Update for this week:

This Week's Update is: One of sheer, unadulterated elation

Everything over at CrudePixel is going super awesome, both my reviews and mine and Sarah' s web-comic are up when they are supposed to be, sometimes my reviews will be up before my deadline day. Which I guess can only be a good thing.

In other news:

Sven, my darling little mad man, part inspired by people I wont even mention just now, you will have to buy issue one when its done to see who me and Sarah thank (and subsequently apologise to) for helping us finally unleash our (roughly) four year old creation (oh my goodness... I just realised that Sven is the same age as my niece...) He is well underway to being fully done and ready to rock your little cotton socklets very soon. Don't thank me just yet, oh, okay. Thank me. I'll let you.

Keep your beady little eyes peeled as no doubt, this humble blog will be one of my ways of letting you lovely, lovely people... except YOU, yes, you right there! *points*... know exactly what's going on in my world. For even more and more regular updates, follow my Twitter: @Salty616

It may not mean a lot to you, but damn it man, its the only world i have.

oh yeah, and a very massive thanks to Colin Somerville, who had faith in me. Even when I didn't. now get me a job, Colin ¬_¬

OH! The Joys

So, not only am I writing reviews for Crude Pixel I am now writing what will (hopefully) become a weekly feature on the site, in its own little section.
What kind of section could I possibly be talking about? Some new, innovative foray into journalism? NOPE! A weekly web-comic, written by yours truly and illustrated by Sarah Burt, a long term friend of mine. Who is also illustrating our graphic-y novel-y type thing.
SO! Ladies and gentlemen of the internet keep your eyes peeled for both of these exciting new additions to my life’s work.

www.crudepixel.com is where the comic will be

and Sven will be out and about when he is

My First Review For Crude Pixel

http://www.crudepixel.com/en/features/spotlight/128-dungeon-run-on-your-desktop\

check it out, Mik took some creative liberties with it but hey, that's his job. My job is to do what i feel i do best, write lovely articles for him to do his job on... =D

p.s. im so chuffed right now ^_^

What will be my first post on CrudePixel

This is a review for Desktop Dungeons, which may feature on crudepixel.com soon. Enjoy

Desktop Dungeons by QCF Design is designed to be a quick ten to fifteen minute game to play over a coffee break but trust me, you can easily get sucked into it for a lot longer than that. I did for sure.

The stream-lined gameplay in Desktop Dungeons makes it a supremely easy game to pick up and play but a very tricky game to master.

You take control of your avatar whom is dictated by the choices you make before you enter the dungeon, there are five races to pick from at the beginning: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling and Gnome. With each race having a bonus for selecting that race. You can unlock an extra two races but I wont ruin the surprise for you as to what they are.

Along with the five races there are four classes you can go at the start, being Fighter, Thief, Priest and Wizard with an abundance of other classes to unlock.

The graphical style of the game is simplistic at best, easily being the game’ biggest downfall, blocky and unappealing art isn’ what you want to be looking at when you are smacking monsters up-side the head but on the other hand, the puddle of blood that is left after you dispatch a monster is rather rewarding. The sound is also rather simplistic also being very brief before cutting out. The audio and graphical style just goes to show that the developers spent more time working on the game than how it looked or sounded.

Every time you enter a new dungeon it is randomly generated which means you will never have the same experience in the game twice, which I find refreshing as spending a lot of time starting a game and being met by the same thing time and time again is not my idea of fun.

There are two goals in Desktop Dungeons and they are to get a supremely high score through a series of goals which in game are known as Conducts, such as killing the boss in normal combat, petrifying a ton of monsters, never taking a health potion, and never dropping below 50% health, doing these things are ridiculously important for getting a high score. The other aim of Desktop Dungeons is to kill the level ten boss in normal combat, you can kill him without ever physically attacking him but to get the conduct bonus for it, you have to physically hit him.

There is an option to pray to Gods throughout the game, each granting you a specific bonus from a plus to strength or a one time resistance to death, but praying at these alters is not a prerequisite to completing the game.

