[040]

Released: November 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, Nintendo DS
Modes: Single-player, multiplayer, co-op
Developer: Treyarch

Call of Duty games are very over-hyped. School boys go crazy for them, leading to more serious gamers resenting the game slightly, claiming that they are bad, rubbish, terrible, etc. It's a similar story if a cult music band suddenly gains a more mainstream audience. Though their music may not have gotten worse (in most cases, they would've gotten better), their new popularity causes their old, 'hardcore' fans to suddenly dislike them. The same, I notice, has happened to Call of Duty fans. Yes, the games are over-rated and yes, they're nothing particulary new or special, but the point I'm attempting to make it this: they are not bad games. I don't know why people play games, but I for one play games to experience 'fun' and to have a good time. And Black Ops delivers this feeling of 'fun'. Sure, it's not technically brilliant but does every game need to be a work of art for you to have a play and enjoy it ? Anyway, I've had my minor, incomprehensible rant, let's get on with the actual review.

Seeing as they release a COD every month or so, I seem to have developed a tradition now where I won't play any multiplayer or zombies or whatever until I've completed the campaign. It doesn't take too long, only about eight hours or so (ten at a push) to go through a play on a reasonable difficulty. I enjoyed the campaign alot, it had the best storyline in a COD since World at War (I tend to be a sucker for World War II storylines, yes I am a massive nerd). I tended to be a lot less interested in the previous storylines as if you blinked you'd lose track of who you're meant to be playing in this particuar chapter or how many times your character at the time were supposed to have died. But yeah, it was good'un, lots of turns and suspense, it really made me want to keep on playing, even just to see what those goddamn numbers meant. Gameplay wise, there wasn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking compared to previous titles. Helicoptor missions, sniper and stealth missions, snow missions, they're all here but there's nothing especially different about them.

As soon as you're done with all that, you're thrown immediately into a game of Zombies. Nazi Zombies was an unexpected and freakishly huge hit from WAW, which gives Black Ops a slight advantage over the Modern Warfare titles (which had no undead). It's significantly more fun when you play the co-op version. Keeping the wooden barriers up and trying to keep your ammo up, opening rooms and upgrading guns, can get pretty intense when you're trying not to get mutilated by zombies. The maps are better than WAW's, more puzzles and windows, and generally a little more comical and fun.

80% of the whole ~Call of Duty~ experience is from the multiplayer. I suspect it's one of the main reasons everyone wants to go out at midnight and buy it straight away so they don't trail behind everyone getting prestige or whatever. I am not one of these hardcore CODers that have to level up and have the best KTD ratio and unlock all the weapons and be the best and, let's be honest here, take the whole thing a little bit too seriously. I only have MW2's online to compare it to (though I may have given the original MW's a go too, I cannot really remember) but while I thought MW2's was better, Black Ops' was more fun for me because I was better at it. I was getting killstreaks of 7 and such, which is crazy good for me. These other kids who play it have either much quicker reactions or very modded controllers. Of course, Bad Company 2's multiplayer rules supreme overall, but let's not get into that right now.

So overall, yeah, I liked Black Ops. It's a good FPS, though I know that it's not 'cool' to say and think that, but let's not get snobby over video games. After all, 18 million consumers can't be wrong, right ?

[039]

Released: October 2010

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC

Modes: Single-player

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

There is absolutely no point in me writing a review of Fallout: New Vegas. There is absolutely nothing constructive or witty I can say about this game that won't make me sound like a grovelling moron. But screw it, I shall carry on regardless, at least for a little while, otherwise I needn't have bothered writing this entry at all. So without further ado, my review:

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the, if not the, best games I have ever played. It is better than 3 and better than most things you will encounter in life ever. So buy it, rent it, whatever. The End. 

[038]

Released: September 2010
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC.
Modes: Single-player, online co-op, multiplayer.
Developer: Capcom

My seemingly undying habit of playing sequels without playing the originals continues. No I did not play the first one. And no, you don't have to take "annoying photos" of the zombies anymore. Whatever that means. But yeah, I'd heard good things and I hadn't played any decent console games for a while so I thought 'why not'.

Serves me right really. I hated this game. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. Well, no that's a lie. I played it for about four-five hours overall ? It was boring. Repetitive. Getting somewhere takes far too long and by the time you've gotten there, this ridiculous time line idea tells you you've run out of time and have therefore PLUNGED THE WORLD INTO ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, but this didn't actually happen because I didn't play it that long.  Maybe that would've made things vaguely interesting.

I don't really understand the appeal of this game unless you're obsessed with combo weapons (making them and discovering them) and how many different ways you can de-limb a zombie. Maybe it's just me that after the first ten minutes of slicing my way through endless zombies I was feeling, "Hm, cute, now can we have some substance?".

