Annual Summary (2011)

Yes! It's that time again! The new year is just a few hours away and just like last year I have decided to summarise my year in this blog post.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS OF THIS YEAR:

This year I bought a PlayStation 3 and have collected a total of 31 games for the system. Here's a list of them and which ones I have finished:

• [FINISHED] Red Dead Redemption, 
• [FINISHED] Grand Theft Auto 4,
• [FINISHED] Fallout 3,
• [FINISHED] Fallout: New Vegas,
• [FINISHED] The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,

Merry Christmas 2011!

Thankyou for your follows and views so far this year it's been great seeing my blog expand in popularity!
I got a load of novelty christmas pressies today as my actual presents are back home in cold England.

Here's a piccy of all of the games I have bought this christmas and the loot I have received...

Call of Duty sleepwear (My parents found this funny...haha)
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 04 
Various art supplies
Dead Space - PS3
Dead Space 2 - PS3
Dead Island - PS3
InFAMOUS - PS3
Bioshock 2 - PS3
Batman: Arkham Asylum  PS3
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - DS
Pokemon White - DS
Pacman graphic tee (I am wearing this whilst typing this post! Teehee!)
A ton of candy - nom nom nom!


!HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Have a good one everybody!

- Oli

Powerup #3 - Targus Lap Chill Mat

The Targus Lap Chill Mat

I bought one of these babies at Walmart today for $38. Basically what it does is blow cool air into the vents under your laptop to prevent it from overheating not nearly as fast as it should do. Seeing as my laptop overheats in literally 10 minutes this is really helpful and I can play for over an hour before my computer's processor starts to feel the burn!


You just plug it into a UBS port and 'poof!' it's on. No software installation, No startup screen, No fuss - it does exactly what it says on the box and is an excellent 'powerup' for my laptop!

Its been a massive help in speeding up and preventing lag on games I like to play online - most recently Tibia which I've just started to play. I highly recommend this accessory if you have trouble with your computers heat!







I rate the Targus Lap Chill Mat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . 9/10

Tibia MMORPG - First Impressions

Daisy at DaisyFAIL recently blogged about her adventures in an MMO called Tibia. Having never heard of this game I asked her about it and she told me more about the game. I also checked out its Wikipedia page for more info (if in doubt always run straight to Wikipedia kids!). Tibia has it's own wiki too which has walkthroughs on quests etc.

Anyway, thanks to Daisy I was persuaded to check out the site. Apparently many people used to love this MMO and it was really popular back in the 'early days'. However people abandoned it for 3D MMOs such as Runescape and World of Warcraft which are all basically the same thing. I personally am not to picky when it comes to graphics, hell Oblivion was pug-ugly but is still my favourite RPG I've ever played! Carrying on, Tibia isn't all that bad - it's 2D and the game's camera is at a slight slant. The interface looks a little dated but it's charmful and fun at the same time...

The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - First Impressions

This is practically the only DS game I can think of that I bought this year - with this year dominated by PlayStation 3 gaming - I haven't really been playing too much of Nintendo's old dual screen wonder. I bought Spirit Tracks new in Super-Target for $19.99 which I didn't think was too bad.

Having played the first in the DS Legend of Zelda series - Phantom Hourglass - which I loved playing through right to the end, I had high expectations for this sequel...

Holiday purchases!

So I'm in the states for my annual holiday again this year. I landed on Friday the 16th so I've been here 5 days already. The main reason I came here was to chill, relax, eat loads of food (especially pop-tarts) and get away from the hassle of my GCSEs. I also came here with a TON of cash... I think you can guess what for!

I've hit Gamestop 5 times so far and here's what I've picked up...

Gamingheap Review - THE ORANGE BOX: Half-Life 2 (PS3)

 Half-Life 2  (PS3)

Over this week Skyrim had gotten a little 'samey' so I decided to play The Orange Box which I kind of ditched back in August. I didn't get very far with Half-Life 2 so I picked it first out of Portal and Team Fortress 2. Here's my verdict, a review, on the game...

Half-Life 2 was released on Microsoft Windows in 2004, ported to the Xbox 360 in '06 and finally released in The Orange Box for the PlayStation 3 in '07. Half-Life 2 is a continuation of the story in Half-Life which was released in 1998 as Valve's debut product. Basically in Half-Life you play as Dr. Gordon Freeman a scientist at the 'Black Mesa' facility. A teleportation experiment goes wrong and open dimensional rifts where parasites come through and attack earth. Eventually Dr. Freeman kills the overlord at the end of the game, unknowingly widening the dimensional rifts. This leads to a trans-dimensional race called 'The Combine' to attack earth. Humanity surrenders and the Combine take over and so on. Basically in Half-Life 2 you play as Gordon Freeman fighting in the resistance against the Combine. 

