PS4 or Xbox one an Update.

I wrote a piece long before the release of the Playstation 4 and the Xbox one discussing their relative merits and in particular which of the two I was going to buy. Now the long and short of it was that I had sat and weighed up all the positives and negatives I knew about and decided that the PS4 was the machine for me. I followed this up after I found myself getting an Xbox but now it is a lot further down the line so I figured that it would be time to take another look, a third look at the two consoles and what they have to offer.

Originally before the machines launched I might have cared a little bit about there stats how powerful this or that component is but in seeing them both run side by side I have to say that what you see and what you get game wise is close enough for any technical specifications to be nothing but a series of numbers. Each machine has its own exclusive games but when it comes down to the third party games if you owned both machines like I do then I would tell you to simply buy whichever version you could get cheapest or to make your decision on which pad you prefer holding, or on which machine still has some free storage space.

I made the argument that In the early years of a console’s lifespan when even second hand games can be quite expensive, paying a yearly rate for services like PS+/Games for gold seemed like a good idea.I also went on to say that PS+ was better value because you would get more games, well Microsoft have done something to level the playing field a little. Microsoft have introduced backwards compatibility allowing you to play some Xbo 360 games on your Xbox One. They are adding to the number every month an basically any 360 games that end up on games for Gold they are making run on the Xbox One, not only does this make Gold a better prospect than it was its also a nice little touch in itself.

Of course you can also pick up a lot of second hand games for cheap prices now for both systems which helps if your thinking of jumping on board now buying one of these machines and grabing a few games to keep you busy.

I originally said that the 500gig Hard drives that both machines come with were inadequate for anything more than the most casual of gamers, this is something I still stand by. Once you find yourself with anything more than 10 to 15 games on either machine you will find your hard drive space is becoming a real issue, and you really dont want to end up in the dance of having to uninstall and reinstall stuff just to play it. I installed a 2 Terrabyte hard drive in to my PS4 and it is still holding up for the moment, I have about 500gig left. I then added an external 500gig hard drive to my Xbox one, followed by a 2 terrabyte one, I now have about 800gig left. As I have previously stated this is one key area where the Xbox one is at an advantage, it can use up to 2 external hard drives at a time to increase its storage capacity. The PS4 cannot install games to an external hard drive so if you run out of space it is a much larger pain in the behind, basically you will need to buy a bigger hardrive, save all of your game saves to the internet, install the hard drive and re-download/install all of your games and saves. This is something that Sony still has not addressed for whatever reason. My recommendation is that if your planning on some serious gaming if you pick the PS4 then factor in a good sized hard drive you think will last you and buy it alongside the PS4 and install it from the start to save yourself a lot of trouble, as a side note the drive you take out of the PS4 can be blanked clean and used in a PC or other device. If your looking at buying an Xbox One then its a little easier either buy it when you can afford it and worry about storage latter or price up a external hard drive and buy one alongside it if you have the money. Now another important thing to remember is the Xbox One can only use two external drives at a time, but that doesn't mean you couldn't end up with 4 with a label on each letting you know whats on them so you can swap between them.

I still find the pad a little better on the xbox one, but then despite all of the updates both machines have had I do find the PS4 to just run better as a machine, there are a few times when the xbox one has refused to load games somehow having become stuck and I have had to reset it and I do not have any similar issues to report for my PlayStation hardware. This was true on the Xbox One's original OS and its still true with all of the updates, its not something that happens a lot but when it does its annoying.

I still stand by the closing statement I made in my last post on the subject so I will simply quote it here ''In short though I have gotten almost equal enjoyment from both machines, If you haven’t jumped on board this generation yet and are looking for some advice then here it is ‘’Look at the deals you can get for each machine, look at the games currently available on both machines, look at how many second hand games are around in your area and how cheap they are and then make your own informed decision from there, I don’t personally feel there is a wrong or right choice, just the one that’s right for you.’’

Black Friday and Christmas Sales from the eyes of a Gamer

OK so around about this time last year I did a post about the Black Friday sales that year which I called the''Black Friday crush a prone persons head just to get a flat screen TV award for most franticly desire for a product.''

