Saturday, August 28

News just in!


I'm going to see the Expendables in a few days...



May God have mercy on us all.



Expect a review after my brain has took in all the explosions, bullet dodging and muscles.



May God have mercy on us all.

Friday, August 27

Ahem...your attention please...


Go place your eyeball lens looker devices onto a screen or monitor displaying the twelfth episode of The Simpsons's fourth season, otherwise known as Marge vs. the Monorail. I shall give you three reasons why:

1. It's funny.

2. Conan O'Brien wrote it.

3. It has amazing quotes:
  • "Heh heh...mule"
  • "Do you want to change your name to Homer Junior? The kids can call you Ho-Ju!"
  • "So then, “mono” means “one”. And ”rail” means “rail”. And that concludes our intensive three-week course."
  • ..."I call the big one Bitey"
  • "We're too late!" "I shouldn't have stopped for that haircut. Sorry."
Ask me to recite a quote anywhere near as funny as those from let's say...season 15 onwards and I wouldn't have a clue. Go figure...

Thursday, August 26

Double poop, but don't worry - Minecraft!!!

Now I don't know if this sounds just too coincidental but the day I planned to write something for this very blog, was the very same day my body decided to contract a bug my cousin had obviously been carrying.

Does it?

Well it's the truth either way, which means the past three days have been nothing more than me lying in bed not noticing/caring about the outside world. However I'm going to stop depressing you with my awful story and get on with what this post is about, and lemme tell you this, it's something pretty special...



If you watch Seananner's video's on YouTube then you should know what I'm on about because it was was he that brought this game into the limelight. It's been around for around a year and after mentioning in a vlog, Seananners has opened it up to a lot of new people, including me! What he actually did was give a link to someone else on YouTube called davidr64yt who is currently doing a walkthrough of it. After watching all his 30 or so video's on it I was hooked.

The basic premise of the game is that in this randomly generated blocky land where your character starts, there are many different resources around you that you can mine. After mining them, you can craft things with them, y'see where I'm going here? However, to save boredom kicking in, the game also incorporates a day/night system - in the day happy cuddly animals such as cows, chickens and pigs roam the land, but at night they are replaced by skeletons, spiders and zombies that are out to kill you. So the goal is simply to survive by building shelters, food, armour, weapons etc etc.

This game looks set to explode in popularity now more people know about it, and then maybe the developer, Notch, might finally finish the game (at the moment it's still in alpha development). Minecraft looks to have unlimited potential with the way things can be created and the various physics the game holds including electricity, water and gravity. You can already see the amazing things being created back when it's audience was tiny so have a search on YouTube and whilst there watch some gameplay vids because believe me - you'll be impressed!

There's so much more to say about this game but I think it's easier just to watch it and find out for yourself, so go on, do it now!

Sunday, August 22

Oh poop.

Well it's been two days and there's been nothing but having only missed yesterday by 24 minutes I don't feel incredibly bad.

25 minutes now*.

I'll make up for it tomorrow with something good and longer than usual I think. That should happitise anyone who reads this. And to those people I say well done, have a goldstar**.

As for now I shall just show this advert that came up whilst I was listening to the wonderful Neil Diamond on YouTube. I know adverts are supposed to be related but it made me chuckle nonetheless...


* 29 minutes now
** You will not receive any actual goldstars, instead you must use your imagination

Thursday, August 19

Motion controls: Useless.

So I was scrolling through YouTube aimlessly as usual and decided to go on IGN's channel. There I found a video about the new Harry Potter Deathly Hallows game. Now I'm definitely not a major Harry Potter fan (I gave up on the books after number three) but...I guess I was bored so I watched it. And to my surprise I found this...



Now I shouldn't judge it on one game...but when the one game in question looks this bad I can't help it. To be honest I don't really like the idea of motion controls in game consoles anyway (some Wii games that I have are an exception because it uses them well e.g. MarioKart, Super Mario Galaxy, Warioware Touched...you see a pattern?) because the majority of gamers, being fat/lazy/nerdy/unfit, don't want to move. Wii have opened up a disgusting terrible market with 'family' games but the less said about that the better.

But this Harry Potter video is new level of crapness. Firstly it seems to be an on-rails game, making the actual gameplay nothing more than what you see - waving your arms. Secondly, it's the arm waving!!! Who wants to do that? Who wants to work with a friend flicking your arm? There's no strategy, no excitement and no fun (not to mention the fact the detection looks a bit iffy).

When I first heard about Kinect (or Project Natal back then) it did sound exciting but not for the reason I think they meant. I didn't want to play any games on it, oh my no. I was just fascinated with the technology involved and that's all. And even that looks a bit dodgy now with all these demo's. The Playstation Move looks exactly the same except instead of holding nothing you're holding...well...y'know what people have described them as...

Xbox and Playstation - leave the Wii with it's own market and don't try and interfere. Just stick to what the people want - more explosions, more guns and more Timesplitters...ahem...no? Just me then...

Wednesday, August 18

Lights, Camera...no, I won't be that cliché.

There was no news or anything at all yesterday. Not a single thing. No cells. No light. No gravity. No laws of Physics. Therefore I didn't exist and could not post anything.

But now, there is. So that's good.

And today and I want to say something fairly simple. Play this game now.


I don't care if you don't like films. Or Activision (however greedy and manipulative they are). Or Lionhead with the seemingly always high Peter Molyneux. Or strategy games. Just get it and make movies on the creator part. Trust me, it's amazing and for a game that came out in 2005, it hasn't been trumped and probably never will do.

As for the expansion pack 'Stunts & Effects', I've haven't got that yet but I'm planning to and it looks to make the experience even better!

