This Months (September 2019) Games with Gold and my oppinion on them.

So what are we getting this month games wise for our gold subscription and what do I think of the choice of games. Well to kick this month of Xbox One owners will start of by getting Hitman: The Complete First Season.

If you have been living under a rock for an absolute age Hitman is exactly what it sounds like its a game in which you do the job of a Hitman. You take on the role of Agent 47 a sinster sort of John Luc Picard looking bolded headed chap who happens to be a world class assasin who can shoot, stab and piano wire his way through pretty much the whole world. In this game you will find yourself travelling to new places such as Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado and Hokkaido, meeting new and intresting people and killing them in a whole host of ways.  If you enjoy planning and then following things through and trying to get a glorius high score while commiting a little murder then your sure to enjoy this game a lot, if your more of a dual gun weilding death machine with the pateince of a 3 year old then this game will most likly frustrate the ever living crap out of you. With the wealth of content on offer here I think its a pretty darn good thing to get.

The Xbox 360 offering for the start of the month (also playable on Xbox one) is Earth Defense Force 2025. A game in which you can very very much leave your brains at the door and just focus on dealing out all the death you can with your trigger finger. The game has tonnes of weapons and four different character classes its a decent little blaster my only complaint is that this is the third game in the series and the previous two were only recently given away so id have prefered something a little diffrent. Still I think this and Hitman are very diffrent and having the two of them togther provides a good counter balance.

From the 16th we have We Were Here. I have never played this game so I am tottally clueless about it and guess I will have to learn what its like when I download it, still as its usually only £5 I cant help but think we have been kind of low balled here. Apparently in this game you team up with a friend or a stranger online and the idea is to escape an abandoned castle. It is supposed to be a puzzler which finds you and one other player trapped alone in different parts of a mysterious castle with only your walkie-talkie and voice to help you.The game is supposed to be very team work heavy but im not that much of an online player to be honest so I think id sooner have had another game but im sure this will make someone out there happy.

Also from the 16th we have Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I think every man and his dog knows what Tekken is. I own Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on my Wii U and really really enjoyed it but heck, its an awesome game so I ma very much looking forward to being able to play it on my Xbox One, what more can I say about it? Its Tekken its flipping amazing. For me this game is the gem of the month and I think if you dont have xbox live and you dont own this game then seeing as you keep any Xbox 360 games you claim it would be worth buying a months worth just to play this bad boy.

What more can I say but KEEP ON GAMING.

Microsofts Xbox One is now backwards backwards compatable kind of..... (Some Xbox games are now playable on the Xbox One)

Towards the end of 2015 Microsoft idea of Xbox engineering boss Mike Ybarra broached the subject of making original Xbox games playable on the Xbox One through backwards compatibility he said that the feature hadnt been ruled out, but that we shouldn't expect it to come anytime soon. Well I guess if he was right or not depends largly on your definition of soon as now towards the end of 2017 we now have original Xbox games on the Xbox one through backwards compatability.

Xbox One backwards compatibility works by emulating the Xbox 360 operating system and then running the games through this apparently, well after having tried one of the Xbox original games on the Xbox one it would appear that they are doing the exact same thing as when you go to play the game you see the original Xbox start up screen.

Currently there are only 7 original xbox games in my country at least which are on the list of those which are currently playable via the Xbox one, and there are basically two ways to play them. One is you simply buy them on the Xbox store and the other is if you have a copy of the disc you can put that in. If you put the original disc in though you dont actually play the game of the disk, the disk simply proves that you own it, you are then allowed to download it but can only play it while the disk is in the slot, still its great that they have made it work in this way because if you have the game your not forced to pay for it again and even if you dont have the disk you can look if its cheaper to source a copy before paying for it digitally.

So far the original xbox games are Black, Ninja Gaiden Black, Crimson Skies, Fusion Frenzy, Psychonauts,  Sid Meiers Pirates, and Grabbed By The Ghoulies. Now with the exception of  Fusion Frenzy I think they are all darn fine games some of the best from the machine. I would argue that now you can buy Rare Replay which features Grabbed by the Ghoulies and a whole other bunch of games its a bit of a redundant purchase but I guess if you have it laying around then its free and you cant complain about free. For those of us who collect old games though this is a great thing, it might not be a lot of games now but it will be great to see which games end up on the list. I have noticed while looking up Knights of the old Republic that game is also on the xbox store and you can buy it to play on your Xbox one, I have this game on disc but I havent gotten round to trying it yet.

I have tried Crimson Skies though and it worked a treat, I enjoyed playing it again and it ran perfectly, if every single game runs like this then it will be awesome. So I guess the last thing to say is what games would I like to see on the list next right? Well I am going to do that but I am going to stick to games which already appeared on the list of Xbox original games that you could play on the Xbox 360 as well I think these are the most likly ones we will see.

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II
• The Bard's Tale
• Blinx: The Time Sweeper
• Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space
• Blood Omen 2
• Brute Force
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds
• Burnout
• Burnout 2
• Burnout 3: Takedown
•  Conker: Live and Reloaded 
• Dead or Alive 3
• Dead or Alive Ultimate
• DOOM 3
• EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 3
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick
• Evil Dead: Regeneration
• Fable
• Fatal Frame
• Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly DIRECTOR'S CUT
• Future Tactics: The Uprising
• Genma Onimusha
• Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee
• Godzilla: Save The Earth
• GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
• Grand Theft Auto: 3
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Indigo Prophecy
• Jade Empire
• JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future
• Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis 

The truth is that I could go on and on listing games I would like to see on backwards compatability but the fact I have already made quiet a bit list very quickly shows that there is a good catalog of games for them to pick from. Part of the fun though will be to see what comes up as playable in the future and run to my retro game collection to see if I have a copy of it sat there.

