Yes, I Am Still Alive.

So what have I been doing? I’ve been busy being too lazy to post on this blog, as well as not feeling like I have anything to write about. But if James is allowed to bore you with overlong posts about his pathetic personal life, then so am I. Indeed, these aforementioned posts will make you weep, though I cannot ascertain whether this will be with joy or sorrow. That depends on how much of a stick fucker you are.

On to other things.

So, 3D, you’re still here? One would think you’d be surpassed by 5D, or at least 4D by now, and people would simply stop playing your range of mostly overpriced and repetitive games, leaving you in the dust to be forgotten. It will happen one day, and then you will look at your older brother, 2D, and feel sorry for all that you did.

But why do I speak these things? Because, of late, I can only bring myself to pay real attention to the realm of the flat sprited dimension, where all was born and hundreds of mascot characters came to rest, or should have – Sonic, you naughty boy. And in this realm, a beautiful princess called “the 2D fighter” has enchanted me beyond belief, firstly forcing me to dig out Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, and secondly forcing me to download MUGEN, and indulge in the shady activity of repeatedly adding characters for no reason than to have a larger collection – it’s probably worse for you than masturbating. Indeed, as Phantom Of the Server’s Ryu is the only character I shall ever use.

If you decide to partake of this frankly pointless and time wasting activity (Hey, you play video games anyway) then make sure you shoot over to Mugen Infantry, self proclaimed Home of the Sharks, and take a browse through their database. Downloading the EVE battle Screenpack would be a good start.

I’ll be connecting up the Amiga and playing James Pond 2 after this post – at some point.

If we dip back into 3D for a moment, I’d like to proclaim my “L337N355″ for unlocking the Real Mega Buster n Dead Rising. James would have no doubt beaten me to it, if it wasn’t for the timely *cough* I mean unfortunate screw up of his 360’s DVD drive appearing at the last minute.

TBC is exactly like World of Warcraft, merely more so.

Sayonara, True Believers.

Blogged with Flock

Consider the Barrel Scraped.

Its coming up to a strong Television time of the year, big TV viewers may have already noticed their favourites returning to Air. Such as Top Gear, Rescue Me, 24 and quite a few others. Well theres something else to be excited about in the coming months – The HBO/BBC Series ROME will be returning to British TV around April.

For those not familiar with it, its a gritty and violent drama based in the time before Julius Caesar’s Assaination. Which not suprisingly was where the series ended. However, the second series picks up with Marc Anthony’s struggle after this most devious of ploys.

On a similar note, the movie 300 is set to air next month – March 9th I believe. Its the movie incarnation of the Frank Miller Graphic novel of the same name and has been absolutely panned in preliminary reviews. I’ve been following it since I first saw a trailer for it, my good friend James even bought me the Graphic Novel and to be honest … If its even close to the same quality as Sin City I’m going to love it.

Other James has recently purchased the new Final Fantasy Game, Final Fantasy XII, and I saw the first fourty-five minutes or so. It looks interesting enough, but i’ll pressure him to write a review for us.

Over on the ET Forums i’ve also been giving, and taking, a panning to the PS3, its quietened down now – but maybe you’ll find it an interesting read. Click right here!

And I know I said my last map link would be the last, but they wiped their site … so its been re-uploaded. So check it out! 243 Downloads and a B+ (or 4-Star) Rating

Have fun guys!

The Cycle

We’re here again, the inevitable period where all the producers loose interest and the project is on its last legs, or as a real nerd would put it;-

Your Blog is Afflicted by Neglect.
Neglect deals -10 Interest to Your Blog.
Neglect deals -10 Interest to Your Blog.
Your Blog Dies.

Well, I don’t know what to say. I had exams, followed by an intense period of gaming. I never came across anything I considered to warrant an entry, but I figure I’ll get one good post down before this beast dies.

In case you’re wondering, Mark hasn’t officially quit, but we can consider his contributions on Hold. Other James has tried to post a few times, but the Blog hates him. If this blog actually goes under (through mediated consent) I will set up shop on a WordPress blog and look into writing content for a few sites I’ve become affiliated with.