When you first bump into the boss, he will scream all this disturbing stuff at you which is a banter and a half to read. Even when the boss is Frank the Zombie you still get a laugh from him wanting to pry your skull open. It’ all about delivery.

All in all, Desktop Dungeons is an easy game to get lost in and spend a lot of time playing if you like this sort of game, the replay value is immense as it is an ever changing world you will inhabit.
I highly recommend Desktop Dungeons, even if it is just over your next coffee break.

Get Desktop Dungeons here: http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20

Ladies and Mentlegen

SO! it took long enough, all the work has payed off, as of yesterday i am now officially a spotlight writer over at crudepixel.com. you guys happy for me? coz i sure as hell am!!

So, What Do You FiNCK?

FiNCK (Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer) by Nifflas (Nicklas Nygren) is a two dimensional platform game with a relatively easy to grasp control system and a really quite simple premise.

The control system in FiNCK is quick to get to grips with but not so quick to master if you have played other games with a slightly different control set up you will be constantly messing up, hitting space to jump instead of S then turning into a puff of smoke and ending up back at the start of the zone, or hitting your up arrow key to jump and promptly falling down a hole. These are both things that will happen to you if you even forget for a second that it is the S key to jump and if you are anything like me, this will get you just a bit angry with the game and make you consider quitting out

But don't! Continue playing through the annoyance and you will find a beautifully crafted and designed game that plays like a dream. It's very rare to find a game that can annoy you and that you feel compelled to play at the same time, there are however a few changes I would have made if I were the one designing and developing this game. I would have the jump key on a more widely used key for jumping, as most other games I have played have had the jump action bound to keys such as the up arrow or the space bar. Apart from this little niggle, the rest of the game is pretty pick-up-and-playable, in the tutorial level all the actions that you can do are spelled out to you in a very understandable way which is what you want from a tutorial.

One rather interesting game play element is the birds strewn throughout the levels that come in varying colours. These birds are beneficial to the player either by granting you flight for as long as you hold them or slowing your fall so you can make bigger jumps. As far as I can tell, the aim of the game is to traverse the world and collect the 25 coins that are scattered throughout the world. Don't worry if you can't get to a coin on your first trip through one of the zones as you will more than likely find a door that takes you to where you need to go.

FiNCK has a unique style, it's not every game you see where the hero has a purple face and blue hair, but apart from that, the colour schemes slightly vary per level but ultimately every “rea”has the same general colour scheme, this gives a degree of uniformity to the game and helps keep the player knowing where he is.

As a whole, FiNCK is a genuinely interesting game, easy to play but not so easy to master if you are forgetful and keep hitting space to jump like I do. But I'm sure you aren't like me, so you should have a much easier ride through FiNCK than I have. On the whole, I would recommend FiNCK to every one of you, even if it's just a way to pass time over a lunch break.

Get FiNCK here: http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=FiNCK

When It Rains.. It Pwns

So i log on to my hotmail to find a message from Mik (CrudePixel.com) asking me to write ANOTHER review for a different game... at this point in time I'm not sure if he wants this one for the fourth as well.. its mounting up now and im feeling the pressure. i can see where they are coming from, wanting to make sure the writers fit with the site and everything but now i have (potentially) two days to play this game to death and write a review that will cement my position on CrudePixel... I'm starting to feel that this may have came to late for me to do anything about it. On the bright side though, something that has been continuously complimented is my grasp of the written word and my articles flow... might be light at the end of this up and down rambling after all.. seriously guys, please, keep them crossed for me

Rock Band: Green Day... *rolls eyes*

One of the most depressing games stories of this year, for me at least, has to be the upcoming release of Green Day: Rock Band.

Developed by Harmonix and published by MTV games, this is the latest in the line of rhythm games designed to make you feel like you are a mediocre band.

Don’t get me wrong, Green Day started out pretty good then per American Idiot turned into an overly political disgrace.

The game itself features tracks from a wide variety of the band’s albums ranging from Dookie to the newest release 21^st Century Breakdown, including the obvious American Idiot which saw Green Day rocket out of obscurity and into the mainstream eye.

