Since I last updated we’ve been having some real fun times, with some new different stuff. One of the big things that Rach and I like to do is do stuff thats different that we havent tried before. This has covered stuff like Ice skating, a night at the darts, going to the greyhounds, crazy golf and various other things. Our latest fun time was two weeks ago where we spent a night out at the Bingo!

Its actually way more fun than I expected, and we had a great time there. So much infact that we ended up going again last night. In our two nights there we are yet to win, but we’ve had some real fun times. Maybe we’ll end up going every week! And if I dont win at the bingo I can always try playing poker!

As well as this I’ve rejoined the gym and started going with Rach. Unfortunately this means going at 6am which as anyone who knows me will know, is hell for me. I’m not a morning person by any means and this has meantearly nights for me.

But on the positive side I’m losing weight, gaining fitness and today I did the longest run Ive done in years, finishing at 5.1 miles and feeling fucking delighted with myself. Even if I did look a mess

No particular post mark, nothing out of the ordinary.

Little did I know the horrors that await

So I open it up and have a look, inside a cover sheet and a second sheet with the actual letter.

And all the letter said was

A joke.

A terrible joke. Hmmm.

At this point Im sat confused, Rach asks whats up so I tell her the joke and how the letter has no identifying marks. Then have to explain the joke. Then I have to explain it again.

So at this point Im a bit confused as to what it is all about wondering if I signed up to something weird. I take another look at the cover sheet and notice some stuff at the bottom

Hmmm. S&H Enterprises. Ive never heard of them.

Theres also a reference for me to show Ive recieved the letter, so I load up the website and fill in the details and get this confirmation.

WHO IN THE FUCK ARE S & H ENTERPRISES

To the google mobile!

Never heard of them.

Well, its someone who knows me anyway.

To twitter!

Well you were no help twitter.

To facebook!

The Backstory.

Graeme is also known as Scotsman. We’ve known each other for years and have a few mutual friends on facebook. One of these used to be a guy we call Homer. Homer loves bad jokes, and uses his facebook status to transmit really fucking terrible jokes all the time. Constantly. To the point where I deleted him as a friend cause I was sick of fucking reading them.

As soon as Scots found out, he was delighted. He had something he could use to annoy me.

Since I deleted Homer from facebook Scots has delighted in sending me Homers jokes over MSN messenger till I told him to stop or I’d block him.

Then it started.

A whatsap message on my phone.

An email.

On a forum in a thread entitled “Taff”

On a forum, in a thread about Xbox games, under spoiler tags while talking about a new game.

And now, through the post.

He fucking got me.

He fucking got me.

He fucking got me.

And the worst thing, I found out after that Rach was in on it, after having been bribed with Lucky Charms.

I will get my revenge. Somehow.

Fuck you Dealer Dan.

“Ron Hextall!!!!!!!
But seriously. What. We seem to have come across some heavy exposure in the facebook world of hockey (the sport) fans. So, in an attempt to clarify: This facebook page is about the band Hockey. Not the sport. Many thanks. b”

http://www.facebook.com/hockeyband?sk=wall&filter=2

And its already got 612 replies from people bitching, and people are making shed loads of posts on their wall complaining.

Some of my faves

Tommy Lee Haan Dumbasses! Go blackhawks! P.S. Get a real name something like the toothless bastards

Guillaume Gagnon Your band should start playing hockey before you start losing all your fans.

Jeff Gorka Lmao.. fucking retarded. Why did you even say anything now you got all these people tearing your ass apart, I should say thanks, this is more entertaining than your music that I wasted my life listening to. GO WINGS!

Kenny Gill Do you have a dog named soccer?

Everyone seems to be blaming the band, rather than facebook. Fucking retards.

Reminder that Hockey own.

Theyre still my alarm clock tone.

Dead Space

Pretty fun little game, but not really my cup of tea. I was never truly into the story which seemed poor anyway, and I blasted through the game using just one weapon as I knew there was a precious achievement for this. It was a decently fun game which I as only playing because friends had reccomended Dead Space 2 so I figured I should play the first one first.