The Original XBOX One is being Discontinued, my thoughts.

So as of today you cant actually buy an original model Xbox One from Microsoft. The manufacturing of the original version apparently stopped  a few months back and now they have reached the point where there is no surpless left as of today it has become officially unavailable.
 
If for some strange reason you really really wanted to get a new in box original Xbox one then you would proberbly be able to find the odd left over unit here and there in stores, if your incredably lucky somewere might even try to push the last few out with some kind of discount.

For those that dont know the Xbox One S which will effectivly from now be the budget entrance model Xbox One doesnt have a proper Kinect port, if you really want to use one then you need to buy an adaptor and apparently the new Xbox coming out at Christmas will be the same in that way. This is a huge turn around its kind of showing that Microsoft is leaving the Kinect behind the Kinect which they originally pushed as being essential to the Xbox One experiance.

I personally really like what the Xbox has become even if I own the original now discontinued model, and I think a move away from the Kinect is a good thing, I also think the idea of the S being the standard unit is a good move, lets face it the S now costs what the original did anyways.

The fact that both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One now will soon have sort of base models and pro models is something I actually like even if I am going to be stuck with low end models of both. I think its good to have an entry model because it helps people with less money get a foot on the ladder or allows parents to get there kids a cheaper unit. There are often early adopters who will then decide they want to buy the newer better unit and will sell there originals offering those with little cash the option of picking up a second hand budget or discontinued model.

The thing I like about consoles over PC's is that if you can get the money up for a console the name on the console is pretty much a promise it can play any game with that name on the case. So get an Xbox One and you can play Xbox One games, you dont have to worry about meeting a set of specifications or will it work on your particular hardware. I also like console generations to last as long as possible and new versions of a console such as slimlines and ultras often see machines last longer, they give the die hard new shiny kit to play with but they give those short on funds the chance to pick up older kit but still join the current generation. I guess I am glad to see the generation continuing with redesigned hardware and glad this will push down the cost of old kit and let more people join the party, lets just hope the party lasts as long as it can.

Xbox One Backwards compatability revisited.... Grab a bargain try something you missed.

So with lots of people running about grabbing Switch's playing Zelda, grabbing PS4 Pro's and playing Horizon Zero Dawn or messing around with the whole Virtual Reality thing ecetera I thought I would do a little thing about playing a few games you might have missed on the cheap again.  Way back  on Monday, the 20th of  June 2016 I made a post about making the most of Xbox One backwards compatability which was a reasonably new function for the Xbox One at the time so without further ado this is an area I would like to revist but first here is a link to my original post incase youd like to have a look at it first.

http://kerr9000.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/a-look-at-making-most-of-xbox-one.html

When I talked about this last time I talked about DarkVoid, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Gears of War 1, 2 and 3 as well as Mass Effect, border lands and Alan Wake all of which are still games I feel are more than worthwhile. Since then however the list of compatable games has been widened. 


A full list of current compatable games can be found here http://www.xbox.com/en-gb/xbox-one/backward-compatibility this includes both games that were originally released on disc and games that are and have always been purly digital, as for the digital only ones I wont be touching those at all for the main reason they have a set price you have to pay to download them and there is no real wiggle room to get a better deal (well apart from when there are sales). I will again be talking about Xbox 360 games which can be purchased on disc for very little and can be either played on an Xbox One or Xbox 360.


Seeing as Zelda Breathe of the Wild is one of the hotest games right now lets start by looking at a set of titles which have a lot in common with the Zelda series, I am of course talking about the highly underated DarkSiders games. Both of the DarkSiders titles can be got from various online sights like Music Magpie and Amazon just to mention 2 for £2 to £3 including postage, heck if your an Xbox Gold subscriber then you can currently claim the first one for free as part of Games with Gold. (Yes there are Xbox one versions of these games but there more money and I would argue they dont actually add that much). Imagine a Zelda game where instead of playing the part of a young guy with pointy ears you play one of the horsemen of the apocolypse and you have the DarkSiders games, the style of gameplay is very simmilar with both puzzles to solve and enemies to fight and it has that same style of progression where the further you get in the game the more tools you get ahold of which then allow you to reach places you couldnt before. If you have enjoyed Zelda games and want something with a good story, good length and that kind of style then you cant fault these games and should jump on them.

I have currently been spending some of my time playing Mass Effect Andromeda on the Xbox One and on the one hand I am enjoying it but on the other I cant help but think that it is not really any better than any of the previous Mass Effect games on the previous generation of consoles. Now when you bear in mind that I spent £38 on this game and I am not enjoying it anymore than the original 3 games so if you havent played those then why not give them a crack first, after all the new one will eventually drop in price. I have to admit the Mass Effect trilogy was a lot more well known than DarkSiders so the chance that there will be people who havent played it is much lower than with DarkSiders and Mass Effect the original will cost you £4.50 from CEX, the second will cost you £3.50 and the 3rd will cost you £7 so given this I would go for DarkSiders first if your looking for something to play as there cheaper. I know some people who gave the first Mass Effect a go and didnt really get on with it so ignored the series for these people I would say why not throw £3.50 down on the second now hear me out. The first tried to be a RPG with shooting, the second game is not quiet the same, in fact it kind of swayed things back the other way in some ways with it being more of a shooter with RPG elements. You might say that if you play the second game then you will be missing out on the story, that you might find youself stuck in the middle of things with no idea of what is going on but to be honest the second game is structured really well, it lays itself out in a way where it recaps you on what has happend and then starts a new story, so if you play it without having played the first game then you will still know who you are, what your doing and why.

