Gamestop Apologise

Recently Gamestop have been in the news due to the fact they were taking out coupons for a streamed version of Deus Ex on Onlive, which seem to have got a little more publicity than they would have with the coupons alone. Shortly after this they pulled the game and stopped selling it all together. Now they have officially apologised and are offering a free $50 GameStop gift card and a Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-owned purchase. All you need to do is take in the apologetic email and your store receipt to your nearest GameStop and they will give you your bribe. I kinda wished I ordered the game from GameStop to get these free coupons actually. It's good to see them at least attempting to make up for there shady business.

Razers Big Announcement

I know I'm a bit late writing about this as it was announced 2 days ago but I've just got back from 3 days away from home. So I haven't had the time or the internet to do so. Anyway Razer put up a interesting website under the name of PC Gaming Is Not Dead this was quite intriguing and it seems they have released a high end gaming laptop called the Blade. It does really look pretty good spec wise which can be found here. What is pretty cool is the interactive touchpad to the right of the keyboard. The buttons and display on it change depending on which game you have running, which is a nice touch. Hopefully there will be a decent amount of games compatible with it on release. With games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft I can see it being quite handy, maybe with games like Counter Strike for buying things at the start of rounds aswell, I'm not really sure what else in game it could be used for. Again it is a pretty awesome looking gaming laptop, the price on release later this year is said to be $2,799. For that kind of money you could build a much better desktop and still have some cash left over. Is it worth nearly 3 grand... I dunno I wouldn't buy it, but I am happy enough to sit in the house and game, I don't have a need for portable gaming. Unless you do to would you really want to throw away 3 grand. Don't get me wrong this isn't a dig at Razer and this product, it is looking like a fantastic piece of tech and they obviously have enough of a market for it otherwise they wouldn't invest in making it. But it's gaming laptops (be it from Razer, Alienware or wherever), they really aren't my thing. If I had plenty of disposable income I probably would think about buying one, but until the price goes down there is no chance in hell i will even consider one tbh.

Cross platform gaming with Steam for CS:GO

As we all know Valve are bringing out a new version of Counter Strike under the name Global Offensive. There is now use of cross platform being implimented between Playstation and PC, with Xbox hopefully joining suit in the near future. The PS version of CS:GO will have keyboard and mouse support, along with Playstation move (although I'm not sure how good/accurate this feature will be but fair play to Valve for using peripheral devices available to them) and of course Dual Shock Controllers, so you can play on PS however you choose.

For years there have been debates over which is better consoles or pcs. Now with Valve implimenting this we will be able to find out. While keyboard and mouse are obviously more accurate than controllers, I do think there will be some guys on PS that will give PC gamers a run for there money. Hopefully Valve can work things out with Microsoft and have Steam over on Xbox as well and we will have fully cross platform compatibility. So you can play against your buddies no matter what platform you happen to play and prefer. I do hope this is a sign of things to come and that we see more cross platform games in the future. Microsoft could (and should of IMO) have started cross platform play with GFWL and XBL. All they had to do really was put in keyboard and mouse support for Xbox, so they at least have the choice of having the same as PC guys, and just chuck a few ports of Xbox games over to Windows. While they did start porting over with the likes of Gears of War, and the first two Halos, which were all (apart from the original Halo I reckon anyway) were quite poor ports of the original Xbox games.  Hopefully Valve and MS will work something out as this would be great to see more games playable with people across all three platforms. We shall see soon enough.

I can see a lot of die hard PC gamers complaining about Valve branching out. I applaude them for forming this bridge between gamers. This imo is the first step to creating a bigger, better and greater gaming community for everyone. A chance for Xbox gamers to play with friends that only have a Playstation or PC and vice versa. And for Valve to be doing this is amazing as they do have great PR and actually listen to what customers want (except hiding away a certain Freeman but that's a completely different story. But everyone knows Valve uses Valve Time and gets things done when they get it done). I can see this making us a little more competitive and can prove once and for all who is better, Consolers or PC gamers.

GameStop takes out Deus Ex coupons from Retail Copies

Retail PC copies of the new Deus Ex game apparently along side having a physical disc of the game also got a coupon for the game to use at Onlive (a service I haven't used but do think is a hell of an idea, cloud gaming, even if you have a shitty computer you can still play the latest games so long as you have a decent internet connection).

Apparently the higher ups at Game Stop have been telling employees to remove the added version of the game. Whether this is happening at every Game Stop we don't know, we don't know why they are doing this as of yet, hopefully we'll get an update on the situation soon enough. It does seem a strange move though, I think it may just be a bit of a dick move hoping they will get more people downloading from Impulse (gamestops DD service), while Impulse and Onlive aren't exactly the same thing they are quite similar and I would say on the same level, no where near up to Steam level but still do okay for themselves. That's pure speculation though though is quite possible as Game Stop have been known to do shady things in the past. Neither Onlive or Square Enix (who made a deal from the coupons to be there) have made a comment on the matter. It all seems a bit shady to me to be honest.

