I can hardly wait. It would be an absolute injustice to have this game on the Wii (sorry mate!) and miss out on the HD lushness. I’m almost salivating at the prospect.
In the mean time I really need to get on with finishing TR Anniversary. I know the levels so well but between work, a family wedding 200 miles away and a boyfriend, it’s turning into a labour of love.
A HQ version of the trailer can be found here plus a vid of the gameplay. Enjoy.
New Lara Croft: Image borrowed from new Lara's publicity shots.
Since I can’t post videos from the Beeb on here, take a look.
I’m totally jealous.
I don’t quite understand why they didn’t call me first, seeing that I’m not tall enough, would require a boob job, have the wrong colour hair/eyes and I’m not a professional gymnast. Plus I just don’t have a kind of angsty yet smouldering look going on.
I can dream, and I’m still planning on being Lara at Christmas. Every year to promote our Christmas sale, all of the staff in the store where I work, dress up in fancy dress. I’ve had my outfit picked out since last year when I was a miserable git and didn’t take part.
I’ve been waiting with some anticipation for the new game to come out, Underworld. Fingers crossed it’s not going to be another Angel of Darkness, I never really knew what to make of that game. The 21st of November will be highlighted in my diary.
All we need now is a new SSX for the Xbox and I will be a happy bunny.
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EDIT: in addition, I can also add another injury to my list from last weeks’ post. I managed to whip myself across the face with the nunchuck wire this evening while attacking some guy with a katana during Redsteel. I think that the other guy came off worse, but I can’t be sure, my Redsteel skills are quite poor.
….except a big thank you to all the people who have visited my blog over the past few days.
I wasn’t really expecting the have any visitors at all so I’m really made up to have any at all 
I have to say, it was a bit of a shock when I realised that I couldn’t put all the hits down to either myself or to people who I know. Really am made up tonight.
Thank you x
EDIT: since I have nothing constructive to add today, take a look at some upcoming Wii titles. My Wii and I are very excited as of now. Boo sucks to the people who think that there are no decent titles for the Wii, pull the [insert console name here] fanboy/girl butt plug out of your arse and take a look.
I remember back when the Wii was first launched, there were a whole load of articles that appeared online telling stories of Wii related injuries. I seem to remember that the wrist straps on the first Wiimotes weren’t always that firmly attached, so during vigorous gameplay the Wiimote might fly out of a persons’ hand and accidentally hit a bystander. Alternatively, there’s a lot of muscles that you could possibly pull, joints (particularly knees) that you could twist, repetative strain injuries and those lovely tension headaches that come about as a result of sheer frustration.
Gaming injuries aren’t anything new. We just seem to have developed whole new ways of injuring ourselves with this more physical form of gaming. In the past, hardcore gamers may have become the victim of repetative strain injuries in the wrists and hands. I remember an episode of the Simpsons where Bart asks Groundskeeper Willie why his hands are all clawed up, he replies ‘Space Invaders of 198?’ Granted I think Willie thought he actually been fighting some real aliens rather than an arcade game, but you see my point.
It’s easy in our health and safety obsessed world [for some people] to worry about gaming related injuries.
This is the H&S obsessed world that required me to take ‘ladder training’ before using a ladder at my previous job. Since we as people always find new ways to injure ourselves with the most innocuous objects (9 tights and stockings related injuries per year in the UK according to RoSPA) I don’t think that we should really worry too much about gaming related injuries. We’re probably just as likely to injure ourselves putting on our pants in the morning as we are playing on a Wii.
My own gaming related injuries, while they may be varied, they really are typical. For example:
My point really is that as gamers, we really should expect to be injured for our art. It’s nothing new, and it is kinda funny seeing who can come up with the most outrageous gaming related injuries. Always strive to be the weirdest and get to number one on Digg. My mum is desperate to get hold of Wii Fit, my gamer senses are tingling and saying that maybe it’s not such a good idea. She doesn’t really understand that the injuries are all a part of the experience.
Maybe it’s just the ramblings of a lunatic, but I like my war wounds and the sagas [definition: any narrative or legend of heroic exploits] that come with them.
Normal service will be resumed soon, suffering from a major amount of melancholy at the moment. Reviews for Red Steel and Tomb Raider Anniversary (both on the Wii) are in the pipeline. Plus the day when I can get my Xbox 360 is drawing ever closer, so there’s some stuff to look forward to. Just need to get a few things off my chest.