I could carry on and on like this laying out cases for why you should buy and play various games on the backwards compatability list, instead I will end things here by making a plea that you dont get so caught up in the present, in all of the hot new games that are coming out that you ignore some of the options open to you, especially when some of them offer you both some of the greatest entertainment you can get your hands on but also some of the best value for money you will ever see when it comes to the world of Video games. Did you know that Oblivion is on the backwards compatability list, that you can go to CEX and get this game for as little as £3.50 or failing that you can have it posted to you from websites such as Amazon for the sum of £4.50. So why am I brining this particular game up in my clossing argument for the brilliance of backwars compatability simple my original play through of this game took me 120 hours, and that wasnt enough I have since returned to the game and restarted it several times even if you ignore these replays then 120 hours of fun for £4.50 is insanly good. Yes some people will be shocked that I call one of those invisable dice rolling RPG style games fun but believe me it is, its the kind of game which gives you tales to share with fellow players, I could tell you the story of how a orc much stronger than me was chasing me and I ran for my life only to find that as I came rushing down a hill he rolled past me and crashed down dead at the bottom of it, having I can only reason fell and broken his neck (Trust me it was much funnier and exciting than it might sound).

A look at making the most of Xbox One backwards compatability

Since the release of Xbox One Backward Compatibility Xbox One uses have been able to play certain Xbox 360 titles on their Xbox Ones, with more titles being added regularly to the list of available games. Since the update which added backwards compatability all of the Xbox 360 games added to games with gold have been ones which are playable on the Xbox One. There are other games however ones which although compatable havent been offerd for free yet, however if you have already purchased them then you can download them on your Xbox One or you can pay the xbox live asking price or wait for a sale involving said title or you can get creative and make the most of backwards compatability with the least money possible.

Capcoms DarkVoid is £14.99 via Xbox Live, which well a lot of peope would proberbly say is not worth it after all it didnt receive the gretest reviews only scoring a metacritic score of 59, however I actually found it a pretty darn fun game, going so far as to complete it twice. I wont get in to a discusion of whether this old game is worth spending £14.99 on digitally because I want to point out the fact that you can buy a second hand physical copy of this game for so little that you have almost nothing to loose, in fact I picked up a complete copy from my local granger game today for £1 and its not like granger is your only option CEX apparently only charge 80pence for it, Game will deliver a second hand copy for £1.99. With disc-based games that are a part of the Back Compat game catalog, all you have to do is insert the disc and the console will begin downloading the game to your hard drive. After the game has finished downloading, you will still need to keep the game disc in the drive to play. Yeah its not as good as just having it digitally there but it is a very cheap usefull way of trying out the backwards compatability function and enjoying more games without spending much.

A full list of current compatable games can be found here https://majornelson.com/blog/xbox-one-backward-compatibility/ some of them are arcade only download titles but others are available on disc for very little not just Dark Void.Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 are cracking games which can also be grabbed from CEX, Game or Granger
for pretty much the same price. Gears of War 1, 2 and 3 as well as Mass Effect, border lands and Alan Wake can all be got for pretty much sub £5... At the very least its worth taking a look at the list and keeping your eyes open to take advantage of the awesomeness that is backwars compatability.

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.’’

Tomb Raider: My completed Game of the month.

So I am here again talking about the game I have completed in the month just passed (September) once again  I have  only completed 1 game and yet again it is a game I had already finished before it is Tomb Raider on the Xbox One. I guess what got me playing it was the fact that it was one of the free Games with Gold games, but it was more than that it was the fact that I had enjoyed playing it so much on the PS4 that I wanted to give it another go. OK so  I will be to some degree doing a sort of review of the content but I will also be talking about issues such as  how long I have been playing it for, how hard or easy it was  to complete and if I think I will ever go back to it again. Just so everyone knows this is not the only thing I have been playing, A lot of other things I have been playing though are either really long or pretty much endless, for example I am still playing Forza 5 but that has so many races to it, and I have been playing Mario Maker which as its basically a make your own levels tool kit is endless, well as long as your imagination is.

Tomb Raider Review

I originally got a second hand copy of Tomb Raider for the Xbox 360 on the super cheap, yet I didn't touch it, I guess it was basically because of what I could describe as franchise fatigue. I had enjoyed the first tomb raider but found that largely my enjoyment of the games got a little bit smaller with each game, this was pretty much the case with each game apart from Tomb Raider Legend which I just seemed to really click with. Now dont get me wrong Legend is not technically an amazing game but it just seemed to be fun and at times a little over the top in a good way. Then I remember playing one that started with you on the ocean floor and it just seemed as dull as dishwater. Yet everyone kept going on and on about the new Tomb Raider, not just magazines and websites but other people I knew. In the end it was this word of mouth praise and the fact that I found myself in a pawn store looking at a copy of Tomb Raider in larlgy perfect condition for the PS4 for £15 that finally tipped the scales. Now I could have been sensible and just played my Xbox 360 version but this was the definitive version so things would be better and there would be extra stuff I reasoned but manly I just wanted an excuse to spend some time on the PS4 I had sat in the room begging for a good game. I finished it, I enjoyed it a lot and then months latter it was announced as a Games with Gold game and my first thought was oh well its been awhile since I finished the PS4 one I could go another round with it on Xbox one. I suppose in a way I could almost end on that because after all if you are happy to play a whole game again 6 months down the line that says a lot for it, it says that it is worth going back to, that it is worth playing more than once and when it comes to games you cant say much better than that.

Now a quick one on the differences between versions. I have looked at videos that compare the graphics and the truth is they look slightly different from version to version but in the case of the PS4, Xbox One and PC on max settings the differences are not really a case of better or worse they are all pretty much equal they just show things in slightly different ways, slight difference in shadows textures and lighting but unless you have them side by side your not going to know. As for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions its little things like Lara's hair being a punch of set pieces which clunkily move compared to on the newer gen machines were every single hair and thread of fibre seems to have its own life, its nice to see the improvements on the newer generation machines but they are not deal breakers or a reason to upgrade if you sitting with a PS3 or Xbox 360 then just buy that version the depth of the story and the action contained within it should be more than enough to stop you worrying about those kinds of things anyway.

