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Book #1 Snow Crash

Feb 28, 2009
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Neal Stephenson

God damn what a fucking awesome book.

I actually read this over the course of 2-3 days while in Sweden, the plane and transfers gave me a real good opportunity to knuckle down and mow through this book.

To start, i was a bit put off by previous experience with books like Neuromancer that i'd just come away feeling jaded about the ending and slightly cheated out of a conclusion. Although saying that, in retrospect about Neuromancer, i took it a little hard.

Anyway, back to Snow Crash - i was pretty much addicted to it after the first 100 pages. The two sides of things, one from Hiro and Y.T really made a difference to the overall story structure.

Geeky humour, badass rat things, such a fantastic read.

It's honestly a shame i didn't get around to writing this up sooner, since it was well over a month ago since i finished and through that i've read 2-3 other books (working on another now).

But seriously, bar the Dark Tower series - it's one of the best books i have ever read and would definitely recommend to anyone who loves dark humour, cyber-punk style bad-assness and a damn good story.

#3 Resistance 2

Jan 11, 2009
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Resistance 2

In honesty, i finished this about a week or so ago. I'd got to the point where i was up until 4am pushing my way through it so i didn't have to play it anymore.

Yeah, you heard right. I pushed through to 4am just so i didn't have to play it anymore.

Ok so the good things :

The graphics were great
Presentation was spot on
Story and progression through it was great

And now the bad :

Lack of 'health' or 'shield bar' (more on that later)
Difficulty was completely skewed (more on that later too...)
Controls could have been better
Invisible monsters that charge at you and kill you in one hit.

I will say, i thought i'd have more negative points about this game but all in all i think that pretty much sums it up.

To expand on the first two points, Resistance 2 operates on the Halo shield style, in that you don't have "HP" or whatever your game says it is. You take a certain amount of damage and you die, to regen that health you step out, hide, duck under cover and it comes back.

Personally i think it's great, it means you don't really worry about having to find HP and because it's a lot more limiting than having 100 HP you actually have to duck/cover/hide in the middle of battle until you're ready to go out and pewpew some more.

Problem is with Resistance 2, is that you don't have a bar showing you where you are at. Instead you have an annoying red glow coming in from the sides of the screen. And it's incredibly hard to judge to what extent you are damaged.

Onto the second point and the worst...

The character you play is part of a team of an elite army team. Sometimes you fight in pairs, sometimes in groups of 5-6 people, sometimes even more.

So why is it all the monsters act as if you are the only one there? I recall several times where friends and enemies are standing next to each other and not even knowing it. I recall times where the big bastard monsters would just run past and ignore people who were in front of them and come for me.

I even started to test the extent of it, and after dying 2-3 times on one portion i let my 3 team mates storm the room ahead and i stood out the back to stop anymore coming from behind. Only to turn around into a stream of monsters that ignored the 3 guys shooting them as they ran up the stairs and go through the backdoor, down an alley and straight for me.

How in the hell did they know i was there?

It was seriously like playing a single player game for the vast majority of it. Team mates were completely useless which destroyed the entire idea of having a team in the first place (which through cutscenes, intel and so on you actually felt like you were part of something and not some no name loser).

Jeeez, how could they get it so wrong? The first game had so much more flavour to it, so much more life and charm. Even though i hate FPS on consoles in general i went through most of it enjoying myself entirely. Rest assured, i'll be very careful picking up console FPS games for a while....

#2 Bioshock

Jan 3, 2009
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Since DevilMayCry 4 was technically a cheat, i've already gone ahead and started working my way through the next game.

Bioshock

In fact, a little over 7 hours worth of game time i've finished it! No really. I spent my New Years bank holiday going through this since Steam had it on sale for £3.50. Not bad to be honest.

Now, i knew that the game was going to be short. I'd had the massive spoiler, that pretty much ruins any subsequent playthroughs but i had such fond memories of the experience originally that i wanted to go through it again to refresh that memory.

First off, i had problems getting it to work through Steam - switching over to DX9 instead of DX10 got that solved and off i went. 7 hours later, with a quick break in the middle and i'd finished it. Making extra special effort to save all the little girls rather than harvesting them, along with finding as many of the recorded messages as possible.

I think my memories sit the same, the game was good - very good. Metacritic has a 96/100 on it.

In retrospect, considering the limitations of the game (i think my first playthrough was not that much longer) can the game really be justified such a high score? With almost zero reply value (even the good/bad endings are pretty much so close to each other you wouldn't need to go through the game again), with a very linear story and quirky gameplay (everything is pretty much a joke, other than the big daddies - i even just went around with a wrench for the last half of the game).

