Sunday, December 17, 2006

I need HD in my life

This week Mr Drew has spent a ridiculous amount of money on a HD TV. When it came time for our next gaming session it only seemed right that I take my 360 up to his and find out what they could do. Let me tell you, they were beautiful together. First thing I had to do was both Halo 3 trailers, these amazed me when they first came out, but seeing them in HD took my breath away. Then onto the games.

We spent most of our time on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, unlocking the last few morsels erin that game ready for the hard mode arcade action, of which we got a taste for and Drew and I are once again addicted. I was a bit let down of the jump from X-Box to 360 graphically originally but HD totally removed that. How much better this game looks is incredible. Everything just looked so much more detailed and crisper.

Drew had mentioned it was the racing games that really looked amazing on HD, unfortunately I don't own any but luckily I do have a demo of Carbon on the hard drive. I was drooling at the car selection screen never mind in game. Finally we tried Dead Rising, I noticed less with this game, but that may be due to the fact Capcom made it for HD and really ignored the standard definition. If was nice to be able to read the text in game for a change though.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Gangsters and Capes

Two topics up for discussion today. Firstly Heroes because I'm not going into much detail. This show is fantastic. Finally a show I have gotten into right from the get go rather than sticking with it because I feel like it could go somewhere. I'm not sure I've done that since Buffy started on Sky One. It really does feel like someone had a comic story to tell but managed to get a TV network to make it instead.

Secondly there's Saints Row. It was one of the first demos I downloaded off Xbox Live and while not overly impressed I did think it could be quite fun, and I've been craving some GTA like action recently. When I first put the game in the machine I hated it, I thought it was very badly done. The car handling is atrocious, the cars feel extremely similar, its only you start getting into the game and start driving very different types of cars that you can start to notice the difference in the handling. Though the handbrake never improves, no matter what you're driving the normal breaks barely do anything while the handbrake is the guaranteed to stop you dead with a near perfect 90 degree turn.

The early missions aren't anything special, at least for the Vice Kings anyway. There are three gangs to take down in the City of Stillwater and it's entirely up to you which order that you do them. I've just finished the Vice Kings and moved onto Los Carnales. The difference between the early Kings and Carnales is quite shocking as I'm really enjoying the Carnales missions while the Kings I did get bored with half way through and it's only my worrying determination to finish games that kept me with Saints Row at that point. Also the activities, while initially standing out as good, just don't work for me really. I realise that they are pick up when you fancy them but I just find myself getting very frustrated with the level system used for them.

All said and done Saints Row is an alternative to GTA, not a better one and not necessarily worse either. They both do certain things better than the other, car handling is certainly better in GTA while targeting is better in Saints Row for instance. One thing for Saints Row is that although the story isn't great is does feel a better gang experience than San Andreas was, which seemed to forget where it came from once CJ’s brother got arrested.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Quick Shout Out

In order to make my posts a bit snappier, if I've got something to say I'm just gonna say it, rather than waiting till the end of the month (which I'm still gonna use as a general sum up).

First off, I've finally got off my arse and posted up links to some of my friend's blogs and the like.

Secondly, I've finally picked up last week's comics. In my pile the to read list was X-Factor (yes a week late but it's fantastic) and Iron Fist. I feel ashamed it's taken me this long to pick up Brubaker at Marvel, but now that I have his and Matt Fraction's story is fantastic. A quick read but brilliantly told. The advertising in Teen Titans was atrocious, and people have been complaining at Marvel? Also Wisdom was a bit of a let down. While it did feel like a proper British comic in the Marvel universe, it also felt like the story needed two issues to be told.