The track listing makes quite interesting reading, a lot of the songs on this game people who started liking Green Day only after American Idiot won’t very probably wont feel as strongly towards as they do the more recent offerings, some of the tracks may be totally new to the new Green Day audience.

Below is the game’s confirmed track list:

Dookie: Basket Case, 01 Dookie 07 Burnout, 01 Dookie 01 Chump, 01 Dookie 3 Coming Clean,01 Dookie 11  Emenius Sleepus, 01 Dookie 12 F.O.D. 01 Dookie 14  Having a Blast, 01 Dookie 02 In The End, 01 Dookie 13 Longview, 01 Dookie 04 Pulling Teeth, 01 Dookie 06 Sassafrass Roots, 01 Dookie 09 She 01 Dookie 08  Welcome to Paradise, 01 Dookie 05 When I Come Around 01 Dookie 10 

Insomniac: Brain Stew/Jaded, GGGeek Stink Breath02 Insomniac 12 

Nimrod: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), 03 Nimrod 03 Hitchin' a Ride,03 Nimrod 02  Nice Guys Finish Last 03 Nimrod 04 

Warning: Minority, Warning 04 Warning 02 

American Idiot: American Idiot,05 American Idiot 01  Are We the Waiting/St. Jimmy, 05 American Idiot 05 Boulevard of Broken Dreams, 05 American Idiot 04 Extraordinary Girl, 05 American Idiot 09 Give Me Novacaine/She's A Rebel, 05 American Idiot 07 Holiday,05 American Idiot 03  Homecoming 05 American Idiot 12  Jesus of Suburbia, 05 American Idiot 02 Letterbomb05 American Idiot 10 , Wake Me Up When September Ends, 05 American Idiot 11 Whatsername05 American Idiot 13 

21^st Century Breakdown: 21st Century Breakdown, 06 21st Century Breakdown 02 American Eulogy, 06 21st Century Breakdown 11 Breakdown Before the Lobotomy, 06 21st Century Breakdown 03 Horseshoes and Handgrenades, L06 21st Century Breakdown 09 ast Night on Earth, M06 21st Century Breakdown 04 urder City, 06 21st Century Breakdown 06 Peacemaker, 06 21st Century Breakdown 05 Restless Heart Syndrome,, See the Light 06 21st Century Breakdown 12 , Song of the Century, 06 21st Century Breakdown 01 The Static Age, 06 21st Century Breakdown 10 ¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)

While I agree that Green Day have had some good tracks I wouldn’t say that this warrants them having a game made of said tracks and the ones that gave them their fame in the mainstream audience.

If you ask me, this game is just an excuse to make money more than giving the fans something they really want, other bands deserve to have this happen for them so much more than Green Day do, such as Alkaline Trio, HIM, The Used, cKy and Reuben. All those games would be so a big improvement on Green Day.

Green Day: Cash Cow… I mean Rock Band will be released on the 8^th of this month (June)

Expect a lot of teenage girls in tight jeans in the queues.

My Challenge From Crude Pixel

I was set a challenge by Crude Pixel to review a game of their choosing, the game they chose was The Wrath of The God by Sinistrade. For those who don't know, Crude Pixel is an indie games and culture site. So if you haven't heard of the game, don't worry too much. Enclosed is the review I will very probably end up submitting to Mik to cement my place on CrudePixel.com, enjoy.

The Wrath of the God by Sinistrade is without a doubt an interesting and glorious game. The premise is a simple one, dodge the angry God’ balls of luminescence and survive for as long as you can. This may sound an easy task but trust me, it gets pretty tricky, pretty quickly.

The artistic style of the game gripped me straight off, it is refreshingly different and simplistic. The minimal colour scheme of the game, mostly blues and blacks with the exception of the balls of light, makes the game stand out for me. The contrast of the lights and the background colour scheme make me think “.k. those lights are pretty but I sure wouldn't like one landing on my head”and just after I think that, BOOM! big great ball of light crushes me. Not good at all. Having the God’ eyes stare down at you as you dodge his balls of pain made me laugh for a minute before i was promptly blown up by said balls.