I remember when the game was first being shown there was a huge fuss about one enemy insinuating he wanted to rape Lara, now why this was an issue who knows. This game is very adult its about trying to survive despite not only a cult who wants you dead but also wild animals and a hostile environment. The game has a wonderful setting and a story you really care about. It takes Lara back to her beginnings and you get to see a somewhat scared young woman slowly become the tomb raider we all know. The game controls well, both in terms of combat and in terms of making jumps. Some of the old Tomb raiders used to be kind of hit and miss with you wondering what jumps you could and couldn't make, you could cling to one surface but not another identical looking surface. All of this seems to have been thought about and solved now Lara looks and reaches towards the next logical place, all surfaces you can cling to have a certain look to them so leaps of faith and mindless deaths are almost none existent.  There are also a lot more enemies and they rush you it makes for a much more action paced game.

I finished the game after a few days but playing for quiet a few hours at a time, some of this was due to having already finished it on the PS4 and having remembered the solutions to a few problems and having skipped cut scenes I could remember. The game is about average on the difficulty front, the only issues are some parts can take a few retries with your character being rushed by large numbers, also some of the quick time events can at times be annoying but they are not to bad.

Conclusion

I would strongly recommend this game to pretty much anyone especially now that its cheap and easy enough to get a hold of, if you got it as part of  Games for Gold and havent played it yet then jump on it get started.

My review of the Forza 6 Demo

So with Forza 6 out in a handful of days I decided to try the Forza 6 Demo, now I have to admit going in to it I had zero desire to buy the game, why you might ask? Well basically I am still playing and enjoying Forza 5 and Forza Horrizon 2 both feel and look awesome to me and I have got a lot of enjoyment out of them and feel they still both have a lot to give especially as I brought the Storm Island add on for Forza Horrizon 2 in a sale and haven't even touched it yet. So I decided I would play the demo, I would review and see if it made me want the game more or less. After all a demo is meant to sell a game so maybe it will alter my opinion on it, it may help me decide how long I would be willing to wait and the kind of price I would  be willing to pay for it and this might also help other people in a similar position to me.

One of the things I liked about the Forza 5 when I first started playing it was the fact it had the Top Gear guys in it, listening to them introduce aspects of the game really got me pumped to play it and to try different types of event. I was pretty sure that what with all the fuss of Clarkson being fired that they wouldn't be in this game, although I have to admit anyone could be connected to it as I haven't been really paying attention to any news relating to it. There was a lot of speeches in Forza 5 about the nature of speed and man's never ending quest to find the perfect machine it was sometimes in danger of feeling like it was trying to push some kind of artistic merit a little too hard but it always seemed to walk the line very well. So I start the Forza 6 demo up and I am met with a video there are two kids facing each other and one is throwing stones and stuff and a voice begins narrating and talking about why do we race while it sort of flicks back from the kids to cars and well it really drops the soap as this time it doesn't walk the line at all. I have no idea who is talking I just know that is sounds like pretentious bollox, if they couldn't get someone who despite some of his questionable qualities can talk in a way that is passionate without tipping over the line like Clarkson then they just shouldn't have bothered.

After finishing my first race what do I think? Well it controls well and the graphics are beautiful but I don't think its a massive leap forward, it looks a lot shinier and the light seems more realistic than in its predecessor, in some ways it feels like the Forza Horrizon 2 graphics and engine pushed in to the Forza 5 framework which seeing as they are both brilliant games is no bad thing. I think the on-screen HUD parts your spedo, map etc all look much cleaner and stick out better than in Forza 5 which is a nice if minor improvement, I would also say that the menu screens and such have a nicer look to them, it seems to feel a little windows 10 inspired and also reminds me of some of the screen shots I have seen for the Xbox One's next supposed overhaul, so maybe thats what they are going for a sort of overall matching theme that feels friendly and inviting. Its a nice step forward but its not like after playing this I am going to look back at the past entries I still own and go oh I don't think I can play these any more they look so primitive.

As a demo I really have to give credit to Microsoft for Forza 6, I have played some car game demo's in the past where you get about one lap in one car to decide if you like the game or not, but in this game you get to experiance full races in a few diffrent types of car. This means that you will leave this demo. I particularly enjoyed the showcase race it put me in. In this race I was driving an Indy car, now up to this moment I had thought that the game hadnt seemed any faster or more thrilling than Forza 5 but the way the Indy car racing was handled the sense of speed just seemed out of this world, it really thrilled me and to be honest made me even more glad I had traded F1 2015 in because in comparison that feels super pedestrian. My recomendation is to download this demo straight away and give it your all you wont regret it.

So am I now going to run out and buy the actual game straight away? No. I do like it but I want to see more of Forza 5 and Forza Horrizon 2, I will catch this when I see some special deal or cheap second hand version that I simply cant help but buy. I am tight though, I am sure many others will happily jump on this and if I got a winning lottery ticket or a spare little wedge of cash fell from somewhere then I think I would be joining them.

Why you sometimes have to guard against your own bias as a reviewer.

I like to buy games especially if I am getting a good deal, I will even try games that are not exactly my usual sort of thing if the price and the opportunity present themselves however sometimes this can lead to you getting a game which although not bad is simply not enjoyable to you as an individual.

The prime example would be that today I purchased F1 2015 for Xbox one from a pawn shop for £10. This is a heck of a deal a total bargain really when you look around and see how much it is typically selling for second hand for example game currently want £39.99 for a second hand copy (but only want to offer me £13 in exchange) really I should be over the moon and I was for a short time but upon playing the game it really want my cup of tea.