Last year the scenes which ended up on our TV’s mostly showed people wrestling over television sets in super markets, although things did get stupider than even that as footage leaked to various internet sites showed. For example an approximately size 18 woman punched out a roughly size 6 woman over a pair of panties which couldn't possible of fitted both of them. Well what happend this year? Was there any bloodshed or craziness? Not really. There was this big build up some companies pushed how great there deals would be, then there were build up to Black Friday sales, the typical Amazon lightning deals were not too bad but then ASDA the very people who decided to bring this Sales holiday over here backed out of the whole thing. The two main TV reports I saw included a report on how only one man had turned up for the sales at a particular store and how another store had put on shed loads of staff and opened up at 4AM in the morning ready and waiting for the rush to find that there was no rush, no one turned up till much latter.

The shop I work in had a few Black Friday sales, but even if it got busy it never got scary or dangerous. So did I buy anything on Black Friday? Well not much, I did buy a few games from a Pawn store which took 20% off of all of its games prices, mostly however my stuff came from both Game and Amazons lead up to Black Friday sales. In fact I got Gears of War Ultimate Edition for £15 and Transformers Devastation for £20 from Game in the lead up sale worrying that maybe they would be even cheaper come Black Friday and that I would feel stupid but they actually went up in price with Gears of War Ultimate being £18 in the actual Black Friday sale and Devastation being £23.

So with Black Friday having proved a bit of a bust what about Christmas sales. Well I remember that both Sony and Microsoft had some great sales leading up to Christmas on there digital stores last year and the year before, in fact I remember one year spending about £130 on the Xbox Store, every day there was an irresistible deal, it seemed to start at the beginning of December and carried on all the way up to New Years day with my fallout practically begging for mercy as I brought arcade titles, full retail titles, DLC. Now so far Microsoft had a Black Friday sale in which the digital games were despite being reduced still much more expensive to buy then it would be to order a new sealed copy of the same game on Disc and have it delivered to your house. Sony have started this buy one PS4 game get one free deal but then they have made the games all £44.99 when some of them I have seen for as little as £12.99 on sale. One of these games is Until Dawn which I recently paid £16.50 for from ShopTo in a sale another is Lego Batman 3 which I have seen for £12.99, now even if your not a maths wizard you can easily see adding those two numbers together is a lot less than £44.99 and you have something physical you could if you choose sell when you've finished them.

To be honest it feels like this is how Black Friday will be from now on, its lost its wow factor over here at least but when it comes to the Seasonal sales on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store maybe things will improve but I guess the important thing is not to see the words Sale and go nuts, slow down take a long hard look around and price up what you want in multiple places, look at both digital and physical prices and unless your absolutely desperate for something dont be afraid to play the waiting game.

Ash Versus Evil Dead Episodes 3 and 4 reviewed

OK so if you follow this blog you have probably been wondering why I made such a big fuss of the first 2 episodes of Ash Versus Evil Dead and then went silent. Well one of the reasons was just plain being busy another is that with the rather short nature of the episodes I wanted to wait till I had a chunk of stuff to write about. So here I am going to cover tepisode 3 and 4 and what I think about them both. Obviously there will be some spoilers here , the episodes are good enough to watch so Id recommend doing that first and then seeing if you agree or disagree with my opinion on them. Hopefully I will also catch up with 5 and 6 and reviewing them before 7 hits the air.