You’re some bloke on a space ship, and theres alien shit attacking you is the very basic story. ~The aliens dont die unless you dismember them which means you have a varietyKilling aliens means you have to chop off their body parts so they die, by using a variety of weapons at your disposal. This was probably the best and most unique part of the game. The story seemed deep, but I cut over most of the cut scenes after a while because I was becoming bored of the game. Its decent tho and a solid play along

Rating : 2.5/5
Acheivements won : 40/48

Alpha Protocol

Based on Scotsmans review I grabbed this game from my rental service too. From reading about this game before hand it seemed to be a love it or hate it game, with many conflicting views. Scotsman LOVES the game, but he also loves Two and a Half Men, so I was looking forward to seeing how this played.

After a little bit I was bored, because it felt kind of clunky, and the responses werent always what I expected. It uses a nice feature where you have one of three responses you can give to a question, and you select which one while the other person is talking so whichever option is selected when they finish speaking is what you say. This makes conversations in the game flow much quicker, and make you think about what you say. The developers have said that the three main response choices you can give are based on the three famous JBs of film and TV : “professional” (Jason Bourne), “suave” (James Bond), and “aggressive” (Jack Bauer). You may also have a fourth option at times that will be based around a special choice.

This conversation format is very unique and really is the best part of the game, much better than my previous favourite conversation style in a game whichg is Mass Effect, where you can sit forever before making a choice.

However the shooting seems terrible, with certain features being massively overpowered (the chainshot skill can kill a boss in seconds) and others feeling just unneeded. The graphics are good, but at times I felt like they were very old school, a similar feeling I got when playing Homefront.

Its a decent enough game tho, and I do like that the game does change slightly based on your decisions, which means plenty of play throughs for those who love the game. I’d say give it a try if you can find it cheap

Rating : 3/5
Acheivements won : 36/50

Fight Night Champion

Out of the games Ive played this was the one that I really wanted to play. I loved Fight Night 3, having some epic online battles against Scotsman where he was a one hit wonder, while I was more of a slogger wearing him down which lead to some long battles where I would be slowly taking him out then he’d hit a punch out of nowhere and knock me down. It was a genuinely great game and the first one I got 100% achievements in.

Its sequel Fight Night 4 was a real step backwards. While they introduced new punch controls meant to make punching more fluid, it actually resulted in fights being a lot more “throw 1000 punches till one connects”. While some may have grasped the new controls through sustained practice, for an ameteur to watching boxing or playing boxing games like me it just made throwing a punch a lottery as to whether it would be a hook or a uppercut or a jab. As well as this they threw much more of a focus on the online aspect, with title belts available for the top players. Unfortunately they took these as real belts so only one belt was available in each weight category which led to players using alternative accounts to hold onto the belt rather than fighting real contendors. One good feature they did introduce was the ability to download other peoples boxers, so I ended up with the likes of Eminem, Michael Jackson, Hitler and Saddam Hussein in my lightweight category

So with Fight Night Champion I was hoping for more of a return to the addictive play of 3, while keeping some of the aspects of 4. When you load the game youre immediately thrust into a storymode where you take a young boxer through his career, with cut scenes showing various aspects outside of the ring. This bit was fun and undoubtably the best part of the game, with the boxer going from a young up and comer, being sent to jail before finally rising up to beat the unbeatable champion with some great little storylines interweaving. Unfortunately its also rather short, and once done you’re left with a game much like Fight Night 4.

The boxing again feels to me like throwing a million punches until you hit a few, though this is more me than the game, as whenever I went online I would get decimated. Online is just a freak show, and since no one I know has the game I cant really say what it feels like to have a fun game with a friend

What I do feel is that there doesnt seem to be enough training in the game, it just assumes you know how to box. I could have done with a better tutorial, where rather than telling you “this button does this” it tells you more about how to play the game.

Rating : 2/5
Achievements : 25 of 44

Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare

I loved Red Dead, despite its flaws much of the game is very good, and its one of the few games where I really appreciated the backgrounds and asthetics of the game. When the game goes into sunrise the backdrops are stunning. I traded it in before the Undead Nightmare pack came out on DLC, so with it on a standalone disk now I decided to rent it.

Its ok, theres some nice touches with some of your old friends and enemies from the full game coming back to haunt you, however it still suffers from many of the same problems as the main game. Riding around can be dull, but in the main game you could avoid this by fast travelling by setting up camps in the wilderness and travelling quickly to set markers or towns. However seeing as in this add on you’re in a zombie infested wilderness they took out the ability to do this. This means increased riding, and increased boredom between missions.