There has been user comments on articles about this defending GameStop saying it's okay they are just reducing competition. Or that it's a low move by Onlive to have coupons for there service selling at game stop. To these type of comments, I say bullshit. Yes removing the vouchers would be reducing competition, does that make it okay? Hell no it doesn't, especially when they remove it, rewrap the code and still sell it as new and don't mention the voucher has been removed. If the game has been opened between Square Enix shipping them off and me buying the game, it's is technically used, maybe not the disc. But the customer should be the first person to open it, whether or not this is illegal, I don't know but it is a dick move by them. As for the Onlive shouldn't be  promoting there system through someone elses. Again bullshit, the fact of the matter is there is a voucher in every PC retail copy so they are not trying to have a go at GameStop and Impulse they are merely doing what companies do and trying to widen there customer market.  GameStop is in the wrong here, if you disagree frankly you are wrong. Onlive did nothing wrong except promoting there company. They made a deal with a games developer. These things happen and they always will. By the logic of stopping competition they shouldn't sell the likes of Battlefield 3 as it needs Origin, making the need to buy from Gamestop or download from impulse unnecessary, we can't have any competition trying to better themselves now can we. Anyway I'm going to end my rant here.

Happy Birthday Team Fortress.

So Team Fortress turns 15 today. For the next 24 hours, if you play TF2 you will get a free party hat (more hats yay...), A free noisemaker (which will probably be annoying as hell) that have unlimited uses on TF's birthday and can only be used each year on that day! Free cake and gifts (in the form of remodeled health kits and ammo packs)!

You will also see some birthday items of previous years including: a TF birthday beach ball and the Celebration Gib, which causes gibbed players to explode in a shower of balloons and confetti (which sounds pretty cool)

I never have been about for any of Team Fortress's birthdays so I think I may go for a couple games of 2fort and get my free hat. Also I haven't played any TF for a week or 3 so it's a good enough excuse.

Ubisofts DRM so successful it's getting removed

Everyone knows about Ubisofts constant online DRM and the majority hate it with a passion. They recently called it a success, as it apparently reduced piracy figures. Or it could be do to the amount of people boycotting the company due to this system whose to say. Anyway with the recent release of a wee little game called 'From Dust' which was apparently not going to have this 'successful' DRM implimented, but ended up having it anyway, thus pissing even more people off. They have now decided this was a bad idea and are now removing it according to a post on their forum. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and they will start using DRM people have accepted with the likes of Steamworks or GFWL (I know alot of people hate it but I want more gamer points dammit).

Pre Ordering Borderlands 2, months in advance.

You can now pre order Borderlands 2 right now from Amazon and Gamestop according to the Borderlands 2 website. That's right in a time of global skintness you can waste 50 bucks, 60 if you go for a console copy (I cba to go google how much it is in GBP) on a game you won't be seeing until mid to late next year. $50 that could be spent on one of the many new and frankly awesome looking games that seem to be on the horizon, such as Rage, Deus Ex, Dead Island and other such titles I can't really think of off the top of my head but I know there is a few coming soon. I know I won't be pre ordering any time soon.

PC Gaming Is Not Dead

PC Gaming is not dead and to prove it Razer have something something up there sleeve, what it is I don't know but keep the 26th of August in your date book. The website they put up is just a loop of a computerised voice with very vague details on what this is about. Maximum PC think it may be related to the Razer Switchblade. Kbmod has a couple of theories aswell. I also noticed it is the same date as a PC release of the new 'Deus Ex' game on Steam so may have something to do with that (although that is the Euro release date, so I dunno). This has got me intrigued and I will be keeping an eye to see what the hell this is about. It's good to see more people defending the PC side of gaming rather than shunning it because consoles will make them more money *cough* Epic *cough*

Epic still shunning PC.

Gears of War 3 is never going to be released on PC, not too much of a surprise but still a little disappointing

Mike Capps told Bit-Gamer at Gamescon 'It's a decision to focus on the market majority'.

'It was a choice. In that amount of time we could have done one big Xbox 360 update for Gears of War 3, or we could have made a PC port. It was a matter of priorities.'

I disagree somewhat with this being a PC gamer. There are alot of guys who game on PC that would love Gears to be ported. Gears could of done well on PC if first off the did a decent port of the original game and if it didn't use GFWL (I don't mind it but it puts alot of people off, but I'll not get into that rant now). It could do well on PC if they made good ports of the game and if we didn't have to wait ages after the console release.