Sure I like racing games when it comes to current generation  (Xbox One and PS4 racing games I have played Forza 5, Forza Horrizon 2, Need for Speed Rivals, Drive Club, The Crew and Motorcycle club and while I cant say that F1 2015 is the worst of these games I have played it is the one I have enjoyed the least.

The graphics are good, the car handling is also good, its a little more realistic than I tend to like but I cant fault it. I just don't like the style of game. Now maybe I should have been a little more forward thinking as a lot of the things I am not keen on should have been obvious to me, I don't like the fact that the game tries to get you to practice before each track and then qualify and then race 15 laps and that is in short mode, my impatience caused me to skip the practice, half-arse the qualifying and then basically get bored 5 laps in to the game. Now I have met and have known people who would at this point call the game rubbish and if pushed to give it a rating give it something absolutely shocking but that wouldn't be fair.Sure games are supposed to be fun and if you don't find a game fun then your entitled to say that you don't like it, you can tell people that you didn't personally enjoy it, it is of course your property to sell or swap (providing you purchased a physical and not digital copy) but unless it is seriously broken and has no redeemable qualities I feel it would be wrong to slate it and give it a review which doesn't reflect its quality and instead scares people away from the game particularly people who might enjoy it.

I can confidently say that F1 2015 is a better programmed more complete game than either The Crew or Motorcycle club even if I enjoy them more in fact Motorcycle club is a far more painfully programmed mess a game in which if I was to make a tick box of everything right and wrong with it would have at least twice as many ticks in the wrong box as the right. I think that some people are not necessarily qualified to review some games and I think that I am not qualified to review F1 2015, its not my kind of game and its not intended for a person like me. If I was a professionally paid reviewer then I would of course do my best to review this game if it was part of my job, but even then I would try to see if there was someone else on the team who was more suited to the task at hand as it stands though as an independent blogger. As it stands I am going to take this game and swap it for something I think I will enjoy more, I don't regret the purchase as the price was so good I stand to profit from the situation, maybe that is one of the reasons I am going to sell it now, I am going to sell it while I can get the most from it.

We all have our biases our preferd types of entertainment and while I do feel that the spark we all contain, the thing inside us which makes us who we are can lead to deep, funny and personal reviews which are far more interesting than a review in which a person simply tries to break everything down in to a collection of numbers, a score for graphics, for sound, for playability, and length it can also lead to us having a bias against a certain type of game or a genre. I think as a reviewer it is part of your responsibility to know your own biases and to address them and maybe to not review something if you cant separate yourself from them or at the very least to make your biases known during the review.

OK well that's my thoughts on the matter, feel free to comment if you either agree or disagree with me but most of all keep on gaming.

This Months Video Game purchases: August 2015

Ok so it is that time of the month again, the time when one month is almost over and a new one is about to begin so it is time once again to look at the retro purchases I have made. I may also at the end this by talking about some of the more modern games I have picked up along the way just to let you all know that I am not stuck completely in the past.

So I started off on the first of the month by buying a Playstation 2 for £10 with its pad and all its wires. I think price wise this is a pretty good purchase but I guess the main reason I did it is because the one in my collection is missing the guard from its CD tray.

It was only a few days after this on the fourth of the month that my daughter called me to let me know that they were selling off some games in a semi local charity store. Cant split the cost of these on an item by item basis as they told me if I just grabbed everything I wanted and made them an offer they wouldn't bother pricing them up individually. I spent £20 on the games below.

Dynasty Warriors 2, Sonic Mega Collection Plus, Jak 3 (Platinum), Tak The great Juju Challange. Winx Club, Malice, Sonic Gems collection, Yu-Gi-Oh - The Duellists Of The Roses, Tokobot Plus, Stitch Experiment 626, Peter Pan - The Legend Of Neverland, Animaniacs - The Great Edgar Hunt, Super Monkey Ball Adventure, Mystic Heroes, Teenage Mutant Ninja: Mutant Melee For the PS2 all complete, Astonishia Story and Daxter for the PSP complete and New super Mario Bros and Fossil League for DS complete.

I was quiet surprised to find that of these games Winx Club was the one with the highest supposed worth selling for around £15 online complete on its own. I looked up the approximate amount the above would tend to sell for and it was around £80 which made me quiet happy overall.

A day latter I got Sclaer, Bionicle heroes, Disnyes Piglets big game, Garfield 2, Casper and the ghostly trio, robots and Stuart little 3 big photo adventure (A Reviewers copy) all for PS2 complete and Nintendogs Labrador and friends complete for DS for £10.

Over the next week or so from there I ordered a cartridge only copy of Ringside Angels for £6 including postage, Race Driving cart only for the snes for £3.50 including postage and TOYS, Complete for the snes, it was advertised as being an NTSC American copy but turned up and was Pal, it was £4 including postage.

Towards the end of the month I have found myself picking up CID The Dummy, M.A.C.H: Modified Air Combat Heroes, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep for £8 only downside is Kingdom hearts doesn't have the manual. I also grabbed a copy of Super RC PRO-AM cart for gameboy for £1 a complete copy of everybody's golf for psp for 25p. I got the following for £1 each on Playstation 1 Syphon filter 2, Quake 2 and Ape Escape (platinum) and Resident Evil code veronica X, Grand Theft auto 3 and Grand theft auto vice city all for Playstation 2 all complete at £2.50 for the lot.

