What ho chaps!

Jolly nice day. Well that depends on your outlook. Been unemployed an suspicious of the sun I’ve been spending most of my time locked in my room hoping the need for food doesn’t over whelm my fear of the outside world.

That said I have been tempted into the daylight to purchase Ghostbusters: The Video Game

First off I’m very impressed with it. Unlike some other licenced games of recent times there are no glaring problems with it to detracted from the experience. Spider-man Web of Shadows for instance was a perfectly fun game, but it was plagued with issues. Ghostbusters is just fun.

Taking the role of a fifth Ghostbuster, both unnamed and unvoiced, you get the job of testing all the unsafe prototype equipment. As such you fell very unobtrusive in the Dan Akroyed & Harold Remis penned story, effectively letting the characters you know and love get on with it while you’re just along for the ride. All the returning characters are voice by the original actor for that extra bit of authenticity too and while some of the lines sound a little wooden, you don’t really notice the first time through.

The busting itself is handled very well. Unlike other shooter you’re not just blasting away and things. While there are enemies you do just destroy with your proton pack, the game really feel right when you’re trapping ghosts. This is split into three sections. First you wear down a ghost energy, then you hold in a capture stream letting you pull it around the stage, and then into the trap. Alot of standard shooter weapons have been replicated as various upgrades to the standard proton back. A boson dart stands in for an RPG and there are shotgun/machine gun alternatives thrown into. There work best against the destroyable foe, but for actual Ghostbusing I tended to stick with the standard proton stream.

It’s not an especially long game, but there is plenty to go back for for completionists . As well as been a tool for tracking ghosts down, your PKE meter can scan them to complete Tobin’s Spirit Guide and a number of cursed artifacts to track down in each level. In addition you also get a couple of quite entertaining features on the disk, a behind the scene look at the game and, my favorite, a look at the restoration of the original Ecto 1.

It’s heard to say if the game would stand-up without the licence, as the experience is just so Ghostbusters from start to finish. If you love Ghostbusters (and lets face it, who doesn’t) it’d be hard to go wrong with this one.

So with the last post hyping up the crazy I figured hey, may as well try and bring this thing back to life. If nothing else it gives me something to do while I’m between jobs.

Speaking of which my new status as a man of leisure has allowed me to dig into some older games a bit more, as well as fully enjoy the few new ones I’ve been able to get and a few I’ve nicked off Bobo.

First up, my addiction to the free-roaming crack that is Saints Row 2 has only gotten worse with the release of DLC. 6 new missions, 12 new forms of transport and loads of new customisation options for about £11.50. That’s two paid and one free pack. Now role on Saints Row 3.

inFamous also grab my attention. Did one run as a Hero, now running through in bad guy mode. Fun stuff.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Blotz is surprisingly good fun. Made some truly epic (and truly retarded) contraptions, such is the power of the creation tools most things will get you from a to b at least.

And last but not least Fuel. Been getting some bad press but I loved it. Has a pleasing “one more go” factor to it. On-line needs work though.

Well enough for now, no doubt more to come when boredom shows it’s face again.

Cheers.

Ok it’s been a while since a post here, but in the intrests of what you are about to see I felt it was needed.

Tekken 6 head

Now what the crap is up with that?!

Battlestar Galactica just finished and I felt compelled to do something small in tribute to the finest show ever made. One of the things that I love the most in the show is the astounding music composed by Bear McCreary so I lept at the idea of a tribute to his version of All Along the Watchtower.

All Along the Watchtower

It was a lot of fun to arrange and try to get something similar to his version but different enough to be my own. I enlisted the talents of Chris (El Bobo) Nelson for vocal duties on the song as I could never do it justice and then set out to record what would become a very instrument dense mix! All told there are around 30 different instrument tracks recorded and I managed to reduce that number down to something more audible. Stylistically, I tried to arrange this to be a heavier mix than the version used on the show. I wanted to keep the same Final Four/Five theme in there and keep the basic structure of the song the same. I decided to change up the rhythm throughout and slow the bpm slightly and gradually introduced more bizarre instruments and effects in to give a greater texture.

It’s not perfect by any means, but I enjoyed doing this, I hope you all like it

Phil Haymes

At the time of writing this it is 4am on a Monday morning, I have 2 hours until I go to work and I have not slept in two days, fun fun huh?

Anyway I actually have a point to write so here it is.

I never thought the day would come when I would be so utterly disgusted by a game from the Sonic franchise.  Myself  like quite a few people out there,  am a sonic whore, yes I play every game, yes even Unleashed.