So yeah, it seems they are in it for a quick buck, which is fair enough they are running a business after all. But it would make sense to widen the market especially as it was PC gamers that got them to where they are today. Now they are big, they don't seem to care. It's almost a middle finger to the guys that made them. Yeah so PC gamers don't matter anymore because Xbox will make more money. The last decent PC game they made was probably UT 2k4. It wouldn't be that bad if it was because a PC port would be interferring with a new game they are working on. But no its because we can patch the Xbox version. I actually want to play the likes of Gears but as I don't have an Xbox and won't be able to afford one in the foreseeable future, I can't. So thank you Epic, thank you so much.

Battlefield is picking on Call of Duty

So EA has been trash talking about the Call of Duty predicting the game will collapse in 2-3 years and saying they hope CoD will rot from the core. (which probably has been taken out of context). Anyway the CoD guys don't seem to happy about this. I agree with this to a certain extent, from what I got from these comments is that EA is being a bit of a twat. Friendly competition is fine and good for businesses and should push them to be better, look at ATI (sorry AMD) and Nvidia they constantly are trying to out do each other. But they seem to be wishing failure on the Activision product.

At the end of the day Call of Duty isn't all that bad of a game, more than likely why it is been about for like 8 years now. It's one of those games that doesn't take long to get used to, one you can just pick up and play. It is a game for the casual masses I would say. That's right I said it's a casual game, and it is. It is a casual shooter, (granted it does have a competitive side with MLG and all that kinda shibbang), my point being it's one of those games you can kill half an hour before going down the pub or whatever else you may have planned. It is alot easier to get into than say Battlefield. I am talking of my experience of Bad Company 2 here, that game took me ages to get into the multiplayer. Battlefield is a more technical, more realistic game, it's got alot more to it than you just foot soldiering around like CoD, which is why alot of people say BF is a better game than CoD. I can see the reasoning behind that but it's all preference isn't it.

One thing that does annoy me is the amount of flaming and trash talking between gamers, it's not like it used to be alot of it is purely insults and nothing else. Banter is one thing but being a dick is another. You then get all the people who say CoD is killing creativity etc in the industry. Why do they make yearly releases of a game? First off because people buy them, just like they have done with many other, damn near every sport game you can think of, if sports games can throw out a new game every year only with a few minor tweaks why can't other games. And it's not like Cod is the only military shooter out there if you dont like it you have, Battlefield, Red Orchestra, Homefront, ARMA, Americas Army and Ghost Recon to name a few, all of which are good games in there own right. I frankly am sick of seeing reviews of new shooters coming out pretty much saying its not CoD so it must suck. Homefront is an especially good case for this. Yes it had some technical difficulties with the multiplayer on release, (because that never happens with more well known franchises does it now. I do love sarcasm). The game it self was quite good. A slightly futuristic military shooter with a decent story (albeit a bit short). But until the ending of the game I thoroughly enjoyed it and do hope they make another Homefront game. Hopefully they will learn from the mistakes of the first game and improve on it if/when they do make a sequel. The game was decent but because everyone compared it to Call of Duty, it kinda flopped on the review side of things making people not want to play it. I bought it purely because of these reviews, if someone says a game is crap I will purposely go out and find some good in it.

Anyway back to my original point: EA are being a dick, like I said before competition and banter is fine being a bonafide twat isn't.

The Gaben Speaks

So Valve make an appearence at Gamescon with there million dollar DOTA2 tournament. While there still seems no news about the where abouts of Mr Freeman. They still have alot going on, with a new Counter Strike on the way Dota 2 pretty much ready for release and there battle with EA, and the whole Origin matter.  Anyway this post is more just to put up the video of Gabe Newell's interview with the guys at CVG.

Pre Purchase The Baconing

The Baconing is now available to pre purchase on steam. Which I think I will be doing very shortly. It comes with 12 Steam Achievements and has a 20% discount for the time being making it £7.99. It will be £9.99 once the discount has gone. More than likely after its released. Anyway buy it. Buy it now... or at least when it comes out. Monsieur Deathspank needs your money to vanquish evil? Did you buy that? I'm gonna say you did.

First thought of Bastion

This game has been out for awhile on XBLA, but has just been released on PC. I ended up giving it a download after seeing a number of reviews and gameplay videos. From the videos alone it looked like a decent little indie game. I have now played though a good couple hours making notes as I went so this post will actually have some form to it instead of the usual rambling on.

First off I have been playing with an Xbox controller, which is probably more suited to the game given that it's an Xbox game in essence, the controls for the controller are very easy to get used to. I did have a quick shot with the Keyboard and Mouse setup. They went with a basic WASD layout, was easy enough to pick up, aiming was more accurate, but over all I would probably say use a controller for this game.