I talked briefly in this post about the influence that my Ex had on me as a gamer. Lol, frankly it wasn’t a very good one. He hijacked my PS2 and my Wii, with his crappy games, Wii Miis and high scores respectively. Plus, towards the end of the relationship, he favoured playing games (or looking at clothes on ebay) over spending time with me. Which is completely soul destroying to be honest, you do begin to question your value as a person when The Da Vinci Code becomes more interesting than you. Honey, it was cheap for a reason!
Even after I’d managed to find and get rid of the entire legacy of his gaming (plus all of his things, photos, letters, cards, my engagement ring, even my car is going as it was the scene of a not so nice incident a month before the split), I realised that the memories of what we had were still all over the Internet.
Ok, so I could go through and delete my blogs, I could block his e-mails, IMs, I could change my usernames, password protect entries, filter him out. But he’ll always still be there.
And he has every right to be, in the same way that I do. But it doesn’t make me feel anymore comfortable; everything that we had in the past and everything that you might have as individuals in the future recorded forever. It’s not really something that you think about when you start a relationship, maybe it is something that we should think about.
I made the mistake of googling him a few weeks ago, dumbass always uses the same username for everything (probably uses the same password too, lol). Predictably, up came a new blog of his, some message board stuff, a porn subscription and his old LiveJournal. I know that I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s a morbid fascination of mine, I think that I must like torturing myself sometimes.
Has he met somebody new? Has he suffered in the same way that I’ve suffered? Is he haunted by the memories of things that he did to him? Does he suffer with the flashbacks?
I hate how he’s made me feel about the ‘net. It once felt so big, full of information, possibilities, now it feels so small and I’m hiding in the corner; another new blog, new username, new e-mail address. Search for me, as a person, in Google and nothing comes up. Search my commonly used usernames, nothing. Personal e-mail, nothing.
I’ve made ‘me’ untraceable, why can’t he do the same?
After some months of procrastinating, weighing up the pros and cons and generally thinking very hard, I decided to sign up to Digg. It seems like a decision that wouldn’t require much thought, but considering my track record for any site that requires any degree of social networking (read: people liking you or what you say) it’s not surprising that I was apprehensive.
There was a My Kinda Place incident of 2001.
I’d watched the message board for ages, seeing who were the popular members and who I was best to avoid. Lol, those groups were generally one and the same to be honest. I joined up, posted when I could think of something to add and for some reason became a target for online bullying. Insults and the like thrown at me because the popular members didn’t agree with some of my opinions. I was still young, it kinda put me off online communication.
Then there was the LiveJournal incident.
My ex and I had a joint journal on LJ, where we’d post whatever dumb internet stuff we could find plus funny stuff that we had written ourselves. We wrote something humorous about where I live and were met again with insults and comments about how we should appreciate what we have. On the plus side, we had readers, on the the negative side, they didn’t like what we were writing.
I’ve lost count of the number of blogs I’ve had, just down to two now, but I’ve always been aware of the potential for people to dislike me online. I started off idealistic, if people find me difficult in real life, I don’t have to be the same person online, there is a place for everybody. But even online, there seems to be a popularity contest, something that you can’t win by being nice, genuine and happy. On a lot of sites, you get to be liked by being mean, opinionated and spiteful.
It seems like a lot of people like me create alternative online personas, where they feel that they can say anything to other people. They can say any manner of horrible things that they wouldn’t say to a persons’ face, but it’s ok, they have their online persona to hide behind. They’re an anonymous username.
For my day job, I work in a department store. It’s quite amazing how badly customers will treat you from day to day, because you are stood on the opposite side of the counter, taking their money. They will belittle you, question your intelligence, treat you like a servant, swear at you, the list goes on. They’ve learned to dehumanise you just because you wear a uniform and a company name badge. It sucks, seriously. I’ve had it all this weekend, plus a formal complaint because I couldn’t comply with a customer’s request that was against store policy. That totally makes me want to go to work next week!
And tonight I come home to…
Being dugg down 
I’m not naive, I know that everyone can’t be liked all the time. But I’m a nice, somewhat sensitive person, so can people please learn some netiquette?
SSX Blur cover feat. Mac
After much delaying, today is the day when I finally take a good look at SSX Blur.
To me, SSX Blur was always going to have two potential problems:
I’m a long time fan of the SSX series, ever since I played one level from a free demo disc years ago, I’ve been completely hooked. To me, the game has always stepped into territories that other games just haven’t.
After the initial success of the SSX Snowboard Supercross game, EA produced SSX Tricky, which was my favourite game for such a long time! Some famous faces were recruited to voice some of the characters, for example, Lucy Liu (Elise) and Billy Zane (Brody). To me, this made the game much more engaging; you could always find a character that you liked. Plus you could throw some even cooler tricks on the slopes than in SSX.