Last week we got to finally try Sonic and the Black Knight and I have never taken a Sonic game back to a store so quickly.  Now I had heard the game was short (I am aware there are 2 endings btw) but even after the final boss I still felt that I had played for a longer period of time than I did.  My final save time was 2hrs 26mins and 23sec, now when compared to older Sonic games this is alot, but when you found that all you do for 2 hours is push forwards and waggle the remote occasionally you realise what a waste of time it has been.  This game has no challenge and it really is a shame because SEGA really could have made this something special.

The game has a really high production value, everything from music to menus is a joy to listen to and look at, so I found it to be a real shame that there is in fact no game here, presentation does not a good game make.  Now I can forgive the Werehog crap, hell I loved unleashed, but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel, the idea seemed good on paper but execution is so poor trust me you don’t want to bother. So overall i must say a few words to SEGA: -

Dear SEGA , please stop this right now, put away the darts and the ideas board or whatever you use to come up with this shit and stop feeding us this crap.  As a long time Sonic fan I feel sick having played this game, all my good memories from past games are now tainted by crap like this, oh and on a side note, new characters are not always better(Marine in sonic rush adventure should not exist in any reality).

This may seem like an angry post and I assure you it is and how can I not be angry, it’s not everyday that a childhood memory is shit upon.  Come on SEGA you are better than this.

Elbobo

It seems ASDA quite likes the Nintendo Wii and this weekend they will be giving the below deal.

Wii Console + Mario Kart + Wall:E + Wii Nunchuck for £177 – Save £59.47! This starts on Thursday 26th Feb and runs until COB Sunday 1st March.

This information comes from a contact within ASDA, so if you have yet to get that Wii for someone take advantage of this offer.

I hate to say this but my PS3 has finally died, well it’s not completly dead but it will no longer read disks.

luckily my console is within it’s first year warrenty(just by 2 days whew) and so I have made my first call to Sony to get it fixed and I must say compared to Microsoft customer support Sony seem like GODS.

Never before have I been so impressed with speed of response and cure as I have with Sony, they make me feel like all is right with the world.  Yes my PS3 is broken but I feel that it is in good hands:)

So long PS3 we await your return.

So the new Fallout game arrived and i’m happy to say has gone.  Don’t get me wrong, like many people I expected this to be golden and my expectations where high.

My first insight of failings appeared as I took my first steps into the game world and it was here that I first sighed and thought “so i’m playing Oblivion again”.  That’s right this game can’t excape it’s roots and this dilutes the experience.  It’s not neccessarily broken but it does raise cause for concern.

Please hold in mind that it took me a whole year of trying to complete Oblivion due to glitches and general anger towards what was happening and after 6 hours of boardom i’m affraid to say that I get the same vibe from Fallout, while I commend Bethesda for sticking to their guns, seriously make something fun to play.

So here I stand board and very pissed off at a game that should have been so much more.  Back to the store with you demon.

Elbobo

Living in the Russian Federation – Ninja Power! 24/10/2008

It’s been a fun time at work, the change of environment from working wih and supporting 3,000 people down to around 10 has been a welcome change of pace and attitiude. Finally I’m in a position to really start looking at best practices, preventative measures and most of all I’m laying down the groundwork for all the IT stuff to come down the line. There’s a real buzz about being a part of a ‘first team’ and doing the things that we’re doing. Next week is going to be insanely cool as I get to start travelling Moscow to various IT vendors and retailers to start negotiating prices, kit and support which should be a lot of fun. It’ll also be a great place to really get to see some more of Moscow which sadly I’ve not seen anywhere near enough of so far

Being an office of only a few people (and never having everyone there at the same time…) things could easily get boring, however we actually manage to have a great time especially when things like this happen. So to set the scene, the office is silent, we’ve all got our heads down working on various things then out of nowhere this dude appears at out 19th floor window swinging around like a mother fucker with a squeegy. Ron chirps up straight away “ya know, I can see he’s breaking at least 6 separate safety procedures already” then starts reeming them off. Deividos then chirps up “and people die making these buildings all the time like that, this place is made from the blood and bones of the fallen just like the Pyramids!”.

This proves that there is nothing like a dude swinging around outside your 19th floor window to brighten up the day (and clean the view!)

Today was also monumental as I visited the shared vending machine for the first time and discovered two gems… take a look!

Ninja Drinks are awesome and you can check out their website at <a href=”www.ninja-drinks.ru”>Ninja Drinks!!!</a>

Tomorrow it’s my first day off so I’m going to do some touristy things….

Philthy