Sunday 29 July 2012

Retro Diary - 29/7/12

Sunday 22nd July 2012

After I posted my Retro Diary last week, me and Steven had a game of Left 4 Dead for the PC, we completed the 2nd chapter.

After that we were going to have a game of Goldeneye Source, but neither of us could get a server running or join any public ones, so we couldn't...

Monday 23rd July 2012

Trials 2 arrived today! The case seemed tatty, and the autorun was in a foreign language, but the game itself was in English, and it was lots of fun!

Tuesday 24th July 2012

I've just been playing Sims 3 and Blood Stone 007 today. However, I've discovered This thing called Raptr, which is one of those databases for games for a signature/widget, but this one automatically updates your status, and the games you've been playing by connecting to your Steam, Games for Windows Live and/or X-fire accounts, I connected all 3, so whenever I play a game, this widget (Located on the right of the page), will automatically update, it even saves my signatures. It also supports Xbox 360 and PS3 games, and you can also add old games, but you'd have to manually track how long you play them, which makes sense, there's no other way of telling it.

Wednesday 25th July 2012

I got Hard Boiled on DVD today, and what a film! I can definitely see why so many people love it! Although considering it was made in 1992, a year after Terminator 2, it seems behind it's time in terms of video and audio quality, that doesn't affect the awesome gun scenes and exiting plot of the film!

I saw Ice Age 4 in the cinema, it sucked, but while we were waiting for the picture to start, which was just under an hour, we went to an bowling alley/arcade, which happened to be near the cinema, I played Razer Storm, a shooter and Dead Heat, a racing game, they were both pretty fun.

I completed Blood Stone today, the game was kind of short, and I thought the ending was disappointing, I won't be spoiling anything.

Thursday 26th July 2012

I started playing Stranglehold, it seems for a while, my goal currently is to beat Mirrors Edge, Blood Stone and Stranglehold, and I've completed the former 2, so I'm at the last stage of this "Goal" of mine.

Friday 27th July 2012

I was playing a bit of Street Fighter X Tekken just there, I was playing in normal mode, much harder than the easiest difficulty I usually do, and flipping heck was it intense! Especially at the last battle! I was frustrated at a game for the first time in ages, but when I finally finished I, it felt so satisfying! I also unlocked a good few achievements on he way, so something came out of it...

Sunday 29th July 2012

It was N64 week this week, I was bringing the N64, and Steven brought along extra games and controllers.

I've forgotten the order we played the games, so bear with me.

We (Me, Giancarlo and Steven) first had a game of Goldeneye, usually we do Licensed to Kill Slappers Only, but this time, we did a normal gun match, makes a nice change, and it was fun as always, even if Steven dominated the match.

Then me and Steven played 1080 Snowboarding.

Then the three of us played 007 The World is Not Enough, like Goldeneye, we just did a normal gun much, or rather a few.

Then we played Super Smash Bros, I was, as always, last place, except surprisingly the last match.

Finally, me and Steven had a quick game of Perfect Dark, and we didn't even finish it, because we had to leave.

When I got back home, my download for the Borderlands free weekend was done, and surprisingly, my PC struggled to run it, well, it struggled doing 60 fps, it can run on all high settings at 30+ no problem, but why do 30, when you can do 60? I played around a bit to get the game as awesome looking as possible, whilst running fast, I took out all post rendering effects and dynamic shadows and Bam! 60+ fps!

I have to say, I love the cel-shaded graphics, I'm an absolute sucker for those kind of graphics! I also loved the game's RPG elements, and interesting characters. I'm definitely getting this game!

Then I played more Sims 3 and that was it.

Next week is Dreamcast week! One of my favourites!

Sunday 22 July 2012

Retro Diary - 22/7/12 - "Slow."

Monday 16th July 2012

I faced my brother in another few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, he was Classic XI, which is a team for 11 of the best football players who ever lived, and I was Celtic, I beat him in both matches we played, with the scores 9-3 and 11-5 respectively.

The latest issue of "Retro Gamer" arrived today, which means my subscription is back! In June, my subscription ran out, and I didn't have the money to renew it, so I made a new one, because I'd have money for it in July, and I was right!

Wednesday 18th July 2012

I just ordered another bunch of stuff off Amazon, a couple of which actually being stuff... packs! For The Sims 3! I'm getting High End Loft and Fast Lane stuff for my Sims 3, because I love cars and technology, mostly gaming related! I'm also getting both Pets and Ambitions expansion packs. I ordered a whole bunch of other stuff, which I most likely reveal once they arrive in the coming days... In the mean time, time for some more Sims 3!

Thursday 19th July 2012

My Street Fighter X Tekken Strategy guide arrived today, great, now all I need is the game, take a wild guess what platform I'm getting that on...