Not only are you bombarded with the balls of light but smaller ones pass across the God’ eyes and explode in the background, the first time i saw this happen i thought to myself “ow, I’ glad I wasn’t on that ridge.”but after a couple more attempts at getting a decent score I could fully appreciate the beauty that those balls of light created. Even when you do get hit by one of these lights, and trust me, you will, you still think to yourself, “his game is so pretty... even when I am splattered everywhere”

The God’ eyes also proved as a distraction for me the first couple of plays of the game for me, watching the eyes watch me was something i couldn't help but do, which also lead me get crushed by the balls. I was staring into those big beauty’ when POW! light ball lands right on my head and again... My little man is splattered all the ways you can think of and then some more

Not only does the games difficulty slope nicely, with the projectiles speeding up, following you and coming more frequently but sometimes the balls of light will explode in the air and split into three and then follow you, making for quite a tricky escape from them.

On the Gamejolt.com page for The Wrath of the God, Sinistrade says that this game took him about five hours to come up with. Even if this is the case, trust me it will take you a lot longer than that to get good at it, in the number of times I have played it, my score has been pitifully low compared to some others i have seen and as soon as i finish this review of it I'm jumping right back on it. It is very rare for any game to have that effect on me, the last game that i literally couldn’t stop playing, even after i had completed it, was Don’ Look Back by Terry Cavanagh which is the story of the Death of Eurydice in a superbly presented package.

Like every game, The Wrath of the God does have it’ flaws but they are so few and far between it makes them barely worth this minimal mention I am giving them, but its only fair for you, the readers, to understand that no game is perfect, but this comes very close indeed, i loved it and i think you will to. It’ simplistic style and graphics make this game a keeper.

To Summarise, The Wrath of the God is beautiful and plays like a dream. The controls are easy to get to grips with. Use the arrow keys to move left, right and jump the low flying balls of light. Don’ let your guard down or you will face the Wrath of the God.

Gaming's One True Sun

My fifth blog post today will be a celebration of a gaming icon that recently just turned the big 3-OH, now I know straight away you’re racking your brains trying to think of gaming icons that are such a reasonably young age. “Surely everyone that big in gaming is a touch older?” Ladies and gentleman, happy belated birthday PAC MAN!

Yes, that’s right everyone’s favourite yellow man is the wrong side of 29. Let us take a stroll down Memory (aah see that? Reasonably passable computer joke) Lane.

Pac-Man released on May 22^nd 1980 and developed and published by Namco stormed the arcades and instantly became a massive hit. Holding people’s pockets hostage for the tidy sum of a quarter a time. Even today 30 years down the line, our little yellow friend is as popular as he has always been, primarily due to the simplicity in the games controls and premise. Collect the dots eat the power pellets then eat the ghosts but don’t let the ghosts touch you unless you have eaten the power pellets.

Not only is Pac-Man as popular as it has ever been but all the Pac-Man clones and spin offs that came about seem to retain their popularity also. The most notable Pac-Man spin off is very probably Ms Pac-Man hailed as some gamers to be superior to the original.

An interesting fact, that I didn’t know but you probably did is that the ghosts in Pac-Man have names… in japan they were known as Macky, Micky, Mucky and Mocky (red, pink, cyan and orange respectively) and in the western world they had better names all together and those were Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. I particularly love the fact that instead of calling the orange ghost/monster a name that ended in –inky they chose to go for a totally random name.

Something this awesome deserves to be around for ever and hopefully in 30 years, when I am 49 I will be able to say, Happy 60^th Pac-Man. But only time will tell.

Flash - Saviour of the (gaming) universe?

Free flash games could very well be an integral part of gaming future.

I know it sounds mad to say but I really do believe this to be the case, there is so much potential out there. Some of the games I have played on websites such as Kongregate and Not Doppler put a lot of other games I have played to shame.

The flash games always have an easy to grasp concept and control style and that’s not something I can say so quickly about other games that big publishers have taken years to make. Some games you have no idea what is going on half the time and don’t know how to control it so what is happening is actually happening in your favour.

Some of the best flash games I have played have been platformer games or puzzle games… or a combination of both.

