

Talking about playing them (or not doing so as the case may be) makes it sound like I am whinging about it though, or that it is a chore or something. In some ways knowing that I have so much to play is a daunting thing to think about, but I’ll be damned if it’s a chore. Bring it all on I say, gaming is in its prime at the moment and I can’t wait to get into more of it as I go along. There’s still about 50 billion games that I want to buy too, so yeah I am always going to have something to do and that is just one of the benefits of being a multi-console gamer.

Other tidbits before I go then:

The forums have really changed over the past year and it’s a good thing, the more members we have the more discussion we get and so on. But there’s been a lot of petty arguing, or insulting happening as well. Partially due to users loyal to one brand (Nintendo, Microsoft - whatever) who are annoying people who play everything and vice versa, partially due to users who prefer certain aspects of their gaming to others and whatever. It’s made for some interesting discussion, it’s made all of us as a community stronger as we’ve bonded through our arguing and whatever but damn I wish some people would think before they say what they intend to. Some of the crap that has come from people’s mouths (mine included probably) has been ridiculous. Not in the sense that their opinion is ridiculous, far from it, but in the sense that they’re not thinking about others or their preferences when they say it. It leads to unnecessary anger, insults, arguments and whatever and it really is unfortunate. PALGN has changed, and again it’s for the better but for god’s sake people (if you know, you’re actually reading this) be weary that you are a part of a community and that there are other people in this community other than yourself. Once people start treating each other with respect again, PALGN will become the place it was with the added members being a bonus and things will just plain kick arse again. Things kick arse now, but it’s definitely different at the same time.

Random thoughts after 4am:

- Where the fark did 2006 go?

- Girlfriend’s new clothes = fucking hot.

- Lily Allen for the win.

- The bots or whatever the hell you things are that are spamming my comments, fuck the hell off. No really, fuck the hell off.

- I swear a lot.

- When is the Viva Pinata show hitting Aussie shores? I want to watch it already dammit! The stuff that has been released so far on the Marketplace has been awesome.

- Speaking of Viva, it’s time to go play the damn thing.

Till next time, when I ramble unnecessary shit…

Next generation equals new experience?

Published December 10th, 2006 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Okay first and foremost, I firmly believe that what is considered to be the ‘Next Generation’ by many people is now the Current Generation and I will refer to it as such from now on. So why did I mention it as the ‘Next Generation’ in the title then? For exactly what I just said, most people still think of it as the Next Generation as it has only just arrived. We’re only just under a year into the 360’s life here in Australia and well we all know the Wii released what, 2 or 3 days ago now? So yeah, it’s very early days yet.
But enough talking shit (it’s something I do best though), why am I writing this particular little rant? Well from my (admittedly) limited time with the Current Gen (so that would be my 360 then), I have had quite a few different experiences across the 7 games that I own. What do I mean by different? Well different in the sense that while these games may indeed be part of franchises or whatever, the gameplay has generally been new to me. Let me explain a little more.

Take Condemned: Criminal Origins for example first, it was a game that really surprised me with the experience that I had with it.

On the outset, Condemned doesn’t scream anything fantastic when you look at pictures of it, watch videos or even try the demo from the Marketplace. But trust me, once you get into the game you won’t feel like you’re playing a game anymore. You will feel like it is you who is walking slowly around that corner, hesitant of what may be around the corner. Will another crazy hobo try and whack you with a fire axe? Or perhaps a rat will race out of the bin that it’s rummaging through as soon as it sees you? One thing Monolith nailed with Condemned was the atmosphere of the game, from the sound effects to the realistic graphics and first-person viewpoint, everything just worked to make Condemned a personal experience and it rocked because of it. So how does it relate to this blog entry’s main subject? Well it’s easy to say that there have been plenty of games in the past that have immersed you so well that you don’t feel like you’re playing a game anymore, but I dunno, there’s something else about Condemned - something that I think can be put down to just how real it feels. It’s just something you don’t come by too often in gaming and it’s definitely unfortunate.

Now take Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter as an example; this game was a new experience for me but the problem with this example is that it’s not a new experience for some other players out there. A lot of gamers have played tactical shooters before, be it from the Ghost Recon series or the Rainbow Six series or whatever and as such, it’s not a new experience in that sense. But it was for me and that is why it relates to my overall point. I hadn’t played a tactical shooting game before GRAW and as such, it was a surprise to find such a nice, compelling game (or indeed genre) within the package as I first tried it. Due to me being new to the genre, I did find the game to be hard. I don’t know whether this challenge comes from my lack of experience though (meaning that veterans of the genre wouldn’t have hassle at all) or whether the type of game that it is just means that challenge comes naturally. Either way the challenge was balanced very nicely and despite it being definitely hard, it wasn’t hard in the sense that some games can be. It wasn’t frustrating, it wasn’t annoying and it never got tedious. Definitely a brilliant game and more importantly, a brilliant new experience that I’ve had in gaming thanks to my 360.