The missions themselves are fun with a bit of good humour in the cut scenes but these suffer sometimes from the same issues that the main game did – they occassionally drag a little too much when you just want to play. By the time I was getting to the later missions I felt that I didnt want to really play anymore because I wasnt really in to the story.

As a DLC its great, it shows the love the developers had for the game in making such a great add on. For me though its little things that take it down to a more average score

Rating : 3/5
Achievements : 19 of 47 DLC achievements

Portal 2

Portal is one of those games that the internet loved and latched onto. With its quirky injokes (the cake is a lie!) and fun gameplay it was just one of these games that people raved about. Because of this type of hype, these games can often end up being a let down, but Portal was actually quite a sweet little game. For those who have never played the game, you walk around in a 1st person perspective with a Portal gun that lets you shoot an orange and a blue portal. You enter a orange portal and come out of the blue one, and vice versa. You can use these to travel further, or make longer jumps than you otherwise could.

Portal 2 expands on the original game, adding a new character voiced by Stephen Merchant, new features with different gels which effect your movement, an addictive 2 player game, and the same great humour as you play. The single player story see’s you awaken within the Apeture facility and after a series of little test chambers where you “relearn” the controls you stroll straight into the main game. The game see’s you attempting to first escape from the facility by allowing your new “friend” Wheatly to take over the facility so you can escape, only it doesnt quite happen that way….

The puzzles themselves are great fun, often requiring you to think outside the box in where you place your portals in order to move objects, direct laser beams or bridges, or just get from one position to another. The two player game adds another element, with a friend also with a portal gun meaning you now have double the portals and double the amount of thinking to defeat the challenges.

A really fun game and I’d really reccomend it – especially if its dropped in price.

Rating :4.5/5
Achievements : 50 of 50

Couple of Arcade games, with even smaller reviews.

Peggle

Shoot out balls, and hit the orange Pegs. Massive fun, one of my favourite arcade games. Fancy a peg party?

Rating :4/5
Achievements : 7 of 12

Streets of Rage

Eh, an old game that shows its age. For fans only, gets old very quickly.

Rating :2/5
Achievements :7 of 12

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Ah yes. A live action performance of Batman. We didn’t have a clue what to expect to be quite honest. Would it be of the levels of Spider-man The Musical which has been dogged with problems ever since it was launched, or would it be something different.

From reading previews I saw it was billed as more Adam Wests Batman than Christian Bales, with a more fun than serious storyline. The show was not a musical, more a live action performance. The show we were seeing was billed as the first full dress rehearsal and before the show out on stage came Anthony Van Laast and James Powell, the co-directors, who warned that if anything went particularly wrong then they may have to stop the show and run through things. Uh oh.

The stage itself, well when we first saw it we didn’t know what to think.

Those tiny buildings, theyre about man size.We sat there wondering how the hell this would work, it looked quite frankly ridiculous. However as the show started it did kind of work well. The buildings were moved as needed, dropping down into the stage or being swiftly moved into the back stage arena. When there were buildings and people on stage they were treated with in a decent way – for instance the Waynes being stood out front of the cinema to represent them having just come out of a screening of Zoro, or later in the show Harley Quinn being sat on top of a replica of Arkham Asylum. While initially thinking the sets were ridiculous they actually worked quite well. Some of the later sets were also great, one highlight being a Jokers Head that was made up of henchman – its difficult to describe but when you see it you’ll love it.

The screen at the back is massive and bat shaped, and gives the different settings some depth. Between scenes it can also flick through comic book pages to show time flicking by. Its used really well at times, with some of my favourite parts being showing the descent into the batcave, or the part where a picture of someone on stage is taken by a photographer, and the “picture” flashes up on-screen in a comic book panel. Theres also a good part where Wayne details some backstory, as the screen flashes up animated versions of the events hes recalling.

The show itself is clearly geared more towards the more fun aspects of Batman. The basic non spoiler version is that its the story of Batman and Robin getting together. It starts with a brief part which shows why Batman became Batman, before skipping forward to Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon at a visit to the circus, where the flying Graysons are performing. Anyone who knows Robins back story can guess what happens there, and this develops the story into a full Batman vs Supervillans story. If you want more spoilers I’ll detail the full story at the end within spoiler tags.