Games such as the flash version of Portal, which in itself was such an amazing game, really made me wonder just how much you could do with Flash. Not having the best graphical capabilities doest seem to stop the Flash-Devs from pushing the boat out as far as they can. Flash Portal is truly an amazing example of a game.

Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back which I found on Kongregate has a unique visual style and a story that is very much based on the legend of Orpheus and The Death of Eurydice, where “while walking among her people, the Cicones, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus travelled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He set off with Eurydice following and in his anxiety as soon as he reached the upper world he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever”. It is easily one of the most interesting games I have ever come across, and the story it delivers is reason enough to give it multiple playthroughs.

Also, not only do the games themselves have so many unique selling points but the websites that host them have some interesting features, Kongregate, which is my favourite flash site offers achievements and chatrooms in a window at the side of the game you are playing. If you haven’t checked out www.kongregate.com then I highly recommend it

Good News... Maybe

I was rummaging around on the internet for jobs, even unpaid volunteer work on gaming websites or publications and I found a very helpful website. www.videogamejournalismjobs.com/. On this website I found a really interesting post over at CrudePixel.com.

I e-mailed the guys and in less than a week they had gotten back to me and last night I had my informal interview over MSN with Darren from Crude Pixel and it seemed to go very well.

They are going over the applications next week when the guys have time.

I would never have had the guts to go and e-mail them if it wasn’t for Colin and Dan Maher. Colin saying that I should be writing for a website or a publication and Dan for taking the time to give me such a good answer about games journalism on his formspring page. Even though Dan will never see this, unless I link him it on his Formspring, I would like to thank him and Colin for giving me the extra push to apply myself.

Thanks a bunch guys and I’ll keep you posted on the news about the position.

Keep your fingers crossed for me

Prepare for Project Natal

Some of you may not know what Project Natal is, well, it is a very interesting sounding new way of gaming. It takes the Wii’s motion tracking and applies it on a much grander scale and even removes the Wii-Mote which was prone to flying out of hands and either breaking faces or windows and replaces it with… You. That’s right, there is no controller in Project Natal apart from your appendages. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, head. If its part of your body it can be used in conjunction with PN.

I have only seen videos about it on Inside Xbox but what I have seen looks like it could totally revolutionise gaming. It really does look that good. The control responsiveness seems quick in the videos and even the graphics look pretty awesome which isn’t something I expected, I thought that the processing power required to run all the mapping would have a severe detrimental effect on the graphics, gladly I was wrong.

I don’t know too much on Natal but I think it’s the way forward for console gaming. The only question is; what will we throw at walls when we get angry now that we have no controller?

Fable 2 - Cracking The Crucible and Other Related Stories

I rock up to the Westcliff Crucible but the guys at the door tell me I’m not famous enough to die in their arena… we shall see about that.

To boost my Renown points I nipped back to Bowerstone Market and down to the dock, where Murgo and the Knothole Island Submarine Guy are, these guys are the two quest givers for the downloadable content areas of See The Future (Murgo) and Knothole Island (three guesses who takes me there.)

The quests in these two areas are pretty different; I will start with the See The Future quest – The Cursed Snowglobe.

So, I’m transported into the snowglobe and everything is black and white, except me, my dog and my weapons. I am instantly confused. I run down the path a little bit and can not believe the sight that awaits me. More colour in the form of three blue shadows sucking the colour out of this one poor guy. Being the fearless hero I am, I rush to his aid and start smacking the shadows with my sword. Doesn’t take too long before they are dead and I am sent on my way through the rest of the mission. I won’t bore you with all the details of the mission, just the key points. All you need to know before I continue is that everything in the world is black and white apart from the Hero, the dog and the coloured shadows that are your enemies. Let’s continue… So I go through a field and I am accosted by about five or six blue shadows… they don’t last long at all. After about five minutes I am no longer accosted by the blue shadows which don’t like being hit with melee attacks and I have to fight my way out of a room with Yellow shadows in it but they are over a crevice that I can’t cross… whatever will I do? That’s right. Shoot them until they stop shooting me. At this point you really start noticing how atmospheric the sparse colour can really make things. The deeper shadows add brighter lights outside can bring so much more to the mission. The brighter lights I am talking about is the Red shadow section which is set out side and you have to go to a the beach and the sun shines right in your eyes, making it very hard to see, that comes after the Yellow shadow section. Will to kill the Red shadows, took me quite a while to figure that one out but by this time I had a level four inferno so I could kill them with a fully charged spell. Ha-ha.