I think that's the issue I have with this game, there's no substance. I didn't care what happened. Sure, I didn't want that little girl to die, but did Chuck really have to be so antagonistic the whole time ? And the girls, oh my God. Each one gets larger breasts, a sluttier personality and an even more cringe and overly-sexually-hungry dialogue. Women are portrayed terribly in this game. And if the game itself didn't bore or annoy me to high heaven, it would've gotten away with it.

Also if Co-op had been offline. Online co-op I'm not too much of a fan of, but if it was offline I would've given it a go at least. I find playing with real life people a lot more entertaining. I didn't play multiplayer either. What's the point if the campaign has you clawing your own eyes out.

Reading other reviews, I do wonder whether it's just me being overly critical and maybe something is vaguely wrong with me to not find this game at least entertaining. Mine seems to be the most negative. I like a game with a good story, a non-repetitive combat system, characters I don't want to stab in the ear, and for me, Dead Rising has none of these.

[037]

Released: August 2010
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC.
Modes: Single-player
Developer: 2K Czech

This review could go one of two ways to be quite honest. I could say nice things, or I could say diabolically terrible things, because believe me, this game has both.

I never played Mafia 1, so I cannot tell you how it compares. I’ve heard people say it’s a lot worse, I’ve heard people say it’s better, but I’m not saying a thing, as that’s something I can’t help you with. I can ramble on for a bit though about my experiences.

Like Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II has a reputation to be similar to Grand Theft Auto. This is wrong. You get to drive around a big city to get to the person you need to do a mission for, but this, to me anyway, is where the similarity ends. I don’t believe Mafia II is a sandbox game at all. You follow a set story line. You don’t go and do random side quests or decide who’s quest to do next, you get no options. You can occasionally go and sell cars or buy clothes, but I only bothered to do this to get the achievements, it’s a bit pointless otherwise. So don’t go into this game thinking, “Oh yeah, another GTA, yeah yeah!”, or you’ll just be disappointed.

The combat system did my nut in. To me, it seemed inconsistent. You can be getting shot to shit one minute without really coming to too much harm, or you can get shot once and BAM- dead. It was annoying, especially when the only thing you have to rely on is auto saves that send you right back to the entrance of the damn building. If it was due to my own stupidity of  my own terribleness at games then fair enough, but I felt this game was just trying to piss me off.

Enough with negativity though, I loved the story. It has twists and turns, death and beytrayal, wars and peace, highs and lows, riches and poor, it’s well written, it’s gripping. It’s the only reason I carried on playing to be honest, I HAD to see how it all ended.

But that’s when it gets pants again. The ending of Mafia II is the laziest ending of a game I have ever experienced. It is a cliff-hanger. I hate cliff-hangers. This is a game, not a damn movie, I want to see how my actions have affected everyone, what happens to this guys I’ve been controlling for the past eight to ten hours (yeah, this game’s short, did I mention that?). It feels like the writers couldn’t think of or couldn’t be bothered to come up with a decent ending. It’s like they just ran out of studio time. As soon as the credits start rolling, I’ll guarantee you’ll shriek an annoyed, “WHAT WAS THAT” to your screen. It’s THAT bad.

But no, let’s end of something posititve. The graphics are good. Very, very good. When you’re driving around at night and it’s raining, you can fully appreciate the level of attention to detail that went into the aesthetics of this game. It truly is stunning sometimes. And driving is fun too. Better than the shambles of GTA. Yeah I said it. I was quite happy to drive around obeying traffic laws, being courteous to other drivers and listening to 40s music because it was such a nice experience. I even won a few races. Me ! Unheard of.

Mafia II has it’s very bad points but it also has it’s very good points. I believe it’s one of those games where you can’t really listen to a review but you must make up your own mind. I know people who loved this game so much they’d rate it as one of the best of the year, but there are others like me who are a lot more sceptical.

[036]

Released: May 2010
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Modes: Single-player, multi-player
Developer: Rockstar

Let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t like Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s not so much that it’s a bad game, because it isn’t, it’s the fact that I wasn’t very good at it. At all. You know that mission at the beginning where you go to a park and beat up that guy? Yes the practise one. I died. No I don’t know how or why, I’m that bad at it that I died at the practise fight, the fight that lets you get used to the combat system. I also cannot control those damn cars. And racing with them ? Don’t even get me started, I don’t stand a chance. I stopped playing that game after a few hours. I was absolutely rubbish.

So when another game comes out by Rockstar that follows the same kind of model, only mixed with cowboys, I was sceptical. I wasn’t keen on Rockstar’s previous games (apart from Bully) and I’m not fond of cowboys. I held out on buying it for quite some time and bought it just to have a go and maybe give it the boyfriend after I had been beaten senseless by it.