Parts like the circus scene allow the show to take a side turn, with the action on stage in this part being all about some high flying trapeze stunts. The show does this at other points, with one later scene developing into a series of magic  tricks. While it is undoubtably impressive to see these kind of stunts, it does to me at least, take away from the storyline that was developing.

While I’m no batman expert (I’ll leave that to the likes of Good Ol’ WT or taterpie), but there did seem inconsistencies with what I would expect from the character.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

One real weak point for me was the fighting. Maybe this was partly because it was the first full dress rehearsal, but the fighting was terrible at times. It looked very awkward and clunky, sound effects didn’t match the action on stage and Batman in particular looked like his costume was making his movements more restricted. Perhaps one of the weakest scenes for me was Batman and Catwoman first meeting. This scene utilised the miniature building sets shown earlier, as Batman and Catwoman fought between buildings jumping from one to the other as they battled. However the movements were clunky, and their fighting looked like they were barely even trying to tickle each other. A later battle where a series of henchman battled Batman and Robin came off as much better, mainly as Robins movements in his costume seemed much smoother

The villans are given almost no back story at all, but I suppose that’s something you can expect when they pack so many characters in. You have The Joker, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, The Riddler, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Twoface and The Scarecrow. I cant help but feel this was a mistake, as aside from Catwoman and the Joker-Harley duo, none of the other enemies get time to develop. Infact Scarecrow and Ivy show up very late in the show, and for a combined time of about three minutes before disappearing. Of the others Two Face gets a few laughs with some fun arguing amongst his two personalities when he first shows up, Riddler gets out a master plan before being pushed to the side, and Penguin gets a big entrance that gets boring quickly.

Of the people on stage, well the undoubtable star is the Joker. He and Harley Quinn get the best lines, and the best scenes. It isnt a Heath Ledger style Joker, its definitely edging more towards a Jack Nicholson style. He makes a great entrance to the stage too. Robin was a bit too over enthusiastic for me, though I suppose many Batman fans felt the same way when he was introduced to the comic. Batman, well Ive already mentioned his costume looking clunky, but he also seemed to be out of breath after any scene that required him to move. May want to rethink that design a little I think.

Despite me coming off as a little negative in the last few paragraphs I would say its a great night out. For a night out for the family I would say its great fun and a good night out. The little kids around, many of them in Batman costumes seemed to love it, and we definitely enjoyed ourselves too.

Batman Live premieres in Manchester from Tuesday 19th July before touring the UK and Europe, then jumping across the pond to open in North America in August 2012. Tickets are on sale now.

Its pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty good

It’s actually my first time ever watching the show properly and Im finding it much better than I ever expected. I know its a critically acclaimed show, but my only experiences of it before now were catching it at late night airings of the show at half past 1 on a Tuesday night on BBC2, often straight after a snooker tournament had aired or when I was flicking through the channels. I wasnt ever caught up in an episode, often being put off by the laugh track or the quirky sound effect that punctuated every scene change

I’ve actually only started watching it recently for two reasons

1) I love the Office, its my favourite TV show ever and I always find the mix of humour and emotion just amazing. A few months back I happened upon the above show on youtube, “Ricky Gervais meets….” which sees Ricky meet and speak with his comedy heros. The above episode (part 1 linked, but the other six parts can be found following on from that video) features Larry David who Gervais considers a genius. I’d never heard of this bloke, so I looked him up and saw he was creator of Seinfeld and star and creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm, so I figured hey if its good enough for Ricky its good enough for me. I started to watch Curb and loved it. Its a great show and “Larry David” is one of the great comedy show characters. When I got up to season 7, which is the Seinfeld reunion season, I figured I should watch Seinfeld before that so Id know what was going on.

2) Various American posters on forums I read hail it as one of the greatest shows ever, with SomethingAwful even featuring a thread where people still just quote lines from the show over and over. Even though Goons are fucking terrible with their opinions sometimes, Ive got to say they got this one right. I still dont agree that My Little Pony is one of the best shows ever tho.

Admittedly, some of the episodes do fall flat for me and the show was a bit of a slow burner at the start. However the more and more I watch it the more I find the majority of episodes, while still dated, are just pure genius.