Episode 3: Books From Beyond

Now this episode is all about an occult bookstore that had been mentioned in the first two episodes. Now kudos where it is due the set design is excellent, there are so many fantastic little props which add detail and character to this shop, its just amazing to see them put so much effort in to a place which we will most likely never see again, it makes the world seem more true, more real.So basically they are there to see if the owner can read the necronomicon and find an undo spell in it which will get rid of all of the deadities, but in short he cant. So Ash being typical ash decides that what they are going to do is use the book to summon a wimpy demon which they can then quiz but of course if you've seen the Evil Dead films you know how well Ash luck and Ash plans usually go and true to form things go from bad to worse. Now I have always loved the fact that Ash essentially is despite being a hero a dumb ass, a blow hard zero brained kind of guy who just goes chasing in to trouble with his boom stick chainsaw and a bag full of one liners.Pablo does stand up to Ash a little and kind of says its a dumb idea but hero worships Ash to much to really push it. The whole uniqueness of this series is that our bunch of heroes are incredibly outclassed and hopeless but they are what we have got.We also got to see a bit more of Lucy Lawless’ character in a scene which showed how good she is at dispatching Deadites. I have seen people go ''oh what is her link to Ash, oh how does she know him why does she want him?'', I wont spoilt it but I will give you the tools to work it out yourself, find her last name either in credits or a press release and then watch the first film again and that will tell you all you need to know. I do think that the future interactions we will get between her and Ash will be the stuff of legends.

So far the slapstick and gratuitous gore has been well mixed with a sense of genuine horror, it seems to be towing the line set by the second Evil Dead film never really getting quite as disturbing as the original movie nor ending up as silly as the third (I dont meen silly as in bad I love Evil Dead 3/Army of Darkness) I think that the demon that was summoned in this episode was well designed and actually a pretty cool and scary character, it kind of shows that the book is not just about zombie like deadite creatures it is so much more than that, so much more dangerous. This episode was all in all pretty darn fantastic.

Episode 4: Brujo

OK so really so far Ash vs. Evil Dead has been all about the witty one liners, the comedy and the gory killing of Deadites, the last episode gave us an interesting demon who I was a bit disappointed didn't get more time, well guess what he does. The tone of this particular episode is a lot different to the early ones but your going to get that when you change directors and this episode is definitely less fast-paced.

“Brujo” is about Ash, Pablo, and Kelly going to see a witch doctor relative of Pablo's who raised him, the reason being that all they seemed to learn from the previous episode is that the answer was inside Ash. So this episode is basically about Ash being taken on what could best be described as a spirit quest. He enters a world inside his own mind and we get to learn more about him as a person, what he likes, what he wants. We learn that his happy place is Jacksonville Florida a place he has an obsession with but has never visited. Apparently he wanted to go there instead of to the original cabin in the wood where all of this started in the first Evil Dead film. However before anything much can be learned it turns out that the demon from the last episode is not gone as they believed it is in fact inside of Kelly.

We also learn that another old enemy of Ash's is still about and is in fact how Lucy Lawless's character is managing to track him, who is this enemy? Well its his own hand which he cut off with a chainsaw after it got possessed. The hand is wrapped in cloth and although not moving around like it was is still twitching and showing signs of life, so maybe just maybe as it gets closer to Ash we will get to see another epic hand against man showdown like in Evil Dead 2.

For me this episode is a dream come true for Evil Dead fans, you get to learn more about Ash as a person how he thinks and feels, what he is like inside, your learn that his hand is still well not alive but well still twitching, still possessed or undead or howver you want to refer to it. You also see that Lucy Lawless's character has a knife not to unlike the one in Evil Dead 2. It might be a bit slower a bit more cerebral than the episodes before it but its the one that proves that this show has some real legs and enough ideas to go the distance.

Is it bad if a game depicts Violence in a realistic way?

Today I am going to ask and try to answer a few questions ''Is it better or worse when Games depict violence in a realistic way, if it is bad why is it bad and should it be stopped.'' I was playing Sniper Eliter V3 the other day and I made a kill shot a kill shot in which the game showed me the bullet quiet literally entering the victims skull and breaking its way through bone and through flesh, now I know there are people who would say that this is to much, that it is basically violence or gun porn and that it is selling sickness to our children. Well I wont get on to the whole kids thing basically because I am not the kind of stupid moron that does not understand that games are not all made for children. Yes some would argue that while adult games exist children could get a hold of them and play them but by this same logic children could also get there hands on 18 certificate horror or action films, pornography, cigarettes and alcohol or even sit reading Lady Chatterley's Lover or at least they could if there parents clearly didn't give a shit about them or simply cared more about having an easy life by any means possible including allowing your kids to watch what they want play what they want and sacrifice the family dog to the dark lord Satan. When parents value a little peace and quiet and no arguing more than they value the stability and development of there children then this is when shit really does begin to hit the fan.