Test Drive Unlimited is the last example and one that may come as a surprise. I mean, it’s just another car game out there. How is it a new experience? Well it’s a new experience in the sense that it allows you to not have a care in the world. In simulation racers your focus is to win the race (well actually that’s the focus in all racers but anyway) and win it by staying on the track, braking correctly for the turns and keeping your nose out of trouble. Arcade racers are also about winning, but the importance of winning isn’t necessarily the same as it is with simulations. So is Test Drive a racer and therefore a game about winning? Well yes, there are many challenges that you can win and whatever. But the difference with Test Drive is that it allows you take your vehicle of choice (and damn there are some nice ones) and just drive it. You can cruise, you can flog it down the highway, you can do a burnout in the city, you can go off road and into the bush - you can do whatever you want. It’s this freedom that racing games in the past have lacked and because you can just drive, it’s a new experience. One that I’ve desired for a long time and I am glad that Test Drive has fulfilled this desire.

My other 360 games have also been fantastic, but they haven’t really been anything new. But I’m not done yet (damn it I hear you say), why am I claiming that this current generation of consoles is all about the new experience if I have only exampled three games so far? Well isn’t it obvious? The 360 isn’t the only defining factor of the current generation, we also have the PS3 and the Wii. I’ll ignore the PS3 in this blog but don’t get me wrong when I say that you will see plenty of new experiences on that console too. Now looking at the Wii, how can that NOT be a console that gives us new experiences? I mean come on, the way you control your games alone is enough to easily assume that our experience with the console will be completely different to the ones we’ve had in the past. Ignoring the new experiences, potential experiences that we can have with the Wii with older game styles is also there. Perhaps with Zelda being the perfect example, it’s an old franchise and looking at what has been said in the many reviews, it still follows the traditions that it has had in the past. But, the Wiimote has added a small yet different way to implement old things in the game. Sword slashes, arrow shooting, it’s all done using the Wiimote now and the experience is already different because of it.

Perhaps rather than saying that we’ll be having new experiences with this generation I should say that we’ll be having different ones instead? That would cover both new types of games and older ones with differences in them. Either way you define it, it’s an exciting future to look forward to. Doesn’t surprise me one bit either.

Why? Take a look at the previous generation (or the generation that most of you still claim to be the current), all three consoles (four if you include the Dreamcast) were your typical console. Games were controlled by a controller, with multiple buttons and games continued their franchises like they’ve done for many years. But we also got a lot of new experiences despite the perhaps limited ways of gaming that we can have with these devices. We had atmospheric games such as Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4, emotional games such as ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, easy to pick up and play games such as Singstar, Buzz and indeed the ever so awesome Guitar Hero. Not to mention stuff like Wario Ware and the like. Then we get into the quirky stuff like Katamari Damacy, Loco Roco and the like. The last generation was a fantastic one both for traditional gaming and new experiences and if anything, it was hinting towards the very impressive future that we are already starting to experience with the 360, the Wii and when it hits the Playstation 3. Again, the future is very bright indeed and I cannot wait to see what else will come and surprise the hell out of us in the coming years. Bring it on!

If anyone is actually reading this piece of crap that I call my blog then please feel free to offer your thoughts on the subject. Do you agree with me, or am I talking shit? Perhaps both? Do you want a pet monkey for Christmas? Or a kick up the arse? Let me know and if you’re lucky, I’ll throw in a free cookie. Gee I’m generous sometimes.

Gran Turismific?

Published November 30th, 2006 in Xbox 360, Gaming and Playstation 2. Closed

Well so much for going in-depth about the games mentioned in the last entry then. I do plan on doing so but for now I will write about Gran Turismo 4 instead.

Earlier this evening I had a random urge to do some circuit based racing so I turned off Carbon and the 360 and fired up the good ol’ PS2 instead for some Gran Turismo 4 loving. Originally I only intended to drive around the one track for a few laps (Monaco for the record) but I ended up driving on 8 different tracks for about 20 laps each.

Monaco (Cote D’ Azur)

Grand Valley

Trial Mountain

Seattle

Seoul

El Capitan

Hong Kong

New York

As you can tell from the above list, I’m mostly a street circuit type of person but it was still nice to drive around Grand Valley, Trial Mountain and El Capitan again.

After driving on these circuits I browsed through my various replays and watched a few of them. It was surprisingly nice to just sit back and ‘chill’ while watching these replays and some of them were even bringing back the memories which is always nice. I must admit though, it felt rather weird not being signed into Live for once. Regardless of whether I was playing by myself or with friends I guess I just got so used to being signed into Live each night that when I wasn’t, it felt rather strange. I kind of liked being away from everyone though, as harsh as that may sound. It was simply me and my gaming with no interruption and yeah, it was perhaps more enjoyable because it had been such a long time since I last did that.

Overall I had a wonderful night playing an old gem again and I look forward to playing it for a bit more before it goes back on the shelf. Playing an old game has sparked interest or even motivation into playing some of the games I am still yet to play or have barely touched on the previous generation of consoles. So I dare say that I won’t be online with the 360 as much in the next few weeks while I finally get into Stranger’s Wrath, Super Metroid, Jade Empire and the like. Should be good. :)

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