Monday, August 16

People care enough to not care on Facebook


Petitions are currently being signed by people who obviously need to get out more. Yes, Facebook users are demanding a 'Meh' button similar to that of the 'Like' one, after seeing the button being taken up by many other websites to great success. Some idiotic CEO bloke quotes "it's a surprising hit", despite the fact all that shows is people are publicly declaring 'I don't like this, I am bored or disappointed or unimpressed by this" about his particular website. Now that's business!

Plus, the addition of this button to Facebook would only mean more junk to arrive on your newsfeed...






So that's a definite no from me, yet one thing I will take away useful from this apparent slow news day (ahem..three days ago...) at New York Daily News is that the actual word, like all things, was created by the Simpsons. God bless Jebus...and the Simpsons...the good Simpsons...seasons 1 - 9...ok I'll stop.

Sunday, August 15

And that's the end of that chapter...


Well there we are. I finally completed Red Dead Redemption, after blogging about it all that time ago. I don't really want to get into a full on review about it, well not yet anyway but I will say this - it's probably one of the best games I ever played. The ending was incredible and really does make you realise how good Rockstar are at storytelling and creating real, emotional characters. Of course, this doesn't mean it's 100% complete though. No, I've got all the stranger side missions, the hunting, the outfits, the weapons, the extra activities, the achievements, the forts and a whole lot more to do now.

All I know is I'll be getting the DLC for sure, and I really do hope there's a sequel on the way, or perhaps even better, a prequel.

Oh and another thing I'm going to try and do is find the elusive Donkey Lady and Cougar Man!

Poor Mexico

Saturday, August 14

Good news everyone!

I lied. Bad news actually. I'm in a non-write-y mood today but after watching a new episode of Futurama just now, I feel the need to praise it. Therefore, I shall show you how good it is in just three GIFs...



 

 

 Go watch it now! 

Friday, August 13

Oh and by the way...

Happy Friday the 13th!!!



Enjoy it, and try not to die.

A belated Call of Duty: Black Ops Multiplayer Trailer analysis!

Yes, Treyarch finally decided to show all the 10 year olds what they can use to annoy next, and I must say I'm split. However glitchy, unfair and hugely irritating Modern Warfare 2 is, people can't excuse the fact it's a good FPS. No, it's just other players that make it the way it is. Yet it's when they add things to game which purposely seems to be there for campers or hackers or whatever to take use that annoys the hell outta me (ahem...tactical insertion...grenade launcher...). And from this trailer for the next game in the COD series, things seem just as jumbled up in the good/bad factor as Modern Warfare 2 was...



So let's go through this shall we...

0:10 - Some strange camera thing allows you to see other rooms with a thermal like vision. Interesting, yet rather obvious and I'm guessing they wouldn't last long before someone takes it out. Basically a worse version of a UAV.

0:19 - Here we see it's a 3 killstreak for the little racing car which you shall soon find out about...

0:20 - Look at the big fancy rocket! Ooh-ahh!

0:22 - Like MW2, care packages are 4 kill streaks.

0:28 - Holy Moses, a bomber bow blow-y-up-y thing! Yeah, I don't like the looks of this, firstly because I can see you just dying randomly by not hearing the thing. But also, if you're the one firing, I can imagine the time it takes for it to blow up the enemy would already be dead.

0:30 - 5 kill streak equal Predator Missile, or something similar.

0:31 - Knife/dart shooter looks cool, but hard to use as well. Then again, maybe that's a good thing. Followed by a double knife kill that looks just a lunge-y as before...great...

0:42 - Helicopter/Copper Gunner another killstreak reward.

0:50 - Yeah yeah, a sticky grenade, something we've seen in Halo and MW2...who cares?

0:55 - Here we go, the racing car bomb - I like this...it's something new and seems fun enough. However, only 3 kills needed to get it? I can see a lot of them racing around you in a game, chasing after you - which sounds pretty darn good in my opinion. (Also, spot the controlled missile in the background, which could be the Predator Missile 4 killstreak thing we saw earlier)

1:03 - In the background, we see a napalm attack which appears to be the Black Ops version of Precision Airstrike. Looks far better and more explosion-y.

1:08 - Sigh...sniping...although to be fair, it seems the hit detection is a lot smaller in this (at least I hope so) so, y'know...people have to actually aim when sniping and we don't get any of this quickscoping/noscoping crap again. Listen players...if you want to shoot like that, use a normal gun...not a sniper rifle...they are not meant to be used like that. Rant over.

1:10 - Bam! Another appearance of that missile, which seems to be a horizontal version of the Predator Missile.

1:18 onwards - What I believe to be the most exciting and interesting part of the trailer - Black Ops will have a playback system like Halo 3's Theatre mode. Finally! So when you do do that amazing grenade multi-kill or a particularly funny kill-cam, you can show your friends without trying to explain it to them! Later we see an upload feature, either being to a dedicated site by Treyarch or perhaps to Youtube. Who knows? Either way, it'll make montages and killcam kills a lot more prominent on Youtube. Hmmm...good or bad?

And there we have it, a mixture of woo hoo's and boo hoo's I think. At the moment I'm still not completely sold on buying this, but no doubt if my chums do on x-box, I will to. Maybe the campaign and/or other features we sell it to me, but at the moment all eyes are on Halo Reach!

Thursday, August 12

News just in!


INCEPTION IS GOOD!!!

Long time no see


Yes, yes I know - 77 days...I do apologise most sincerely...well, a bit anyway.

However, be prepared for daily updates starting today! That's right, every day a marvellous new thing to read from Dropped Banana going straight from the webpage into your eyeballs!!!

Enjoy!

p.s. My days are much different from your puny human 'days', hopefully that doesn't muck things up...