So. You’ve done all the stuff you can do outside, rescued the schoolchildren from the red shadows, that’s the quest over right? Wrong. The school mistress gives you a Red Seal key for the red door you pass on your way to the areas occupied by the red shadows. I would make a fore-shadowing pun here but I don’t think I will.

Into the cave then...

The cave is your standard RPG cave, get to the end of the cave to complete your objective whilst picking off enemies, in this case you are attacked by varying groups of different coloured shadows and at the end you have to kill three Shadow Cultists, who die in one shot. Colour is returned and you go back to the docks and Murgo has a new item in, The Cursed Skull.

After Murgo I nipped off to Knothole Island for a holiday, well to stop all the residents freezing to death for a nice little renown boost. Again this is a pretty straight forward quest and wont get much words dedicated to it for that fact.

You go dig up the key, go to a shrine, kill some enemies and use the key to “save” Knothole.

The main talking point of this Knothole Island quest is the puzzles in the cave, where you have to pull levers in a certain order, be quick to hit the Flit Switch and decipher the code of the Melee flit switches… I figured that last one out after I had been hitting them for about five minutes. But as I said, quite a straight forward affair. BACK TO THE DOCKS!

I can’t remember if I done this before or after the Crucible but it would make sense that it was before, for the renown but so far my favourite quest in the game and one that truly boosted my evil score and my standing in the Temple of Shadow… The Oakfield Massacre. It is what you think it is, does exactly what it says on the tin. Go to Oakfield and kill everyone you can see. No time limit so you can take as long as you want with them for added evil effect. Which I did.

Now I am famous enough for the Crucible, which is an eight round arena against different types of monsters including: beetles, Hobbes, bandits, balverines and more Hobbes. I bloody hate Hobbes. If you can get a perfect time on six of the eight rounds, including the last boss, you get a legendary weapon but by the time I got to the Crucible I had two amazing weapons. The Master Cleaver and the Master Flintlock Pistol. My cleaver could kill balverines in roughly five hits.

The most annoying area of the Crucible is the last area. The troll boss. For a number of reasons, 1: You have to hit his nerve endings which appear as glowing red on his body, doesn’t sound too tricky but when you couple it with reason 2 that this is the most annoying round you will understand what I mean, and reason number 2 is… More… Bloody… HOBBES! Yeah, I know. So they get in your way when you’re trying to concentrate on getting the weapon but are easy to dispatch, you lose time but you get experience… kind of a double edged sword. But as I said, the crucible is quite a straight forward deal. Kill things. The Crucible is an integral point in the story as it leads you to be able to go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth, who is the hero if Will.

When I get around to freeing him you guys will be the first to know, so watch this space people.

Today on LIAVW

The updates will be coming thick and fast in the next two hours.

There will be a Fable 2 update, a Project Natal preview and some very exciting news, not exciting for you but for me instead.

I will do them in the order that I said so, Fable 2 - Cracking The Crucible and Other Related Stories first.

Okay so I was going to update my Fable 2 story from home but my copy of Word decided to play up so you will have to do without the news and updates from Albion for now.

I haven’t stopped playing Fable but I am taking a brief sabbatical from Fable 2 to play Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia on the Xbox 360. Released on December 5^th, 2008

I’ve just started and already I’m thinking… this really doesn’t compare to any of the PlayStation 2 offerings, i.e. Sands of Time, Two Thrones and Warrior Within.

The control scheme is very basic, where buttons are mapped to a specific action – A is your acrobatic button, X is the sword attack, B is your gauntlet and the use of the Y button will be described a couple of paragraphs down.