You start of in bed, staying there until you move which makes you get up. Out of nowhere you hear a voice, this is you the player not the character. This is turns out to be the story being told overhead. The guy that voices it sounds pretty cool aswell. Anyway so there you are next to your bed and the platform you stand on is floating, little weird I know. A little bit more weird is there doesn't seem to be a way out, it's just a floating platform. So you move around and all of a sudden a path starts to appear infront of you. This is well implimented throughout the game, there seems to be no path until you get closer to it. I guess it is same kind of deal as the fog in games like command and conquer you can not see what is there until you get closer. It is a cool little feature. The enviroment on the most part is destructable, if there is something in your way you can destroy it 9 times out of 10.

The first level, is essentially a tutorial but they still fit it nicely in with the storyline. You get a number of weapons in this first level including a giant hammer, a gun and a bow and arrow towards the end. You fight though mobs of enemies and pick up items, the most important of which being a 'Core'. You eventually get towards the end of the first level and hop on a hover boat type thing, (I forget what they called it), which leads you to the 'Bastion' which will become your base of operations. Upon getting there you see a man, who happens to be the same guy that is narrating the story. He will tell you to put the 'Core' you found in a monument just ahead of you.

You do this and the place starts to come alive and starts rebuilding itself. You can then create a building which you can use for upgrades. The more you play the game and the more 'cores' you collect the more buildings you can build letting you upgrade different things. The upgrade system is quite simple, while you are out on missions you pick up little blue shards and other items all of which can be used to upgrade if you go to the right shop. You go in see if you have enough bits click which upgrade and BAM. Done.

I do find myself getting quite addicted to this game, as I said before I played for a good couple of hours and I was still wanting more, I only stopped to walk the dog and write up this. It is definately worth a play. Another thing I noticed is you don't seem to die if you fall off the edge of a platform, which happens more than you would think, all though that might just be my playing. If you actually die from enemies you get one continue then if you die after that you get a menu screen where you can restart, go to bastion, quit etc...

MW3 take advantage of Steam

As we all know ever since the announcement of both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, there has of course been a lot of fan boy flame wars going on. A lot of which have kept me amused but that is beside the point. So I logged into steam just now and what is on the front page of the store? A big massive MW3 advert. While EA have vowed not to release Battlefield onto Steam in favour of pushing there own Origin product, but I'm not going to get into that because I would be here for days. Looks like the guys down at CoD HQ are going to take full advantage of Valves lovely service, seriously the advert takes up half the screen. No doubt it will be staying there for the foreseeable future.

Lawsuit to be settled with a game of Quake?

You heard me right. Bethesda are currently in battle with the guys who made Minecraft over a new game coming out named 'Scrolls', which they think is to close to the name 'The Elder Scrolls', one of there most popular games, there is a little about the case here. I think it's quite ridiculous to be honest. Are they going to go after anyone that uses 'Elder' as there game name or even 'The'. Its quite frankly stupid. Anyway Notch, the Minecraft guy' challenged Bethesda to a game fo Quake 3 to solve the lawsuit. If Bethesda wins the name will be changed from scrolls to something else if they lose however they must drop the case. Full Details Here. I do hope Bethesda take up the challenge. I want every video game lawsuit to be resolved by playing video games. It would be a much better world if that were to happen.

Steam Group

I just made a little steam group, it's essentially more of a blog feed at the moment. I may do more with it some point down the line when I think of something. Maybe start gaming nights when enough people join. I'll think of a few things to do with it eventually. Anyway it is http://steamcommunity.com/groups/playeronegaming There is also a link down the side to it aswell.

Go click and join, make me more popular :P

Borderlands 2

I've not really been paying to much attention to news of Borderlands 2, I did enjoy the first game except the ending, it was a bit disappointing , I've still got some DLC to play for it aswell which I must get round to playing. I found a little teaser trailer below. It looks pretty cool and hopefully we'll be seeing some more characters coming over the horizon soon. Along with that there is news of longer missions which is a good thing I guess. Some of the missions in the original were ridiculous short, like go see this guy or kill 5 of these and such. Delivery quests and kill so many of these quests do get a bit boring after so many of them. I'm kind of interested to see how they are going to kick it up a notch.




There has been a couple things mentioned about this by Paul Hellquist, one of the designers for BL2, he says:
"The story missions in Borderlands 2 are about 3 times the scope of a single story mission in the first game. And they twist and turn throughout; your gameplay is changing, your goals are changing... it will be a much more dynamic experience compared to last time."