Then came SSX 3, which is officially my favourite PS2 game of all time, period. EA gave this game a killer soundtrack with songs from a really diverse group of artists; everything from Basement Jaxx and Goldfrapp to the Black Eyed Peas and N*E*R*D. Most of the songs are still on my iPod right now, lol. Then came SSX on Tour, which I thought was the weakest title. For the soundtrack EA just tried too hard and the music had become too niche. Plus, despite being a more than competent player, I just couldn’t get into the medals on most events wich really sucked the fun out of the game for me. Consequently, I only ended up playing it a few times
And then came SSX Blur, the first SSX game on the Wii platform.
Blur takes the best level and game play aspects from SSX3 and On Tour and combines them into one game. Big Mountain makes a welcome return with its three playable peaks, as well as a whole host of tracks from both of the games. Plus Radio Big is back, but without the killer soundtrack of songs by well known artists. Can’t have everything I guess, I love listening to DJ Atomica though. Crush maybe? Lol.
It follows the On Tour framework of building up your chosen riders’ rep and moving up places on the leaderboard by taking part in events and tournaments. More points means more available tournaments, boards and characters. As well as the usual race, slopestyle and big air events, there is a new slalom event which had me practically tearing my hair out with frustration.
I won’t lie, the control system can be weird.
As someone who is used to button bashing to perform moves, I found the transition from finger movement to whole hand movement difficult to pick up. Flips, spins and uber trips are performed by the Wiimote; tilt, swing or draw a shape respectively. Grabs, jumps and steering are performed by the nunchuck; z tilt, flick up and stick/tilt respectively. It all sounds so simple until you try the tutorial, and then you wonder if you’ll ever be able to do it. Just have some commitment and give it a go, you will get used to it. I still find uber tricks pretty impossible but it seems that you can make it through the game without doing any of them.
The graphics are a step back from SSX3, which probably could be expected from the Wii. The characters are less real and more exaggerated in a cartoony way. In some cases, the characters look nothing like they did in their first outing. JP has changed from being a hot, blond Frenchman, to being a slightly strange looking guy with some weird facial hair (I think he’s still supposed to be French though).
I do miss the realism of the environment from previous games, the famous voices, the killer soundtrack, the attractive characters etc. But at the end of the day, I must confess that once I’d worked out the controls for the game, I couldn’t turn off the console until it was finished. The whole competitive aspect brought out my competitive side and I was determined to be number 1 with all gold medals (which I achieved after a number of hours that I daren’t think about). I am kind of crossing my fingers for an SSX for the Xbox, with its HD capabilities SSX could look so good.
So please EA, produce a version of SSX for the Xbox 360 with graphics good enough to eat, a fantastic soundtrack and some of the normal looking characters we know and love. Love you forever? x
Is this the face of hardcore gaming? No, it's the Master Chief! He's more like the poster child of hardcore gaming.
I was going to take a look a SSX Blur tonight, but my body is under siege from that monthly annoyance.
And it’s still under siege, so I will get to back to that ASAP. Plus tonight, I had the choice to either a) watch War of the Worlds or b) hit the laptop for some blogging. I like sci-fi but I’m a bit sick of disaster movies so blogging won (well blogging and TopGear followed by Long Way Round )
So I was on digg.com the other day, as I am most of the time despite not being a member. I’m just too lazy to find my own news really. Anyway, I came across this article by Caryl Shaw and her crimes as hardcore gamer.
If these are the rules by which we are measured, then I am buggered as a hardcore gamer.
Seriously.
For one, I don’t do FPS games, I just don’t. I try really hard and have moments of pure brilliance (according to my other half) but that’s generally only during co-op missions. I’ve played Halo 3, Call of Duty and Army of Two, where I was killed an embarrassing 35 times during the first mission. Otherwise, I just don’t have the patience, or the skill admittedly, to get through the game. Maybe I need to get in touch with my masculine aggression, lol, and remember to use some tactics. My usual tactics are something like this:
Game plan for [insert game name here, any FPS you like with a co-op mode]
Hopefully, a few month (or years possibly) down the line, I’ll be able to give a different answer. Perhaps I’ll finally figure out that the running into the middle of a fight all guns blazing approach doesn’t always work. I really want to be able to be a part of games like Halo 3, I just can’t help it if my skills and concentration don’t live up to my desires. It’s of small consolation, but I am really good at Tomb Raider, when I’m not weeing my pants because something has just jumped out at me.
One crime that I’m only occasionally guilty of is that of not finishing a game. I do generally finish games, not just to the end, but to the 100% complete end. I like the challenge, and I’m slightly anal retentive about completing things the best that I can. I’m a perfectionist, what can I say?