Excuse the terrible quality of the youtube, but the above scene with the faking orgasms had me in stitches. This linked scene was even better (embedding disabled on this one unfortunately).

Ive been watching 6-7 episodes a week, more whenever I have the free time and really enjoying it.

If youre British, and never realised the fuss, its definitely worth checking out. And if youre American, Im sorry for judging you simply by Two and a Half Men.

Ive set myself a goal of getting to 100k by the end of the yea, this isnt a realistic goal, its just cause I want to track it. My actual goal is 75k and Im on target for this.

Ive also set myself a goal of beating Nibbles TA score. Obviously he plays for the more difficult achievements which get higher TA%. The thing about this is hes set himself a goal of beating my Gamerscore. Will be a fun battle.

Started at the following
TA : 89,768 vs 94,834 – 5066 difference
GS : 63,495 vs 58,430 – 5065 difference

Will be interesting to see who gets there first.

In games, I played a bunch of Lips (31/40), sent back Homefront (26/47), got a few on Borderlands (31/50), nabbed one on Crash Course (11/12) and Battlefield 1943 (11/12).

But the crowning glory was this achievement

Ive been sitting on 45 of 46 for a few weeks. Id been sitting on 43 of 46 for months. The last 3 achievements were for

1) Playing in every stadium – theres 50 stadiums
2) Playing as a team from every league – Theres around 30 leagues.
3) Playing 500 games with your virtual Pro.

1 + 2 were fairly easy to track once I’d set out to, though they were difficuly and time consuming to get. I stuck a spreadsheet on Googledocs ad loaded it up everytime I played to check leagues and stadiums off.

3 was a killer. 500 games, a minimum of 8 minutes a game, works out as almost 3 days solid of just playing Fifa. Add in the fact that any matches I lost connection from wouldnt count and you have a fucking time consuming achievo.

Thankfully, I got it this week, playing online clubs and 1k’d Fifa 11. Get the fuck in.

This week I will be mostly playing Dead Space which just arrived from my rental place. I should be getting another game in the next few days from my Top 5, which is Fight Night, Top Spin 4, Alpha Protocol (reccomended by Scotsman), Crysis 2 and Red Dead Undead Nightmares.

I have been playing a lot more Xbox lately, mainly because I signed up for a games rental service, and it mean while Im saving money from not buying games, I also get to play a lot more games that I get from them.

Since I signed up Ive had XMen Wolverine, NBA Jam, NBA 2K11 (which I played half a game then sent back), Spiderman Web Of Shadows, Splinter Cell Conviction and Lego Harry Potter. In all its been mainly positives for the games

Enter Homefront.

I got this on Friday, I didnt want it and had only put it in my rental list as I wanted to get Fight Night Champion which came out last week, and I thought putting a new release in there may make it more likely that they send me the game I want.

Homefront has a ridiculous story. North Koreas leader dies, and his son takes over. Shortly after Korea is reunited. Various oher things happen, then Korea take over Japan, Canada and Mexico close their borders to America due to various reasons including their instability and a birdflu epidemic. Korea launch a satelite which switches off power in America, and then invade America via Hawaii. You join as one of the rebels fighting back against the Koreans

Its just totally OTT.The game has a couple of little pieces that it expects to get a rise out of you for, including the discovery of mass graves, a kids parents being shot infront of him, and some people being tortured.  The problem is the character models are so bad that none of these are particulary moving or horrific in a way that say the Airport mission of COD4 was.

Its full of little things that annoy me. Paths you have to walk down following a colleague who blocks your way with invisible walls even though theres space to get past him. Then shortly after one of the other people on my team stood on the same spot as me and I was seeing through their body. and seeing the inside of their eyeballs – it was just so terrible.

The rebel forces arent very well equipped, so you dont have access to a lot of ammo or guns and youre meant to keep having to take stuff from enemies to ensure youre always stocked up. However there was never a moment where I felt low on ammo and that I had pressure on me to find anything. It seems silly to put such a feature in then make it have little difference.

The single player campaign is insanely short, just 5-6 hours. Even me as a complete amateur completed it easily. Some of the achievements are well done, but they do require you to play through the game about 3 times including once on the hardest difficulty in order to get 100% of them in the game.

Its just not an entirely enjoyable game. I think I’ll be sending it back this week.