"Lots of fans and critics gave us the business on the story. When we took a look at what we had done last time, we said, 'we can do way better than that'... So the story has been, from the very first day, one of the most important things that we wanted to improve in Borderlands 2."

I reckon from the first quote about how the gameplay and goals are changing, you can actually fail missions which would change the story and what happens next, which would be pretty cool instead of the whole go back and keep trying until you finish it deal most rpg type games have you do. This is another game thats definately going on the list.

My mascot

Well I've been throwing ideas around for what my banner/logo for this site should be. I ended up with an idea about a Mascot which happens to be a pig. A pig? Yes. A pig. Why a pig you ask? Basically the intials of the site is p.o.g but I couldn't think of anything that would relate to that. Then I thought p1g, P1G looks like pig and the idea was born. This pig has now be named and will forever be known as Paul. He was named by my friend Nathan (who owns www.portalcasino.co.uk I know a shameless plug but nevermind). I said he could name him if he helps me design him and the banner. So he gets photoshop and to name my pig, I get a pig and a pretty picture to go up top there. So far what he is going to look like is still in the works, Nathan suggested making him out of the letters P1G (yes I know 1 isn't a letter, not my point). It sounds like a good idea, I'm not sure how it's going to work I can't picture it, I'm interested to see how it would work actually it sounds pretty cool. I'm kind of thinking a cartoonish pig, sunglasses, quite bright coloured t shirt im thinking yellow all within a circle of some sort. I'm going to start doodling and see what I come up with. Anyway I'm going to bed now.

Playstation get cheaper.

If you are looking to get a Playstation 3 now would be a good time to do it as the prices have just been dropped. The 160gb PS3 has been dropped from $299 (£180) to $249 (£150), and the 320gb version is dropped from $349 (£210) to $299 (£180). If I didn't have one already would the $50 discount persuade me? Yeah probably if I had the funds. It would be a good time to get one aswell actually as they does have a few new games such as Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3 on the way. There are alot other games but those 2 are the ones I look forward to the most over on the Playstation scene. Uncharted is definately number 1 on the lise.

Deus Ex primed for PC.

The new Deus Ex game is due to be released to us in the not to distant future, I am looking forward to this aswell, I very much doubt it will be a day 1 purchase but it's on the list none the less. This is just about how they are actually making the PC version an actual PC version and not just some console port like alot of developers do. We will be getting be seeing full DX11 compatibility along with support for AMD's Eyefinity (which is use of multiple monitors) and also 3DHD, if you happen to be rich enough to own a 3D monitor or tv already. Looks like PC gaming is finally coming back around and getting a bit more loving attention that it truely deserves as it has been sat in the shadows for awhile now. I guess both main consoles are getting a little dated so the logical step would to turn back to PCs with there ever evolving tech.

Lineup for WWE 12 announced

I'm not a massive follower of these kind of games, or any sport games either really. Which is probably why I only buy them every few years, it's practically the same games every year just with an updated roster, there is no point buying them yearly in my opinion. But as the last wrestling game I bought was the original Smackdown Vs Raw for the PS2, I'm not sure how long ago that was and frankly can't be bothered to look it up. Anyway I'm getting to the point of this post which is the announced line up for the game. It will of course have some of the old times featured with the likes: Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Kevin Nash, The Road Warriors, Vader and of course we can't forget Mr Vinny Mac, who will all be making an appearance. I think it's about time I got a new wrestling game so I think I may just give this a purchase. If you want to see the full line have a look here.

Hard Reset Gameplay

We now have a decent amount of gameplay. It looks pretty damn good if you ask me. Seems to be shaping up to be hopefully be one of the next big things. For some reason I can't get the video to work in this post so I'll just link it instead. Enjoy 7 Minutes of Hard Reset

More on The Baconing

Just came across an interview with Mike Inglehart, a producer at HotHead games, about The Baconing: The 3rd Deathspank game. If you haven't heard of Deathspank go google it or something, it's a great game. Anyway check out the interview here as he talks a little about the game, with some random bearded guy with a microphone. The game starts off with Deathspank sitting around, bored out his skull and decides to put on all 6 Thongs of Virtue which summons an evil version of himself creating the Anti-Spank. To defeat the Anti-Spank he has to find the Fires of Bacon and burn each of the Thongs of Virtue in said Bacon Fires. Doing that will weaken the Anti-Spank allowing Deathspank to kill him. If you have never heard of Deathspank that will sound 10 times more ridiculous than it actually is.

Want a shiny new Xbox? Tough.