In the Prince of Persia, you control the Prince, a nameless hero, who has lost his donkey and through this dramatic twist of fate you find yourself at the bottom of ravine and it doesn’t take too long at all before Elika falls on you, in her quest to escape he pursuers. This is where the story begins.

I wont tell you too much about it, needless to say it gets very convoluted very quickly, you have to stop a god of darkness escaping by collecting light seeds and healing places so the darkness cant touch it. That’s the gist of it

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Elika’s powers are utilized through the Y button; she can help the Prince jump further and help out in combo attacks. Not only does she do this, she can also be used to save your life, if you mess up a jump, Elika will pull you back up. If you are in a fight and it’s not going too well at all, Elika will save you. Dying in Prince of Persia is pretty tricky.

So far it’s been fairly easy, being pretty much invincible helps a lot. But even if I could die, I’m pretty sure I would still complete the game in enough time to get The Speed Demon achievement – Complete the game in less than 12 hours.

I wont keep you posted about Prince of Persia but I will more than likely tell you when I'm done. Back to Fable very soon, I have some juicy news to share with you all but you will have to wait for that I am afraid.

Fable 2 - New Playthrough, Old Choices

As you may have guessed from an earlier post I am currently playing Lionhead Studio’s epic release Fable 2.

I think I’m on my third start now, having cocked up my other two, one by not playing it the way I wanted to and the other by accidentally starting a Chapel of Light quest and being thrown out of the Shadow worshippers at the Temple of Shadows, not so good considering I was going after The Executioner achievement and a tidy 10gamerscore. So I had no real choice but to start again to rectify this most awful of mistakes.

So, I’m back in Albion and more evil than ever. Not only am I the bane of Albion I’m also going after all the silver keys and gargoyles littered throughout the game. If you want to know how that’s going, keep tabs on this very blog and you will be updated as updates come in.

All of the above text is now outdated as it was quickly scribbled on my notepad while I was combing Albion for silver keys, gargoyles and souls to sacrifice to the shadows. All three tasks I have undertaken are coming along very well but they are keeping me from the main quests.

I have cleared two areas of Albion of all the silver keys and gargoyles to be found, those regions are Rookridge and Bowerstone Old Town.

I also managed to get The Executioner, making four people follow me at a time meant it only took three trips to Bowerstone Market Square and back to the Temple of Shadows to successfully sacrifice 10 people. I am now working on getting the prize for getting 2000 Shadow Loyalty Points and sacrificing my wife to the shadows… which means I have to go out and get married. At the time of this post I have 16/50 Silver Keys, 8/50 Gargoyles and have made 37 sacrifices to the shadows. I’m not sure how much more sacrifices I will have to make to reach the 2000 SLP but I don’t think I’m too far off at all. The numbers in the above part of my post will be updated in subsequent posts. Keep an eye out

And oh yeah, you should see my Hero… the size of his horns puts most bulls to shame.

For additional updates, check out my Twitter which I will start posting Silver Key, Gargoyle and Sacrifice numbers on: @Salty616

Living In A Virtual World

In all my twenty years on this green and blue ball of rock and magma I have never been more at home as I am when I have a game controller in my hands. Be it 360, PS2, PS1, SNES, NES, MasterSystem or MegaDrive or even a PC keyboard and mouse (yes I’ve been a busy boy over 20 years but I do enjoy a good game) I don’t know what it is about gaming that I love so much. It’s one of the truest forms of escapism. To be able to just turn on your console of choice and slip away into another universe. The years have hit gaming just as hard as they have hit any other medium, games developers going bust, new ones sprouting from nothingness and coming out with some of the best games out there today. There have been several discussions on whether or not games are art, most people are ready to say implicitly that no, they are not but I beg to differ with them. Some of the most beautiful images I have ever seen have been in a videogame. The rippling water effects in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, any cutscene in Fable 2 or Fallout 3. Even the more gruesome aspects of gaming are done in a delightfully beautiful manner. Well I think so at least. All those people out there who say that videogames cause violent behaviour are either stupid or have never played a videogame. If videogames dictated behaviour then I would be running around in a suit of armour, hitting things with a sword or gun or some description of magical spell… and that really doesn’t sound like something I do. It would be fun though. If I wasn’t doing that I would be swallowing mushrooms, jumping down pips screaming “WAHOO!” neither of those things happen. C’mon people. Videogames give us an escape, not a way to further our idiocy in the real world. If I could I would live in a virtual world. As long as I got to choose, I definitely wouldn’t choose the Fallout universe, no chance. BUT! My virtual world would have a reset button and cheat codes something I could chose to implement if I saw fit, but if I did that I wouldn’t get the achievements so not worth it all