Now lets assume that we live in a world which is far more perfect than our own, one where the young are not allowed to watch or play anything which they are not yet emotionally and mentally ready for (I say this as opposed to legally allowed as I feel age certificates dont tell the whole picture, what one person can see, understand and process at the age of 12 another might not be ready for until they are 15). I think in this situation you could make an argument that it is in fact better to see more realistic effects of sword slashes and weapons fire compared to simply seeing enemies flash, drop down and then disappear. Going back to Sniper Elite when you see someone die it looks painful at times it has made me cringe and make involuntary noises, it really does hammer home the fact that not only would I not want to be shot and die like this in real life I would not want to do what I am doing to the in game enemies to a real person. Yes you can argue that other people might see this and feel differently you could argue that some might see this level of violence and be attracted to it, that they might in fact feel the desire to replicate it but if you say that and you want to try to use that for as an excuse to try and ban or sanitise something then you need to stop and think about the big picture. Violence has existed longer than Video Games, Video games are not the first medium to depict violence, there was violence in films before and there was violence in literature, in fact lots of classic literature including holy books are absolutely dripping in violence and gore or at the very least the suggestion of it. So surly if you were going to argue for outlawing violence in one form of media then you need to do the same thing with all the others music, film , books.

The honest truth is that the realistic gore in some games is just used as a scape goat , no one wants to be held accountable anymore, parents dont want to admit that there kids have ended up as shitty human beings because they were to busy being selfish and ignoring them. People themselves dont want to be held accountable for committing crimes when they can try to use any old excuse to weasel there way out of it. I am not the first one to notice or comment on this in fact one of my favourite examples of this is South Park and in particular the movie. Look at the lines in the song Blame Canada, after spending the whole song saying how they wouldn't blame this that or the other for the fate and actions of there children and that they instead would blame Canada, now look at the last line ''We must blame them and cause a fuss...Before somebody thinks of blaming us!''. Add to this the moment when Cartman decides that instead of taking responsibility for his actions he will say the following '' That movie warped my fragile little mind.''


If everyone would just take responsibility for there own kids and even more importantly for there own actions then there would be no need to keep talking about this and the world would be a much better place.

So we are now bombing Syria, and how I feel about it.

So here I am again talking about the current state of our world yet again instead of Video Games and horror movies, but the truth is unfortunatly the world is so bloody dark at the moment that no horror movie could possibly compete with it, and also I am pissed off and need to get some of it out of my system.

So it has been mentioned that David Cameron criticised the Russian bombing of Syria not to long ago because of the fact that it would lead to increased radicalisation, then what did he do, well if you read this blog or even the news in general then you will know that he Voted to bomb Syria a few days ago, that he said that anyone who didn't vote Yes or didn't believe that we should bomb them was a terrorist sympathiser. Then basically we started bombing them as soon as it was possible, right away without a pause. So what incredible vital place did we bomb well we bombed the Omar oil field in Syria and apparently it went tremendously well according to the press here is one particular quote to show how it has been reported “Four Tornados took off from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus just an hour after MPs voted in favour of launching airstrikes in the war-torn country. The jets struck targets in the Omar oil field in Eastern Syria, dealing a “real blow” to the death cult, also known as Daesh.”