So the guys in the lab down at Microsoft are stopping production on Xbox's with a glossy case finish in favour of a matte finish instead. What brought on this ground breaking idea is any mans guess. Except the slight change in colour is there any other changes to better the Xbox? Not that I know of. I personally prefer the shiny version. Shiny things are shiny. So if you are wanting a lovely shiny Xbox instead of a bland matte finished one I would suggest buying one soon, otherwise you will have to get a second hand one. Not really much more to say on this matter really. So yeah discontinuing shiny versions.

Oddworld

Steam happened to have a offer on the different Oddworld games. I would of got them all if funds allowed but only had enough for Abe's Oddysee. I remember playing this years ago and loving it and I think I still have a disc of it about somewhere, god knows where it is though. I do love the old side scrolling type games. Anyway I had a quite shot on it earlier, it's probably because I am still getting used to the controls and such. It is alot harder than I remember, either that or I was much better at gaming back when I was 12, whose to say. Also what I don't remember was it has cutscenes, or at least an starting video explaining the story a little. Considering it came out pre 2000 its actually quite good graphically.

In the game you play Abe, I know who would of thought, he is a slave worker at Rupture Farms, he has been all his life along with many other Mudokons (his race). Rupture Farms is owned by Molluck the Glukkon (the bad guy) and is the biggest meat processing plant on Oddworld. Abe has worked and worked and managed to be the current Employee of the Year, apparently slave labours have there favourite slaves. Rupture Farms is getting into difficulties financially as the ingredients of there 3 products: Scrab Cakes, Paramite Pies and meech Munchies, are running out. Abe being the good hard working little slave that he is was working late one night, and ends up nearby the Board Room where various Glukkons are talking about this situation. Molluck comes up with a great idea of using his Mudokon slaves as there next product, grinding them down into what he named Mudokon Pops. Abe is obviously not having any of this and decides to make a break for it and escape the factory which enslaves him. After his daring escape Abe sees a large moon in the sky, with its face in the shape of a Mudokon handprint, signifying the Mudokons as the "chosen people". Abe suddenly falls down a cliff, smashing his head; as he lies on the ground, BigFace appears before him in a vision.
BigFace sends Abe on a quest to rescue his enslaved brethren and "restore the lost land". He cannot accomplish this feat without first completing the spiritual trials of the Monsaic Lines and Mudokon temples. Abe journeys into the Monsaic Lines, from where he travels to the forests of Paramonia and the deserts of Scrabania. In each land, Abe completes the tests of the respective temple; after each one, BigFace gives Abe hand scars, one representing the Paramites and one representing the Scrabs.
Once Abe has both scars, he can become the Shrykull, an all-powerful demigod creature. The Shrykull stands outside life as a dualistic god, of creation and destruction, and of fear and love. With this power, Abe returns to RuptureFarms, rescues his Mudokon brethren and comes close to shutting it down entirely.
Abe is surprised, captured, and bound so he cannot chant to invoke the Shrykull. It is at this point that he first appears in captivity at the start of the game. As Molluck enters the prison cell and prepares to drop Abe into a meat grinder, BigFace holds a meeting with freed Mudokons at the Monsaic Sanctum.

Bioshock Infinate to out sell previous games?

Analysts are predicting the new Bioshock game due out in 2012 will out sell all the previous Bioshock games. Prediction are hoping for nearly 5 million copies to be sold which would be over $200 million. Bioshock 1 and 2 have sold over 3 million copies to date. I have only played Bioshock 2 which I thoroughly enjoyed. I will get round to playing the first game before I start on Infinate though. I reckon these predictions could well be true as Bioshock seems to have got a pretty solid fan base. Whether it will sell the predicted 5 million is still to be seen, it definately has the potential though. I know I will be buying it some point down the line.

Rage introduce a new DRM for used copies

I say DRM, it's not quite drm but anyway id seem to be implimenting a system where if you buy the game used you will miss out on part of the game, albeit side quests of the game so you won't miss out on the actual storyline. I'm not entirely sure how exactly this is going to be enforced maybe through the disc key being used on multiple systems. While it is obviously going to annoy alot of the used gamer community, you have to admit it is a clever rouse on ids part to incentivise you to buy the game new. I for one don't really care one way or another about it as I tend to buy games new anyway albeit (as yes I use that word quite alot) at discounted prices a couple months or so later.

A little more news about cs go

Apparently there won't be new game modes as rumoured, but there are new weapons and old ones aswell. All weapons appear to have been tweaked to make the likes of shotguns and sub machines more viable purchases so maybe everyone won't be sitting about with aks and m4s all the time. We also have new grenade types firstly we have molotovs which I can see being quite annoying. Secondly we have a decoy grenade which emits gunfire sounds that should confuse people, again will be quite annoying. There may even be full kevlar as the standard player load out, which would change up the money system quite alot which has been changed aswell somewhat. Which will more than likely lead to alot of the guns prices changing.