Zero Punctuation:BioShock

The zero punctuation review of Bioshock, from way back in 2007 pretty much nails some of my gripes. If you look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R (both of them), Fallout, the original System Shocks. There was a hell of a lot more to those games, aside from the story and click here and choose which super power you want next.

I think the biggest problem with Bioshock, is that it wants so desperately to be one of those games. When in fact it's a lot more like the Half Life series, or even Doom 3 where the RPG element is contained within the story and related conversations with other NPCs or notes/tape recorders littered about the levels. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but looking back on the game now i can't help but feel jaded about the whole thing. Sure it's pretty, got a nice story, the ghost scenes/background story are great, voice acting is great - but it is very much a very confused little boy. Unsure if it's a full blown FPSRPG or a simple FPS game. Bioshock, definitely sits somewhere in the middle.

Ah well, already making progress through the next game of the year. Which is Resistance 2.

Resistance 2

Back in business and #1 DevilMayCry 4

Jan 2, 2009
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So it's been a while, almost a year in fact since i last posted on this thing.

I read LJs, quite a few are on my regular "cycle" and there is one guy who went through 80 games last year. Everyone he made a little post about, listed them at the end of the year to keep track and so on.

Thinking about it, it was a pretty good idea. Of all the games i've completed, how many have i actually thought about afterwards?

So that's what i'm doing. For all of 2009 i'm going to make an effort to do the follow:

Play through games to the end
Post something about them, even if it's a simple "i did this, look"
Tally up at the end of the year
Give some meaning to this hobby.

All in all, i should probably use this journal a bit more to.

Anyway, first up!

DevilMayCry4

The current gen version of the classic arcady/action hack and slash. I'm not sure technically what genre it would slide into and really i'm cheating on this since i finished it before the start of '09.

I was a big fan of the original Devil May Cry's, at least the first and the second. By the time the third had come out i was well under the influence of MMOs and found out just enough (guitar firing bats...) that completely put me off the game.

It's certainly part of the DevilMayCry humour, to have silly little cut scenes,

joke weapons but sometimes it gets a bit to much. I'd say the same with this,

DMC 4 Dante vs Angelo Agnus

with dance scenes, salsa (killing a boss?) and complete rip off of a Shakespeare play.

Overall though, it was just about ok for me to put up with. Plus actually being able to play as Dante rather than Nero was a nice switch up because of the history of the series, or at least my history with the series.

I'm not sure if i'm looking to find another one. It's one of those series that i think is pretty much done. I can't really think of many games that go up to this number without seriously losing their basis. Then again, it's more of a feel good game, where you do ridiculous combos over and over again until you see that magic triple S score!

I want this on my wall.

Feb 27, 2008
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Allisinherarms

What's the difference, between a life sentance in prison, or the death sentance?

Oct 17, 2007
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I'm talking like, life in prison with no chance of parole. Sometimes this actually happens and people go to prison forever, without the chance of parole, good behaviour or whatever else.

So i'm sitting there thinking, what's the difference between that and the death penalty?

All i can really see, is that in the end, we have a load of people rotting in jail costing money and space. Where as if they are dead, then they are dead.

Maybe that's morbid, but when they are on a life sentance, what really is the difference ?

Internets

Oct 9, 2007
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I have to admit, that although i've been "on" the internet for a long time there are still plenty of things that amaze me. Mostly these come in the form of various memes, or in many cases just little things that are acceptable or common practice on the internet. Yet would be totally unacceptable anywhere else in the world, no matter what country or background you are from.

Also on the other side of that, internet in itself is aside from all of that. Thinking about it, it would be arguable that a man from Japan may automatically take his shoes off when entering a house, where as a man entering his house in England may not. Internet is another one of these, and in some cases, has its own little sub-cultures.

Certain message boards as an example, or auction sites may have their own etiquette. I think though, it's funny when you as an "experienced" user of the internet, well versed in various memes and subcultures and sub-subcultures see these abused or even misused.

An example i saw today, and the reason for this post in fact. Is while browsing ebay for trainers, i noticed that some auctions were being listed as "RARE".

Now, don't get me wrong a pair of shoes may well be "RARE" - but exactly how rare can a pair of Nike Air trainers, size 11 be? I could walk into town now and i'm sure i'd find the exact same pair on the shelf. Now looking back to the early days of ebay, RARE was used to describe something that was actually rare, or exceptional. A way of grabbing attention.

I'm sure, you like me put two and two together and realised that "RARE" has just become a marketing slogan, it's not really rare. But it's a way of saying "HEY COME AND HAVE A LOOK!!"

Sad really, since now when i search for things that might actually be rare, they are all rare.