I would say in general that this was a much better month for grabbing Retro games than last month, I probably wouldn't have brought the few bits and pieces I did from ebay and would have just relied on what I found but I ended up buying the Japanese wrestling game because I owned it as a kid and someone reminded me of it, I saw a copy cart only for the cheapest price I had seen it in a long time and decided it might be a now or never moment. If not for this conversation I would probably have given it a miss. The Snes games I also mostly brought so that I could review them, neither of them were things I had fond memories of or a real desire to try but I thought they would help me make decent reviews.

As you might have been able to guess from some of my reviews and opinion pieces at the beginning of the month I brought Rare Replay, largely just because it was a way to play a whole bunch of my favourite old games in one place. I cant remember exactly what I paid for it but it was like £17 or £18 pounds which I considered great value for money. I have also brought one other game new and that was Scream Ride from Argos mostly because it was only £13.50 and was something a little bit different to a lot of the games I already own for the machine. I grabbed a second hand copy of Diablo 3 for the Xbox One from a pawn store for £15 and then ordered Dying light from game during a promotion where I paid £21 for dying light and got a pre-owned copy of Assassins creed unity for £1.

I imagine that next month will be a lot less exciting when it comes to game purchases, for one it is my fiancées birthday month so need to hold something back to treat her right, I also think I might have ran out my retro luck for awhile but I guess we will just have tot wait and see. 

Path of The Warrior DLC Review

OK so first things first I am not reviewing WWE 2K15 the game here, I am reviewing the Path Of The Warrior DLC. Sure it runs on the engine provided by the game so parts of what I will be talking about will to some degree be interchangeable but then others wont. Also I guess you could consider this a spoiler alert if you are young as I will warn you now I will talk about the outcomes of matches etcetera but remember this whole DLC is based on matches which to most of us old timers are ancient history.

So what inspired me to buy this piece of DLC when I have ignored the rest of what is on offer for WWE 2K15? Well a whole mode which tells the story of the Warrior was to some extent appealing on its own but what really swung it was all of the things I could unlock, the arenas, the wrestlers and the managers and the fact that once I had them I could use them in other modes. As a kid I would have never cared about the ability to play as the Honkey Tonk man or Ravishing Rick Rude, to be honest I never really saw how important the villains were but as an adult I can fully appreciate how cool it can be to try things from the other side.

It is amazingly fun to play the 8 matches this DLC is made up of and to see the defining moments of them replayed within the game and when you think of the fact that this DLC cost £8 at £1 per match with at least 1 unlockable character and 1 unlockable arena for proper completion of the match I don't think you can really argue about value. Lets face it some game DLC can be as bad a £4 just for a singe character. My complaints are quiet thin on the ground, It can be frustrating at times when you can loose a whole match or fail on a in match challenge because you missed the press of a single button at a specific time but my feelings about these moments are mixed. In basic you weaken an opponent until it tells you what you need to do to repeat the historical events of the match, so you will weaken someone then it will tell you to throw them to the ropes, once you throw them to the ropes a cool in game cut-scene will kick in showing what happened next, with a quick time button prompt thrown in at some point, the button press will for example cause you to flying press your opponent. It can be annoying but still I wouldn't want to loose these moments and I cant really think of a better way to handle them, in some cases if you fail the damage could be limited by giving you the chance to get your opponent in the same position and try again with a loss of energy or health punishing you slightly for the failure without ruining the match or making you have to start the match again if you want all the unlockables.

I enjoyed playing all of these levels from the perspective of the Warrior but I do think there is room there to implement a play as the villain mode where you can try to deny history, maybe you want to be Rick Rude and win the steel cage match against the warrior. Alternative reality stuff like this has worked well in some of the Dragon Ball Z games and I think it would be really fun in a wrestling game, after all who hasn't watched a wrestling match as a kid and cheered someone on and then felt the bitter sting of defeat when they have lost.

I have to give series credit to the announcing in this DLC not only are the matches themselves well announced but its wonderful to hear them mention other matches at the respective main events, to hear the names of other classic wrestlers thrown in here and there. Add on to this all of the cut-scenes featuring classic promo's ring entrances and you just have one hell of a juicy nostalgia sandwich of gameplay here. Really in terms of completing the matches and unlocking everything you have an evening worth of play but if you lived through these matches and feel for them the way I do it will be a darn good evening. If I had to give this DLC a score I would give it a 8.5 out of 10. It is darn good fun, it is darn good value for money maybe not so much for length but definitely for the amount of content you can unlock. I think there is more they could do though and I hope to one day see something which builds on what they have done here.

The way they ended this with the Warriors hall of fame speech it really brought tears to my eyes. Yes the Warrior did do a few questionable things in his life, said a few things he shouldn't have but I think towards the end he tried to make right all of his wrongs , it is important to remember though that the man did a lot of good. The Warrior inspired a lot of people, made a lot of people happy and made so many people want to be the best they could be.

I hope that WWE make more DLC like this for future games but that they add to it allow you to play both sides of the match, to have fun with history, it is my own personal hope that WWE 2K16 will get its very own Hot Rod Rowdy Roddy Piper DLC to respect the passing of that particular legend and all of his achievements. I hope in a year or so I am writing about how ''The Path of the Piper'' DLC is the greatest DLC for a WWE game ever made.I also would be quiet happy to play DLC based on Dusty Rhodes the American Dream, another legend we have had to say goodbye to recently.

R.I.P Warrior, Piper and Dusty I hope your all kicking ass up there in the great battle royal in the sky.

My Rare Replay was supposed to arrive today through Amazon. I cant moan that much though because in general everything I have ordered from them has arrived promptly and in good condition. I am however absolutely itching to get it and to start playing the games. I grew up on a lot of these titles Atic Atac one of the Spectrum games on the disc was one of the first Spectrum games I remember really enjoying.