Hard Reset Trailer

Hard Reset have a new video out its a comic storyline trailer, it is looking quite good the last game I think I played with a kind of comic type storyline was XIII way back in the early 2000's. There may have been others but I can't think. Anyway I haven't played all that many games with a comic like story/cutscenes which by the looks of this vid is going to happen with this game. It is looking like it is going back to fps roots and having a good old fashion shooter none of this modern war games that seem to of taken the stage as of late. I've got nothing against war simulators but we need a bit of variety and to bring fun back to gaming rather the onslaught of your CoDs and Battlefields. We need mindless violence, which we have started to see coming back with the likes of Bulletstorm and Duke, We have a few coming up in the future aswell. One I am looking forward to is Serious Sam I believe I already mentioned that in a previous post.  Anyway I've got off track here but yeah Hard Reset is starting to take form and I for one welcome it. Anyway I'm leaving links to the videos in this sentence.

Bungie Employee Kicks Ass

Not stricktly gaming news but tis cool none the less. Bungie employee Jeff Fletcher was just on his way to an atm to pick up some cash. At the same time a fight was breaking out near by, allegedly over a drug deal which lead to guns being fired. One of the gunmen ended up cheesing it in the direction Jeff was in. So what does he do, he lies in wait hidden behind the atm machine waiting to take his move, when the fore mentioned criminal approaches he jumps out in front of him and points his own gun at the gunman and tell him to drop to the floor which in turn he does so. By the time the police arrive Mr Fletcher has the criminal is already searched, cuffed and sat on the floor waiting to be picked up by the police. We need more people like Jeff people who won't just sit back and let things happen right in front of them and be all "meh not my job". People who will stand up in the name of good. 

The baconing release date.

So we now have a release date for the Playstation it seems. It's 30th of August and is release as part of the Playstation Play promotion. Whether or not I get it for Playstation or a different platform is yet to be decided. I probably will just end up getting myself a pc version.

Official annoucement for new Counter Strike

So we have a new Counter Strike heading our way, at the moment coming some point early 2012. We will see new maps, game modes (what modes I don't think has been said as of yet) and leader boards to name a few things, and no doubt updated graphics aswell.
I saw that they will also be releasing the game on Playstation and Xbox aswell. While most people will more than likely sit and complain about this with "ah man it's a pc game crappy consoles shouldn't get to play it yadda yadda bullshit" It's not that big a deal. As Valve being Valve have always been PC based, with a couple minor exceptions. But they no doubt will put the PC version as there priority and keep the majority of there fan base (ie pc gamers) happy. And yes there are going to be a lot of people complain about it just like they did when source was released but people get over that and end up playing the game anyway. If they don't they like this new version they will just return to there favourite version of the game. It's not going to die any time soon. There is still people who play 1.6 and even cz to this day. Hopefully we will hear more about this in the not to distant future.

Games I'm looking forward to

There is a few games I am looking forward to which are coming out. Believe or not Modern Warfare and Battlefield aren't in that list, which I'll probably get them eventually but I couldn't really care about getting them on day one.
What I am looking forward to first off is Rage. I have been a massive fan of id since the original doom and quake. From the trailers and videos I have seen of it, it looks frankly quite amazing graphically at least, and as pretty much every id game I have played I have liked I will get it and hopefully it will be a new id brand and sit quite happily along side Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.
Next game I want is Serious Sam 3, I love this franchise, there is nothing better than mowing down shit tons of enemies. There isn't really much to say about this game, it's just frantic gun fire all the time. you can't go wrong with it really.
Another one is The Baconing, it's a small indie hack and slash type game which is the third installment of the Deathspank series. If you have never played it you should totally go and play one of the first 2 games. I would say the first is the better of the 2 but the second is still pretty good in its own right.
Last one I am going to mention atm is already released but I have yet to have a shot on it. It is Red Faction Armageddon, I realise it didn't get the best of reviews and THQ have pretty much said they're done with the series now because it didn't success in the first couple of months. They must realise we are in a global recession and not everyone can afford to buy every single game on the day of release. Games are meant to be a long term investment. There are games I want from years ago I have yet to buy and down the line when I have the funds I will buy them. To call the game a failure within a couple of months is frankly stupid. I'm a fan of the previous Red Faction games, granted Guerilla took a little getting used to but when I got past the whole 3rd person aspect I quite enjoyed it. Anyway I've rambled on for enough at the moment. I'll be posting about the fore mentioned games later with whatever news happens to come along about them.