My first impressions of the game weren't great. I thought the gameplay was repetitive, graphics mediocre and overall a boring game... Oh I was so wrong!

Top Soundtracks [001]: L.A. Noire - Chase 3

 TOP SOUNDTRACKS [001]:  

 L.A. NOIRE - CHASE 3 

Personally I think L.A. Noire which was released earlier on in the year has one of the best soundtracks of this years top releases. Just listening to it is great, but when your playing as Cole Phelps, the music (especially the amazingly designed chase scenes) really gets the blood running!

This piece below is one of my favourites...

Trailer Evaluation: Judge Dredd Vs. Zombies

I am a massive fan of 2000AD and Judge Dredd is by far my favourite comic book character. I've read over half of the comics as far as I know and I have played the game 'Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death' produced by Rebellion in 2003 on the PlayStation 2 and PC. Now a new game is coming to the iOS (I don't own any Apple technology unfortunately)...

4 Bad Things About The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

"WHAT!?" I hear you exclaim with several explanation marks for effect! "Skyrim rocks! There is nothing bad about it!" I hear you shout. Well let's face it Skyrim is a fantastic immersive world full of quests, dungeons, fully fleshed out NPCs and Guards that talk about arrows in their knees - BUT there are some, quite frankly, poor aspects in this game. Bare in mind this is the PS3 version and some glitches may not appear on other formats. Though they may only be the odd bug I thought I might list some things that have grinded my gears over the past few weeks...

Another day, another friend gets a blog!

So over the past 2 days, 3 of my friends have made their own blogs using Blogger! It started when my mate Doug at TheDougLog broadcasted his blog and then my 2 friends Reubzen at The World Of Reubzen and Joe at Biotripcon published their own blogs too. Reubzen, Joe and Doug are all gaming enthusiasts like myself and will post about games and other techy stuff often. Reubzen and Joe are also budding musicians so if you enjoy your music head on over to their blogs and take a look!

This post is just a little shout out to my friends' blogs. If you enjoy reading their posts then take some time to leave a comment or follow/subscribe to them!

http://www.thedouglog.blogspot.com
http://www.theworldofreubzen.blogspot.com
http://www.biotripcon.blogspot.com

The Frustration of Easy Video Games - The World of Reubzen

A friend of mine recently made a very interesting post on his new blog 'The World of Reubzen'. He mentioned that video games back in the 80's on consoles such as the NES were extremely challenging (I know this because I have played games such as Contra and Castlevania on emulators) and how that completing a difficult game back then was a real achievement worthy of boasting in front of your friends. Reubzen goes on to say that big names in this day and age such as Call of Duty and other popular FPSs are dominating the market, not because of the gameplay however, it's literally just because it's another Call of Duty game and people are just being suckered into buying them because of they happen to have some improved graphics.

I agree with Reubzen here, how that games like Call of Duty can be completed in an afternoon without much difficulty at all. Check out Reubzen's blog and follow him at http://www.theworldofreubzen.blogspot.com/!

Gamingheap Special: SKYRIM - Part 3

 Gamingheap Special: SKYRIM 

Part 3

*** THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS! ***

Oops! I got kinda carried away with Skyrim and haven't done a post in 2 weeks! Oh well, now I get to tell you all about my little adventures, teehee!

Basically a lot has happened! I scraped together every last piece of jewellery and all the potions I knew I wasn't going to use from my Whiterun house and managed to bring in just over 25k to buy a house in Solitude. But before I could buy the house I had to do a quest for the Jarl's steward. I had to investigate some place called 'Wolfskull Cave' where people had gone missing and strange lights could be seen at night. Exciting I know!... Anyway I head on in and I am confronted by several skeletons with swords... I proceeded to introduce arrows to their skulls and moved on through the cave. It was pretty small if I remember rightly and I soon found myself discovering what the mystery was! After slaying some draugr (Zombie nords) I saw a massive blue light circling the inner cave which was dotted with strange stone towers. It turned out to be some necromancers summoning 'The Wolf Queen'. Long story shortened I threw them off the top of the tower, grabbed some loot from a boss chest nearby and got my ass out of there.