I have done everything possible today to ignore the fact that it is not yet in my possession, I have played other games, I have gone out and brought retro games from a charity shop I even brought and hammerd the Path of the Ultimate Warrior DLC for WWE 2K15 (I will talk about this soon enough). I think one of the things I have spent the most time doing though is simply thinking about Rare Replay, thinking about what is on the disc, what is not on the disk, why these games are missing be it down to licensing issues or other reasons. It is obvious why the Donkey Kong games are not on there with Donkey Kong belonging to Nintendo, I can understand GoldenEye not being on there due to the bong license but when we have BattleToads NES and arcade on there why did the SNES BattleToads in battle maniacs not make the cut?

One thing that really hit me when I stopped and thought about it though is that there are now more N64 titles available on the Xbox One than there are on the Wii U. Even saying or writing that seems strange but here are the facts.

On Rare Replay released today you can get the following N64 games

Killer Instinct Gold
Jet Force Gemini
Blast Corps
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
Perfect Dark


(The first four are pure N64 Emulated, the last three have had slight touch up's)

On the Wii U’s Virtual Console shop, you can buy and download

Paper Mario
Donkey Kong 64
Super Mario 64
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Mario Tennis
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

If you want those six N64 games on the Wii U though you will need to pay £54 in total and have nothing Physical to show for it at all, with no real chance of discount (Unless you get a discounted Nintendo cash card from somewhere like CDkeys).

Or you can get the 7 N64 based titles on Xbox one for, well depends what seller you go to but its £18 on Amazon (I did see it for £16.50 on one site for awhile) and you have a disc to keep as well and all kinds of extra challenges added in, documentary footage, making of videos plus a whole bunch of Spectrum games,Nes games, an arcade game, an original xbox game, 5 or so Xbox 360 games on top for your money.

When you look at it in this way from my perspective at least this just makes Nintendo look kind of greedy and not as business savy as they should be in this digital area. OK if you make your Wii U go into Wii mode you can go to the Wii Virtual console and then this puts the amount of N64 games you can get up to around 20 but still at a high high cost.

I cant wait to see sales figures for Rare Replay. It does raise all kinds of questions though. What would have happened if Nintendo had brought out Rare, would we be looking at Rare Replay on the Wii U with added Donkey kong related games? Or would Nintendo have preferd to have slowly drip fed these games on to there virtual console store at £9 per N64 game, £3.50 per NES title etcetera? We will never know what would have happened if Nintendo owned Rare maybe would have milked the IP for every penny maybe they wouldn't have. Why not leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Games I think get too much hate. 1: Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.

Ok so today I am going to be talking about Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts and first things first to get this out of the way, I really like Nuts and Bolts in fact I think I would go as far as to say I love it. I know its a popular game to hate, it seems to attract an almost never ending stream of venom to the degree that it has become pretty much cool to hate on it. I can even understand some of this hate after all it is a sequel which is very different to its predecessors when most people really wanted more of the same. People also feel that some of the comments made in the games opening are kind of insulting to the fans of the original games but I don't really see it like that myself.

For me the opening with Banjo and Kazooie having gotten fat and out of shape is really kind of funny. I mean think about it. Most games with sequels are kind of like a TV show in which no matter what happens the status qua is always re-established at the end of a story or at the start of a new episode. Think about the Simpsons for example yes they go on a crazy adventure and become rich or adopt an elephant but most of these changes never last there universe always seems to default to a set state and the characters never really change or age. If you pick u a Mario game be it the first game or the most recent Mario looks more or less the same well apart from the difference in graphical fidelity at least. Nuts and Bolts with the whole fat joke basically was poking fun at this, instead of 6 years having passed in the real world but time having stood still in Banjo's world they decided to make a joke that since saving the world Banjo had sat around eating and doing nothing because there were no adventures to go on. It might not be the funniest joke in the world but it got a small laugh out of me and I think the hatters like to read to much in to it and are just looking for holes to pick. 

Then there is the whole point where a character in the game basically tells you that no one wants a platformer anymore they want to shoot things, people seemed to view this as the games producers saying ''look we know what's best for you, we will give you what we think is best and you can shut up and like it'' I never personally took it this way at all. I took it more as a comment on the state of the video game world and how it had changed. Growing up for me yeah sure there were games where you could shoot and kill aliens but there was so much more than that, cute platformers had been popular it had been cool to like Mario and sonic and before that there had been some weird games on the spectrum games where you would control a man who just wanted to hide from his wife, or a game where you controlled a music groups management, and even a game where you controlled a plumber trying to unblock pipes before they flooded with shit. Rare had been around a long time both as Rare and as Ultimate Play the Game they had seen this change they had felt it happen around them and this was simply them commenting on it. There is an argument made that it was Microsoft who forced rare to make Nuts and bolts a car based game as opposed to a traditional platformer but even if that's true than this still stands, it is someone or a group of writers within Rare making a point possibly even poking fun at those above them in control.

I think most of the backlash against the game is from people who simply just wanted more of the same and while I also would have been happy with more of the same I really like what we got. I remember playing Nuts and Bolts for the first time and really loving the building aspect to it. I would play it with my 6 year old daughter on my knee laughing and clapping to her it was a video game representation of the lego's she played with. She loved to build her own vehicles to watch me build them and to talk about what we could do, and how we could do it.