The Origin Matter

EA have annoyed alot of folk recently with the whole pulling their games from Steam. The few games they have removed I'm not to fussed about anyway so makes no difference to me anyway. There seems to be much debate on the actual reasons behind this, they are essentially just doing what Valve did all those years ago with Half Life 2. Everyone hated Steam when it first came out now 5 years later they seemed to have fought there way into the majority of PC gamers hearts. EA seem to be doing the same thing granted a few years to late. While it is easy to point out the flaws in a system, which I have quite a list of. I am writing a pros and cons list I will actually post it later when I've used Origin properly, ie bought games, got friends etc on there, most of the cons so far are pretty much layout of the whole thing. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them time to sort stuff out considering they are still just in a beta at the moment. One thing that has been mentioned though is the bit in the Terms of Service about how if you haven't used your account/games for over 2 years you may lose. That is the same principle of me going out buying a Dvd for example then me not watching it for a couple years and the producers coming into my living room and taking it off my shelf and telling me if you aren't going to watch it regularly you can't have it at all. Now you have to go buy another copy. It's not right.

News on the Valve front.

First of all L4D campaign Blood Harvest is coming along to L4D2 tomorrow I believe I read. So I know what I'll be doing as soon as the game updates.
Secondly there has been word of a new Counter Strike called Global Offensive. Hopefully it will be on a brand new source engine with fancy new graphics. Hopefully accompanied by a certain game containing a certain freeman. I know I can always hope.
Anyway talking of Half life there is a little protest at Valve HQ for the release of the next Half Life game yesterday the Gman came out and brought them lunch. How long it will last, I'm not sure but I hope it'll encourage the guys at Valve to at least make a statement about the whereabouts of Mr Freeman. We shall soon see.

A Proper Introduction.

And i'm back, with a proper introduction instead of me rambling endlessly looking for a point to talk about. It will happen again though, I know exactly what I'm like. I am Craig, I use Player One as my online name for pretty much every game. I did start off with whatever default name games used to give me, ie Player, Default Player etc... which evolved at some point to Player One. Yup I've quite the creative one I know.
Most of the games I do play are mainly single player, at the moment I have a few games on the go as I'm trying polish off my frankly quite large backlog of games. I blame steam and there constant deals and cheapness. At the moment I'm playing GTA4 many doing that to build up a little gamer score as I don't have an xbox. I will get some more Windows Live games some point down the line, I reckon batman AA and Gears are probably next no the list to get. I started play Metro aswell, I did start playing it awhile back but got stuck at some point quite nearish the start and never ended up playing it for awhile, so it's yet another game I have on the list.
What little multiplayer I do play is generally anything Valve and old halflife mods.

At the minute one mod I'm getting proper into again is Science and Industry, It's an under rated halflife 1 mod. Basically you play a a security guy of a science company and your main objective is to research better weapons, armour, and other upgrades and devices. You can do this quicker by stealing the other teams scientists, along with secondary objectives like sabotage and stealing the other teams weapons which you don't have yet. Even after all these years the SI guys still have there weekly gathering on sunday nights (9 gmt).

Rambling just to get me started.

So basically I've been thinking about starting a gaming blog for god knows how long to ramble on about games I've been playing or one that are coming out and anything else I care to rant about at the time.. I may move on to youtubing some point down the line but anyway I digress. I don't really know what I'm going to talk about in this one tbh, I'll end up typing until some sort of topic comes out. Future posts will most likely be a bit more thought though.

One thing that has been annoyed as of late is the fact that trying to use a playstation controller on PC is such a fucking faff to get working due to first off that there doesn't seem to be any official Sony drivers for them. When I did get the controller working in the windows settings would it work in games? Hell it wouldn't. Lucky I had some spare moolah about so instead of getting pissed off with sony I just went and bought a xbox controller, which works without a problem. At the end of the day I just did that mainly as I'm quite lazy and prefer going with the easy option. Anyway my point being I should be able to use whatever controller I like on my computer. I mostly blame sony for not having drivers but it makes sense for MS to not give a crap about any controller that isn't by them. But it should be about the customer and making things easier for them.

All this to play some GTA4, have had the game for ages but haven't actually played it yet. It's steams fault I constantly buy games on special and end up having a massive backlog of games. Anyway as we're on about GTA4 that's going to lead me on the GFWL. While everyone seems to complain about it and how it's not as good as steam and it's crap and all that shibbang, its frankly not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Granted the desktop client is frankly pretty poor but the ingame aspect is really quite decent or at least in my experience of it anyway. They still need to work on it and release more games for it, eg halo gow and other xbox exclusives. That would be a start of getting back at least some of the pc community. Anyway I'm tired and kinda losing concentration on what im rambling on about so I'm going to finish it now. Next time I'll have some better prepared stuff to talk about but if I hadn't started this now I wouldn't of done this for even longer.