Fable 2 - Choices, Choices

Not only will I be reviewing and previewing games, I will try to keep you up to date with the games I am playing. At the moment, it is Fable 2.

I know it’s quite an old game now, 2008 it was released in, but I was lucky enough to get a shot of the Game of the Year edition, complete with the DLC for Knothole Island and See the Future. Good times all round.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Fable series, Fable is a third person RPG (role playing game) mixed with some awesome puzzles, a great story of revenge and betrayal, some spells, an astounding variety of weaponry and hitting things a lot with your sword. Swords are good for hitting.

Every choice you make in Fable has consequences and rewards. If you behave as an upstanding citizen, Albion will flourish and you will look regal and majestic. So will your canine companion, but if, like me, you decide to play for the evil team you’re forehead will sprout horns and you will strike fear into the hearts of the people around you and your dog will look pretty damn ferocious. Use a lot of “Will” (which is the magic in Fable) and blue lines of energy will ripple across your body, level up your “Skill” (which is the shooting abilities) and you will grow tall and lithe, concentrate in Strength and you will look like a tank and can even kill people with a single slap emote, sounds good eh?

I have been playing Fable 2 on and off for about 2 weeks now, and without giving anything away, because there may be people out there who haven’t played it yet… for shame. It gets very good, very quick. The difficulty slopes nicely, it doesn’t get too hard before you can upgrade your weapons, which is always a good thing.

Fable 2 is based in being able to make choices to either benefit or detriment people. You can even buy a house and have a kid with your wife. But then there is the inverse, you can buy a house and fill it with people and have sex with them all (on the 360 that will get you The Swinger achievement and a tasty 10Gamerscore.) You can kill anyone in Albion, even your wife, but if you kill your wife your kid will get taken away from you. I put a bullet in my wife’s back last night then invited two women back to my crib in Bowerstone Market. Fun times all round. The women of Bowerstone didn’t even seem to care about the corpse of my wife in the bedroom… freaky femmes in Bowerstone.

More information as it comes in; I will do a full review when I complete it. There is a lot more I haven’t covered but… I will.

SSFVI - Why You Should Care

I know that some of you are already rolling those eyes of yours but you can stop right there, SSFIV is more than a repackage of the original with some new characters (10 to be precise but we will get to them later.)

Along with these new characters there are new game modes, a second ultimate combo and (not having played it) I think that the awesome barrel and car breaking has come back, but I will be able to tell you that for fact after I have actually played it.

Now, if you don’t know who the new characters are by now, and if you have a 360 with live, then you should as there has been an abundance of videos saying who they are. But for those of you who are XBL challenged, I will fill you in.

T-Hawk, Dee-Jay, Juri, Dudley, Ibuki, Cody, Adon, Guy and Hakan are the names of the new characters. If you are versed in Street Fighter, you will recognize more than a couple of those names, as some of them appeared in Street Fighter III and Final Fight

Hakan and Juri are the two completely new characters so I will tell you more about them

Juri: is a young South Korean female Taekwondo fighter. Juri has an energy-boosting device implanted inside her left eye called the "Feng Shui Engine", which provides her with time-warping abilities.

Hakan: is a Turkish oil wrestler who seeks to prove that Turkish oil wrestling is the greatest fighting style on earth.

See that… not just are there new characters (always a bonus) but some sexy new game modes. I’m also under good authority that the on-line features have been greatly beefed up. Introducing a new online lobby and a sexy new replay… thing. Yeah, I’m calling this game sexy a lot but, dude, its Street Fighter… So… It’s sexy.

HADOUKEN!