I do love a surprise though. Turns out I wasn’t as appalling at Red Dead as I was at GTA, and I had a damn fun time doing it too. I’m not saying it’s easy, because it’s not, but it didn’t make me want to smash my head against my Xbox and using my imminent brain damage as an excuse to not play video games anymore. Unlike GTA.

You play John Marston, a retired outlaw who’s just started to enjoy life on the right side of the law, when his family are taken as a sort of ransom by the government. The only way to get them back, he is told, is by hunting down the remnants of his former gang. So you’re basically going around southern America and Mexico tracking down these men, doing random side missions and shooting a whole lot of animals and bad people. Which is lots of fun. The story is better than it sounds. I felt myself caring a lot about John and his family, especially near the end of the game, where you’re just egging for everything to turn out okay. The very end left me a little heartbroken, but in a good way. If that makes any sort of sense.

The combat system is only slightly different from GTA. You eventually get this mode that enables you to slow down time and choose multiple targets to shoot at. Which is lovely and useful if you’re rubbish at aiming like me. You get to hide behind things like in GTA which is useful when twenty pissed off Mexicans are shooting at you. I do keep comparing this game to GTA, but when a new game is so similar to such an important and popular game, it cannot be helped. Most of Red Dead’s sales can be down to people knowing this was by GTA’s creators and thinking that it would be similar. Which it is in a way, but takes the best aspects of the game and makes them less annoying. Which works for me.

The only thing that may annoy GTA fans is that being bad in Red Dead is a bit lame. You have occasional options to be a badman (this game’s slogan after all is ‘outlaw to the end’, which isn’t exactly accurate, but whatever) but it doesn’t really pay. Getting away from the ‘cops’ is far too easy, and they just seem to forget that you need to a pay a bounty. Also if you’re accidentally bad, you may have a whole town hating your guts for no reason. Which is also annoying, especially when you need to do a damn important mission in that town.

I won’t talk about the multiplayer, mostly because I only played it for about ten minutes. I think it’s one of those multiplayers where it’s only really fun if you’re playing with your friends. It’s really hard to get into when you’re only level one, riding a poor donkey and you’re so worn out by playing the main missions and those side things where you have to collect flowers (yes I did enjoy that, yes I’m female) that you can’t really be arsed.

But no, I enjoyed this game. If you like your sandboxes, get it without hesitation, you will not be disappointed. I’m not sure if the GTA fan will appreciate it as much as I did (boyfriend is a hardcore GTA fan and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about Red Dead) but give it a go, it’s old now, it’ll be cheap :D

[035]

Life isn't too exciting right now. After America and Dir en grey, things seemed to have slowed down alot for me. We've moved house now, which is gay, but it's also quite interesting. I wish I'd written more during the time as it would probably be quite uplifting, or the complete opposite, to read in the future. But whatever, I'm lazy at stuff like this most of the time. Especially when the places I have to write on this laptop are a complete mess.

Laura's birthday weekend in Brighton was a bit of a highlight though.

Any excuse to dress up is a fun time in my opinion.

I just wish I could feel like my life was going somewhere.

[034] the best night of my life.

(photos from Hannah Thomas Photography, she got some amazing shots)

So on Tuesday the 3rd of August, a month after returning from America, I'd have an experience that'd warp me even more than that trip.

Mark and I got to London about 4pm and started queueing about half an hour later after some food. Or, the only food I could really keep down (gigs make me anxious). So burgers it is. The queue wasn't very interesting. I can usually chat away to people in Jrock-gig queues, but the girls behind us were Japanese (I wasn't sure whether they could speak English very well, or generally didn't like English people, or maybe they were those kind of elitist Japanese fans, or whatever, I didn't want to risk it haha) and the girls in front of us seemed fine in their own little world. I saw Kazmin for a brief time too, which was cool, as I haven't seen her for what must be a few years. Dir en grey always seem to reunite us.

After about two hours of queueing, we were finally allowed to come into the venue. I bought two t-shirts straight away, but I was strangely disappointed they didn't have more merchandise. I got out about £80 to spend on them but only ended up spending £40. Not that I should be complaining anyway, I can't really afford even to spend that forty. But I do stupid things for this band.

The gig was held at Koko Camden, which is an amazingly elaborate but decent-sized venue. It had the bottom floor which held the stage and a very large floor to hold, well, a lot of messy pits. Then there was a first floor balcony, with stairs leading up to the second balcony. There were also some private booth balconies, which all had amazing views of the stage. I was quite jealous of these people. We stood on the stairs between the two sets of balconies. I could see the stage so very clearly, much better than last time.  I was also next to some pretty friendly people which was nice, who all seemed pretty much as excited as I was. Mark took this opportunity to stock up on beer.