The vehicles can be built freely by the player from over 1,600 different components including body panels, engines, wheels, wings, propellers,weapons, fuel and ammo containers. Basically you are met with various challenges and you build the vehicle you think you need to succeed. There is no one right answer , the vehicle you build to do it might be very different from the one I build and this is half of the fun. The physics engine allows the vehicles to behave in relation to how they are built, the sense of weight is somewhat exaggerated but you know if you put more armour on a vehicle it will effect how it moves and if you don't remember to balance the weight on either side/end then its going to cause problems. You can construct vehicles can be paint them, then save them in order to use them latter or to come back to them and edit them. Your always unlocking new parts. So maybe you made a bike and it was fast but its too slippy in the way it handles to complete a new challenge, easy you load up your blue print for it and add the new high gripping wheels you found problem solved. There is a test track area provided so that if you make subtle changes to a vehicle you can test them out before attempting to really use it. One of my favourite things about the game though is that Players can also send and receive blueprints online, so if you have people on your friends list with the game and you think you have built the ultimate vehicle well you can send them it to play with.

Nowadays we are very used to games that have this sort of creativity but I think its important to note that this game launched before the likes of Minecraft got popular. Look at the way Minecraft has become this massive phenomenon this creative outlet which no one can get enough off, its seen as so much more than a game, its a game but its also one of the few electronic experiences that educational institutes such as schools feel like they can get behind and support because of the creative aspects of it. Yet when you look at Nuts and Bolts laid bare it had a lot of the same qualities. Maybe it was simply before its time. Maybe if it had come out a little latter or been made as its own stand alone without the Banjo name it would have fared better

Just look at Minecraft and the way it seemed to take over the whole world. The way it still remains popular and relevant to this day while other new titles fall by the wayside one after another. It seems to have attracted a whole new generation of players to its innovative open-world, sandbox styled gameplay, and inspired so many other games. Now we have things like the Little Big Planet series helping you to build your own levels, and kerbal space programme helping you build space ships to try and travel through deep space. All of these games being considered special both fun and to some degree creative and educational.

So why is Nuts and Bolts hated so much? Its only mistake was trying to pass itself off as a new Banjo-Kazooie game. If people had hated on it a little less and seen the positive side of it well then it could have achieved so much. It was offering some of the creativity that minecraft does before minecraft did. It could have been a creative force for good it could have brought more people to gaming but unfortunately some people just want to moan and complain about what they don't have instead of looking at the positives.

I will always enjoy Nuts and Bolts both as a game and as a part of a whole group of special moments of fun and laughter I got to share with my child. No matter what anyone says to me it is an underrated gem. hopefully with its inclusion on Rare Replay which is released in a few days it might reach a new audience.

Games I have completed in July 2015

OK I am once again copying from my good buddy's blog here I swear I will come up with something original soon. So I am here talking about the games I have completed this month in this case they are Assassins creed 4 black flag and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. I guess to some degree I will be almost doing mini reviews of them but then I also want to talk about how long I have been playing them for, how hard or easy they were to complete and if I think I will ever go back to them again.

 

 So to start with I will talk about Assassins creed 4 black flag. To start with I have played every single Assassins creed game that has come out but at present this is the only one I have completed which I think says a lot for it to start with. I remember playing the original one on my Xbox 360, I got some enjoyment out of it, the assassinations the leaps of faith into giant piles of hay but eventually it just seemed to become to more of a chore than a pleasure. I guess some of it is that I never became invested in the characters, I never felt the need to learn what happened to them. Black flag was different though, the main Character Edward Kenway seemed interesting, I wanted to know how his story would unfold and what would happen to the people he knew and cared about. Not only this though things happened that I didn't see coming so it kept me surprised and on my feet. It has everything the past games in its series have had but I just seemed to connect with the plot and characters so much more. I enjoyed the sailing and upgrading my boat. I have basically been playing this game in quick spurts for the whole of the month finishing it a few days ago. Since finishing it I have gone back on it a few times found a few extra chests, purchased a few different outfits. I even noticed that the season pass was on half price sale and decided to purchase it. I think I mostly did this so I could play the freedom city add on because I found the character who I know features in that interesting. It wasn't a hard game to finish, there was the odd part I found a little challenging, mostly bits where it instantly failed you if you were seen but in general I would say its a medium game in terms of difficulty. I have had a brief look at Assassins creed unity and the fact that there are buttons which allow you to go up or down giving you a little bit more control when free running but in general it felt like a step backwards.

 As for Call of Duty Advanced warfare well I got it on sale ages ago, I have been playing it more or less a mission at a time with large gaps between them. Nothing with the game was really bad but I didn't feel anything was that brilliant or gripping either. It seemed to have that thing in it that lots of Call of Duty games do where they give you an interesting tool or ability to play with and then its either for that mission only or you only use it when the game dictates that it needs to be used. I would find myself playing through a level and then I would finish a level and immediately find that I had hit my threshold for it, I wanted to save come off it and go on something else. Then sometimes it would be a week or a fortnight before I would even play the next one. After finishing it I did take a dip into the online multi-player and in honesty it didnt seem too bad but I don't think I will be playing it again. So does any of the DLC appeal to me? Well I have a soft spot for zombies so obviously yes some of the zombie stuff appeals to me, particularly knowing that Bruce Campbell star of The Evil Dead films and upcoming TV series Ash Versus Evil Dead is in it. The truth is though that I don't understand what I really need to buy to get the zombie related stuff it seems like to get it all I would need to buy the season pass which is around £35, which is a lot when I am not interested in any extra none zombie related maps or multi-player or well anything other than Bruce and the Dead. The only thing I got a little stuck on was chasing a Villain and I think that had more to do with my daughter talking to me and me getting confused and not knowing where he had gone in order to follow him. The story was not that interesting but I have to admit that Kevin Spacey's performance was straight out of a GI Joe cartoon. So what would I like to see from a future Call of Duty? Well for a start if I have tools in my arsenal let me use them when I please and be able to tackle the levels in different ways. I dont usually finish a Call of Duty before its sequel is out, a large part of that is due to how I tend to play them a level every so often but its also because I wont buy them till I can get them for around half of there original Recommended Retail Price. (If my memory serves me I still need to finish black op's 2).