But thats enough of that.

What have I been up to? I hear you asking, I’ve been playing some games I never tried first time round. Then returning to my roots with some classic TBS games and of course some decent doses of World of Warcraft.

I’ve been playing four games in particular over the recent weeks, listed in order of recent play:-

• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell – Double Agent (Cooperative)
• Gun
• Master of Magic
• Colonization

You may remember I mentioned purchasing Double Agent a short while ago, I rated it fairly highly so far as the Single Player game went, but I looked over the Cooperative play. I took it to other James’ to lend it to him, so we could also get some of the cooperative in, and i’ll tell you now. It is easily as good as the singleplayer, possibly one of the best Cooperative modes ever included.

Its designed to integrate into the main plot, you’re essentially “Those guys that helped Sam Fisher on level X to do Y” and it is done very very well. Certain modifications have been made to make you require 2 people, besides the obvious 2-player climbs there are also changes to the electronic disabler built into the pistol so it has to be held on to work, perfect for covering one another across protected hallways.

It isn’t without its annoyances though, key cards are an absolute nightmare, often you have to run back through the level – past all those cameras / turrets again – just to grab a key card you mssed, in a completely retarded place, that you had little/no reason to go to. Also, less of a criticism, but more of an opinion: The Back-to-Back climb is just Gay. Super Gay. Ultra Gay. Quite frankly:

[2: Trade][Sam Fisher]: wtb Grappling Hook
[2: Trade][Sam Fisher]: On AH Now: Noob Partner.

Gun, a western free-roam created by Neversoft and clearly inspired by Grand Theft Auto with Bullet-time and Indiands thrown in for good measure. Sound Disasterous? Thats what I thought when I first saw trailers for it, and so I disregarded it and moved on to greener pastures.p>

My mistake. Gun (‘Gun’ or GUN, its a hard choice) is a sound game, fun from the start with reasonable and intuitive controls. There isn’t really a moment where it felt undoable or poorly designed. You never got burdened with ammo worries or overly harsh time constraints, unless you chose to do the optional (although highly recommended) Side Missions.

The side missions included Poker, courier work, ranching and other (slightly more generic) missions. They’re all delightfully simple, whilst remaining very charming and fun to do. The core story missions are each quite original, although usally involving: Ride to A, Shoot B, Rescue C.

Estimated play time is 8 Hours, for a slow person. On Medium it took me little over 6 Hours, 100% Completion. That is my only true criticism, its short lived. Its polished, clever and fun. I highly recommend it.

Score: 85%
Summary: Equally as much fun as Cowboys and Indians from your child hood. It really is everything it says on the tin. However, its not an original concept and looses serious points for having no new features.

I’m not sure what led me onto my next thing, but I started looking at decompilers, to the end of decompiling the Master of Magic executables. You see, I was wondering how hard it could possibly be to make it Windows compatible. I gave up on that quickly and just gave Dosbox another pop, it didn’t work well last time.

Perfect. It worked Perfect. And I suck at it, but i’ve been reliving those days with my Super City Levelling heroes.

After that I returned to another classic love, Colonization, theoretically a step in another direction with Civilization. Great fun, sound working – albeit the music was missing. I’ll link the sites you need to visit to enjoy it yourself at the end of the post, be sure to check them out.

Well, I’m nearing the end of my post and I don’t know whats left to add. If we decide to shut-down altogether I will post and say so, but if anyone actually reads this, nows the time to show your support.

Have a nice time,
JamesR

Links

Dosbox Downloads (I recommend 16,000+ Cycles for MoM)
d-Fend Downloads
Master of Magic Download (requires Dosbox to play on Windows XP)
Colonization Download (Works with XP though you may need to download a gfx .dll)

For Sound on MoM, set the Dosbox emulator settings, then run install.exe and set the same sound configuration there. If you’ve done it correctly running magic.exe should work with sound.