Sounds great doesn't it? We hit a strategic target an oil field which would be providing fuel for the enemy and would be very unlikely to have innocent women and children hanging around it. However there is a bit of a fly in the ointment here and that is that on the 23rd of October it was reported that Russian and American planes had completely destroyed the Omar oil field in Syria. Well if it was totally destroyed back then how was there anything to bomb now? When I picture an Oil field bombed to the point it can be considerd tottally destroyed I remember the fact that oil is flammable and picture nothing left but a chared black stain on the ground, so either it wasn't destroyed as much as people claimed the first time, its remarkably easy to clean up and rebuild destroyed oil fields or the media has bullshited us either back then or now

Here is a quote from the reporting of its distruction back in October“The terrorists’ oil field in eastern Syria was obliterated in a day of bombing conducted by both Russia and the US-led coalition. US operations officer Major Michael Filanowski told reporters in Baghdad the Omar oil field was blitzed, heavily damaging the lucrative funding source for ISIS.”

Now if bombs were free and jet fuel didnt cost anything and you could be certain that not one innocent person was harmed then many people might shrug there shoulders and say so what the same site was bombed twice, even if the first lot of bombs had already destroyed it the second lot wouldn't do any harm, surly it would just make doubly sure that the area is smashed. The problem is Jet Fuel, man power and bombs do cost in fact they cost an awful lot.

OK here I have to admit that I do not know the economic cost of war, yes I can look up how much assets cost and make crude guesses but if someone knows better than me then I am not about to argue with them. According to a little research I did America has used both bombs and missiles to hit Syria, now just One Tomahawk cruise missile (something they have used a number of) costs the equivalent of £850,000. Stop and think about that, £850,000 on one missile. The missile didn't just get itself there either a missile needs to be fired by something, something which needs to be controlled by a professional(s) and got in to position all of which costs even more money. This is happening while our Government is going on about cutting Tax benefits making hard worker families poorer, plunging more of our own children in to poverty. Yet if you look at Syria and a company called Genie Energy and a certain region called the Golan Heights which Israel illegally took from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War you can put two and two together and see the advantages for the rich who are invested in Genie Energy in bombing the region into submission in order to get to the black gold. One of those who holds stock in Genie is Rupert Murdock the founder, chairman and CEO of global media holding company News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate. So when a man with such a vested interest in this controls the media you can see we are likely to get a heavily biased story if we turn to this same media for our information. Tony Blair turned out to have money invested in oil so it would hardly surprise me to learn the same was true in terms of Cameron or other politicians who have voted for bombing Syria. 

Also lets look at it logically who is likely to suffer from retaliation. Are the politicians who have voted for this likely to be the ones to die in retaliation? I dont think so, its more likely to be normal every day people. In fact its more likely to be normal average people who suffer all around. The terrorists want to die in glorious flames, they want to be martyrs and have a holly war and this from the looks of things is being handed directly to them, where as the civilians over there most likely just want a quiet life, enough food to eat to be left alone. Both Syrian civilians and the average man(woman) on the street here are looking at the possibility of being blown up because of selfish toss-pots who want what they want regardless of its effect on other people. So Cameron and ISIS both have something in Common there selfish tosspots who think they know what is best for a whole bunch of people and feel they have the right to act in other peoples names.

So Cameron when your blowing the shit out of places and people please dont think your doing it in my name you posh elitist money hungry wank shaft, I dont respect you in the slightest, I dont feel protected by you and your actions and I dont believe a word you say and I am pretty darn sure that I am not the only one.

Fallout 4 My completed game of the month

Last month I plain forgot to write a piece on what I had completed, in all honesty all I did finish was Forza 5, I had basically played the heck out of it to start with but then slowed down, not because it was a bad game but because its actually quite long when you look at completing all of the different series's available. So what made me actually finish it? Forza 6 basically. I played a heck of a lot of Forza 3 must have got right near the end but then I got 4 crazy cheap not long after release and never finished 3, never finished 4 either.

I know that its not that uncommon to not finish a game, after all lots of sites have shown using play statistics that lots of people only get part way through lots of games and never see the end of them. So I decided to set myself a restriction, this restriction was that I would not allow myself to buy Forza 6 no matter how cheap it got until I had finished  Forza 5. So this little self set challenge/restriction actually helped me knuckle down and finish every series in the game, my biggest challenge wasn't any of the races it was affording one particular car in order to finish one particular series, still I enjoyed it and I am glad that I made myself finish it.

