I'll sort out some pics of the Navy Boat, Car shows and the saved turntable, gimme a while.
I’ve just realised that the mouse that died on me was a Logitech G500, not a G5 as I thought, I still have my pair of G5’s, Mk I & Mk II, in use on my main machine and on the Socket A/Win 98 computer. Oh well.
Life is a minestrone, here’s a regular dish of mine, soup made with fresh ingredients, almost a meal in itself, I often make food like this as for me it’s easy to consume with my eating difficulties and it be chock full of goodness. It also tastes pretty good.
The Steam games sale, as usual I spent too much but here’s a summary. Mucks posted a link to some cheap games so I bought five for just under £4. Two were ok so I guess that kinda works out at £2 each which, all things considered, is pretty good value. They were:
Capsized - £1.19
Rock Of Ages - £1.39
Adventures Of Shuggy - £0.39p
Defy Gravity Extended - £0.18p
Marlow Briggs and the Mask Of Death - £0.79p
By far the best of those is Marlow Briggs and it only cost 79p, in fact it’s the only one I’ve really enjoyed playing so far. It’s old school, corny, the game engine is not the best ever invented, but it kept my attention and is quite good fun.
Capsized is also pretty good, I played some late in the evening and it showed promise, I shall return to this in a less tired and more sober moment.
The other three, imo, are a complete waste of time, all rubbish.
Adventures of Shuggy is difficult and frustrating as hell, the game engine isn’t very good and using the Microsoft Controller to play, the character always seems to overshoot your intended target. I gave it 30 minutes and consigned it to ‘mistake’.
Rock Of Ages is awful, difficult to control and the MS Controller wouldn’t work with it. And even if it did work well it’s basically a tarted up game of skittles. Not for me.
Defy Gravity Extended might have been pretty good in 1996 or in the days of the BBC B Microcomputer but on a 2014 computer it’s pretty much a pile of old tosh. Ignore.
So, that’s the cheap games. I noticed Wolfenstein: The New Order had been reduced from £34.99 in the Steam sale to £23.44 but on a whim I checked the price of the game on Amazon and they were selling a hard copy for £20.20 inc free delivery so I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived two days later. Came on 4 DVD’s, took around 90 minutes to install, the disks loaded 73% and Steam loaded the remainder.
I’ve played 8 hours so far and I have to say this is the best game I’ve played for about 3 years – it’s brilliant. There are five difficulty levels and I’ve been playing on the middle level which is ‘Normal’. There have been a few hard moments, particularly the arrival of two big robots that you have to battle together, that was quite hard, but so far I’ve managed.
But, if you do get stuck or frustrated, you can chop and change difficulty level throughout the game as you see fit, which is pretty good. The auto-save is fair but I wish they could have provided the ability to save whenever you like. I’d recommend this game.
And, this isn’t a spoiler, but so far in the game I’ve had one instance where you go back to the original 3D Escape From Castle Wolfenstein, the pre-Doom game, and they have re-created it perfectly complete with cheesy midi music, that was really good. You can enter this level if you come across a bed and it says ‘Nightmare’ but once you die, that’s it, you can’t re-enter, and presumably you have to find another link to have another go.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengenance - £9.99 Well, I’m glad I didn’t pay the full £30 for this one. It’s ok, and worth buying cheap, but it’s more cut scene than action and the combat is largely button mashing on the controller and hoping for the best, if you’’ve played any of these Japanese offerings before – such as Bayonetta on the Xbox 360 – you’ll know what I mean.
Still, I do return to it, which must mean it’s enjoyable. I’ve often wondered why these Japanese game-makers have their in-game characters as some weird multi-racial cross between Superman and your regular Japanese male citizen. I have never seen a real Japanese fella look anything vaguely like these computer game heroes, they all look like Mr Universe USA with a vague hint of coming from the land of the rising sun. Weird.
Final Fantasy VIII - £3.39. Not played it yet.
Batman Arkham Origins - £5.74. Not played it yet.
Resident Evil: Revelations - £7.49. Not played it yet
Amnesia A Machine For Pigs - £3.37 Not played it yet
Faery: Legends Of Avalon - £5.24. This is an absolute bunch of crap, really awful. The game engine is rubbish, the graphics are rubbish, the voice acting is rubbish, in fact it’s all rubbish. It may have impressed slightly in 1997 but not now. Do not waste your money.
Lego Movie The Videogame - £5.74. Haven’t played it yet but I’m very fond of all the Lego games, great puzzles, entertaining, not too taxing and with a sense of humour. Good to relax to.
Skullgirls plus 2 x DLC - £4.97. Another take on Mortal Kombat. Not bad, not bad, quite difficult but I haven’t played it on the easiest setting yet. If you see it going for £3 or less without the DLC and you like Kombat games then buy it. Works well with MS Controller.
And finally, I saw Call Of Duty Ghosts in an 8 hour flash sale half price for £20 so I bought it. I’m only going to play the single player campaign so I figured twenty quid was worth it. I won’t be playing multiplayer as I don’t think it’s worth playing any CoD MP unless you have all the extra maps and that means purchasing the ‘DLC’ and I wouldn’t mind betting the available ‘DLC’ costs more than I paid for the basic game, so screw ‘em.
So, there we are, highs and lows and some good stuff (I hope) to look forward to trying and playing. Of course I spent far too much but I don’t go out so much these days, I’m not running a car any more and penny for penny, computer gaming is a a lot cheaper form of entertainment than visiting pubs, cinemas, music venues or your local magistrates court
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