As for hardcore gamer crime #3, I am a casual gamer. I think that my downloaded Wii shop titles would support that. Plus my tendency to always head for PopCap whenever I have a free moment. I am completely addicted to Zuma, despite the fact that I’ve completed the online version countless times. But it’s available on the Xbox Live Arcade…I know what I’m going to be doing when I finally sell/work enough to get my Xbox 360.
I think at the moment though, I’m still quite happy committing crimes against hardcore gaming. We can’t take everything seriously, gaming is supposed to be fun, right?
Wii console and Wiimote
I was going to take a look a SSX Blur tonight, but my body is under siege from that monthly annoyance. The thought of trying to skillfully move flail my arms around knocks me sick. Damn you excruciating stabby cramps.
Anywho, the perfect solution for this kind of staying-completely-still situation is games played with the Wii classic controller (or side on Wiimote) from the Wii Shop. When I got my Wii this time last year, to be honest, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. It became the source of much hatred when my ex became addicted to to Wii sports. Of all the games he could have ignored me for, it was this and Championship Manager 2006. Seriously, I have no respect for him now. But once I’d erased his game profiles, high scores and Wii Mii, I could claim back the Wii as my own and start exploring the possibilities.
The Wii Shop was a complete revelation to me; I could download and play games that I hadn’t seen for years. Oh the possibilites. To be honest though, after downloading a tonne of games costing me an amount of Wii points that doesn’t even bear thinking about in real money terms, I only really play Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Back in the day, my friend and I would always play Sonic 3 when we got in from school. She was always Sonic and I was always Tails. Mostly because I was crap at it and couldn’t be trusted being the principal character, but also because that way I would spend most of my time off screen 
I was perusing digg.com earlier on this evening when I came across this article. I had no idea that the storage space on a Wii is a tiny 0.5 gb. It didn’t even cross my mind that anything available today that requires storage would have a capacity so small. I can’t imagine that the downloadable games take up a huge amount of space but it does start to add up eventually. The SD card slot seemed like the perfect solution but you can’t play games from off of the card, so some moving around channels is required. Will Nintendo make games playable off an SD card or will they produce an additional hardware perhiperal for us to buy?
While they’re deciding, can they make the DS Lite support WPA-PSK2 so it can join in with my secure home network?
K? Thanx.
No More Heroes cover
My first foray into slightly more serious gaming. I use the word slightly as how serious can a person get with games on the Wii, lol. That’s a whole other post though, so anywho….
You play the role of a wannabe assassin, Travis Touchdown, and you follow his exploits in attempting to become the number one assassin in America (at least I think it’s supposed to be America). In addition, mysterious Sylvia (who works for the assassin agency) has said that she will sleep with you if you reach number one. Getting to number one isn’t so easy though, not only do you have to face 10 top assassins, you also have to pay for each fight! To do this you must take on a variety of side jobs and assassin missions. With me so far? As well as paying for fights, you can also buy a variety of extras, most of which are not vital to finishing the game.
Your weapon of choice is a beam katana, which to all intents and purposes looks like a light saber. It even makes the swooshy sounds that a light saber does. All of the weapon moves are performed by pressing the A button on the wiimote and tilting it up or down. I was a bit disappointed with this as I had imagined flinging the wiimote in different directions to perform a variety of moves. It may make you look like an idiot to anyone who happens to be watching (which would be the next door neighbours in my case), but it’s a helluva lot more fun in the long run. The developers missed a trick on that one, only the final slashing kill move is performed by moving the wiimote in the direction shown on the screen.
As you would expect, the fights get harder as you progress through the game. One of my friends remarked on starting the game that the fights were really easy. Fast forward three hours and he’s so wound up that he wants to chuck the Wii out of the window, thankfully I managed to stop him before he did that but this game can be that frustrating! During the later bouts, you can have been fighting for 15 minutes and almost defeated your opponent, when they unleash some bizarre combo/sneaky move and wipe you out in one go. Arghhh, the annoyance.
The game does stay relatively interesting, although to me it feels kind of short taking me about 10 hours to finish. During the last few fights, with the sexual tension building between Travis and Sylvia, you really just want to get the boy laid and be done with it. Although I get the feeling that something may get in the way and stop that from happening. There are some utterly bizarre twists in the storyline which will really leave you scratching your head.
Overall though, despite all the annoying little niggles, it’s an interesting play. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from hammering the A button and coming out with some spectacular combos, even if you’ve done little to control them. The Japanese anime style is interesting to look at even if the characters are a little stereotypical. Some commitment, and cash, is required to see the true ending of the game so just sit tight.
Buy it in the sale, and have some fun!