I cant say that I am glad that I finished the game I actually finished in November though. I finished Fallout 4, which took me about 40 hours, it could have been done much quicker but and I will try not to spoil things too much here but I need to explain a little. Basically there are a bunch of factions in the game and if you fully support one and finish all of the missions for that faction then you finish the game. If you went at this in the most forward way possible, didn't use a guide but didn't allow yourself to become sidetracked at all then I think the game would be about 20 hours long. I did become side tracked though and I sort of followed everyone and tried to keep every faction sweet with me for as long as possible. Now there are different endings I haven't seen which I could either totally replay the game to get or I could even look at one of my slightly earlier saves, one from before I too strongly committed myself to any choices, there is also the option to just carry on and to search the wastelands and to complete small missions I never finished, the option to look for things I didnt find and to keep building up my settlements but I dont think I will invest too much more time in to it. It was a great game while it lasted worth every penny I spent on it and I would advise anyone with even a passing intrest in this sort of thing to get it but after seeing the end credits and finishing the main mission doing these little things kind of feels like cleaning out a scrap paper bin in comparison to the great things I have already accomplished in game.

At the moment I have no idea if I will have finished anything else by the end of December after all there is Christmas to be dealing with and work and at the moment I havent even really settled on something I want to play to that degree. Every time I approach my consoles at the moment I am playing a little bit of this and a little bit of that waiting for something to grab me. I have sampled Transformers Devastation, Dragonball Xenoverse and a few other titles but I am really just waiting for something to suck me in the way Fallout 4 did, oh well it was wonderful while it lasted.

Are Young people who question the Government or media really extremists?

OK so apparently ''Young people who question the Government or media may be extremists'' according to governmental produced leaflets. Parents and carers have also been advised by a safeguarding board in London that “showing a mistrust of mainstream media reports and a belief in conspiracy theories” could be a sign that children are being groomed by extremists.

Now lets slow down and take this apart, young people who question the media may be extremists, now lets look at this media, and what we mean by the term Media. This very blog is a form of media but we know they don't mean things like this what they really mean is mainstream newspapers and TV reports. Well one of the very reasons I write a blog is that back when I was in college and in University I was taught to ask questions, I was taught to not take things on face value, I was taught to look a little deeper, to ask what paper a piece of news was in, who had written it, who was the editor who had asked for and accepted it and did any of these people have any biases, does the paper itself have an inherent bias. Yet if you look at things on this level by the terms being used by our current Prime Minster you could say I had been radicalised as the colleges and University I attend taught me to not trust what politicians said,and  to not believe everything I see and hear in the Media. Now let me be clear on this I am a White Male Atheist, I don't listen to the words of any god I purely follow my heart and do what it says is the right thing to do, yet my own moral compass tells me that dropping masses of bombs on somewhere in the hope of killing terrorists knowing that you will most likely kill lots of innocent men, women and children is the wrong call to make, yet my own countries Prime Minster (who I didn't vote for I hasten to add) has said that anyone who does not support the dropping of these bombs is a terrorist sympathiser. So I have woke up this morning to learn that someone who I hold in nothing but contempt now would consider me a radicalised terrorist sympathiser.

''Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it'' Now I know there is the old chestnut that if anything is talked about or argued about long enough on the internet then the Nazi's and fascism will be brought up and used but in this case it seems appropriate. We have seen where blindly following a government and not asking questions and just following orders leads. I don't want people to be radicalised in the way I view radicalisation, I don't want people to be led into following a radicalised perverted version of a religion which preaches hatred and destruction which encourages people to strap bombs to themselves or grab guns and kill the innocent but I also view people being brainwashed into following a government without question no matter what it says or what it decides to do, a government which uses bombs and  breeds hate itself as a very bad thing as well, after all both are about stripping away someone's ability to think for themselves, peeling away there individuality and turning them into a puppet.

So what's my message? Well I guess it is dont let anyone brainwash you in to giving up your own mind and your own soul, ask questions never stop, never accept anything on face value, think about who is saying it, why they are saying it and what they have to gain by making people believe there words.