There was no support band, so we had to wait an hour while background music would gradually get louder, and small sound checks would take place. I prefer this to be honest, because support bands on the whole usually annoy me. I've seen like three decent ones in my time, and I prefer just having slight noise than annoying noise.

I rarely have fangirl moments. I've seen a hell of a lot of bands in my time (this makes me sound ancient, but it's true) and I never seem to have manic moments when I will just scream and scream and bounce like a little girl for a moment. Unless of course it's Dir en grey and I just seem to forget I'm surrounded by people and screech and screech when the lights go out.

They came on one at a time as always. They played that intro track from Uroboros in the background, and then they slammed right into Red Soil. The rest of the setlist, if you know Diru, was;

SE. SABIR
Red soil
Agitated screams of maggots
THE FATAL BELIEVER
Hageshisa to kono mune no naka de karamitsuita shakunetsu no yami
Stuck man
Gaika chinmoku ga nemuru koro
Inconvenient ideal

INWARD SCREAM

Dozing green
Rotting root
Shokubeni
OBSCURE

INWARD SCREAM

Bugaboo
Reiketsu nariseba
Vinushka

ENCORE:
The Final
Zan
RASETSUKOKU

I'm not a fan of Agitated or Inconvenient Ideal, but somehow I even managed to enjoy those songs. The set list looks long when I look at it like this, but I didn't want it to end. I'd have loved it to go on for another hour, even though by the time the encore came around I was sweating and sore already. And I wasn't even in the pits.

The crowd around me changed a few times. The stairs got crowded after a few songs, but I mostly had small girls like me around me so I didn't get pushed around alot until people wanted to go up and the down stairs. People wandering around during gigs piss me off. "Oh let's go get a drink", what, fuck drinks, let's watch this amazing band instead. Some of these people were exceptionally rude as well, literally pushing us out the way instead of just nudging us and asking us to move. Especially this large scene girls and a very, very large boy who insisted on rubbing his knee across my bum for an entire song before then asking me to move. I had two girls next to me for the first half who may have been from Sweden or some part of Europe because they chanted with a slight accent, but we got moved around a bit and I ended up next to these two scene girls. I didn't like them too much to begin with because they made Mark move a little away from me and weren't very active. But when that massive guy rammed past us all, they had to squash me right into the rails of the stairs, and they got concerned and asked me if I was okay which was very nice, so I liked them after that haha. I'm easily pleased. They got into it in the later parts of the gigs, though one of them seemed quite self conscious, and seemed to only dance or wave her arms or get into it if I was doing it at the same time. But I don't really blame her, as I'm usually that way if it was any other band. 

The highlights were Hageshisha because the sing along was so fun and everyone seemed to know it. Gaika because it's one of my favourites from Uroboros, as with Reiketsu. The best however was Vinushka, which is such a powerful song, and it being live made it so much more epic and intense, it was amazing. As was The Final. I was hoping for The Final so much, and when the intro played I could've exploded. It's one of my favourite ever Dir en grey songs and to hear it being performed with such an amazing atmosphere and the band putting so much effort into every little thing was one of the best moments I've ever experienced. Also let's not forget Vulgar classics Obscure and Shokubeni. Amazing songs, and they really suit Dir en grey's heavier style right now.

Kyo had a few voice solos ('inward screams') which were very cool, but western audiences don't keep as quiet as Japanese ones so you could hear a few people chatting at the same time which was pretty annoying. Each member seemed really enthusiastic, Kyo shouting 'Roonndaaannnn' at us all the time, Toshiya, Die and Kaoru beckoning us to jump harder or shout louder. At the end they threw us water, picks and drum sticks (Shinya got such a loud cheer when he got out behind his kit). Kyo clapped us and then was off, but the rest, especially Toshiya and Die stayed for a little while to thank us some more with claps and bows, and threw more liquids and picks.

An hour and a half set later we were out, sweating like crazy but I was high as a kite haha. We still had an hour until my dad would pick us up, so Kazmin found me and we talked about our experiences, then Mark and I sat in a pub until he arrived. There were fans waiting outside the stage door waiting for Diru to come out, but I thought they'd be hours still so I never think of waiting. When we were literally getting into the car however, we heard massive screams coming from the venue. Damnit, missed them !

There's no use of me writing a critical review of the gig because to me, Dir en grey can do no wrong. I loved their latest album, and their performances seemed so much better to me than last time I saw them (2007). I've been "umm"ing and "err"ing about whether to get a Dir en grey tattoo for the past four or five years, but that night confirmed it for me that it pretty much needs to happen.