Blood Stone 007, Left 4 Dead 2 & Plants vs. Zombies have arrived today, I got Blood Stone 007 because it was the last game by Bizzare creations before they went bust, and I loved them, so I thought I'd pay tribute and get their last game, and through ordering it I realised an advantage to being a PC gamer rather than a console gamer, is that even in retail, PC games are considerably cheaper, sometimes even with pre-orders! When I ordered the game, Blood Stone for the PS3 and Xbox 360 were about £15 each, the PC version was £5, booyah! So far, I love the game, I'm glad I got it!

I played the heck out of Left 4 Dead 1, so I decided to get the 2nd one, although I've been busy with Sims 3 and Blood Stone, I'll get around to it eventually...

Before I kind of mentioned it, did you know that you could get Plants vs. Zombies on a CD? Unbelievable, right? I got the Game of the Year Edition, again, I've been busy with other games to play it, but like L4D, I'll get around to it...

I got all of this, but no Sims 3 Ambitions? I ordered it with free one-day delivery, and it hasn't arrived on it's time limit!...

Oh wait, hold on, it's here! For some reason it arrived later than my other stuff, weird, but I'm not complaining... I'll go play more Sims 3!

Saturday 21st July 2012

Yesterday, all I played was Sims 3 and Blood Stone, so that sums up Friday, however, it seemed that I was so in trance into them yesterday, that I missed yesterday's post, although at the time, I thought I didn't receive anything, because I wasn't expecting anything, according to Amazon, nothing I ordered was estimated to arrive yesterday or today, but it turns out, just about everything arrived!

I got my Sims 3 stuff, I got Street Fighter X Tekken, I got a switch box for all of my AV consoles, so swap jobs should be a thing of the past, and I got my Mirror's Edge strategy guide! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be playing some games...

I just encountered a game on MDickie's Facebook Page called "Wrestling Revolution", I downloaded it for the PC, it's free by the way, but the game is absolutely awful! Every aspect about it is bad, I suggest you steer clear at all costs, there are much better free games out there, and even better Flash exe's, including Mdickie's own Flash Stuntz, and even his flash conversion of Sure Shot.

Saturday 21st July 2012

I just got my PS1 packed up, and my auntie is going to pick me up to grans, or so I've been told, so I decided while I waited, I'd play some games, I played a bit of Sims 3, then I went on to complete Mirrors Edge, it's a great game in my opinion, I wouldn't say it lived up the hype, but it's still great.

It was PS1 week at grans today.

Steven had a game of Vib Ribbon, 2 actually, one on Normal, and one on Hard, he managed to pass both.

I then had a game on Normal, then Giancarlo had a game on Easy, the coward!

Then me and Steven had a few races of Firebugs.

Then we had a few games of "Cops and Robbers" on Driver 2.

Then we had a few races on Wipeout 3: Special Edition, most of which Steven either got destroyed, or ran out of time, what I love about Wipeout 3, is that it's straight out, it doesn't try to dumb it down or be nice, it just said Steven was slow, his part of the end stats didn't display any time or "DNF", it just said "Slow", brilliant!

Then for the first time in ages, we had a "Horse of the Week" game on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, the "horse" was "UFNFXPWDTC", my handicap was set to the lowest, and his to the highest, to assure a more fair match... I still beat him, I didn't get one letter!

After that, we left, next week is N64 week, it's been far too long since we had a game of Slappers!

Sunday 15 July 2012

Retro Diary - 15/7/12 - "Are the biscuits retail or digital?"

Wednesday 11th July 2012 - Saturday 14th July 2012

I'm back from my holiday in Italy, and at first it was boring, because I had no access to my games, but after I got used to it, I started to enjoy it a little.

While I was there, I bought a few PC games, there's something I'm jealous at Italy for, over there, you actually get free full games with magazines, I got Metro 2033 with a Italian PC magazine, the full game, with the DVD case in everything, for about €5, and it works fine, it's the full game, and even though it's Italian, you can install the game in English, so I of course did that.

I'll be honest, though, the game is kind of boring, for one thing, it's one of those games that forces anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field and bloom effects, I don't like those effects, they blur out the game for me, but if you want the high quality models and textures, like I do, you're going to have them turned on as well, because you can't manually edit these, you can only have what they give you, which blows!
Also, the game has all the stereotypes that any modern FPS parody has, a needlessly complicated story, players with gritty voices and seem to have tourette syndrome, and you can only do actions when told to, the the environments and dull and colourless.
To be honest, I'll probably keep playing to get more of the story, because as needlessly complicated as it is, I'm kind of intrigued by it, and want to find out how it unfolds.

While I was at Italy, I also came across a GameStop, for those who haven't heard of it, it's an American store, but it also had it's branches in Europe, except, for some reason, Scotland.
Anyway, over there, for €10, you can get 3 PC games, and it pretty much applied to all of them, which was awesome, well, it was a 3 for 2 offer, but most games were about €5 each, so it was about the same.
So I got a good few games from there, most notably Mirrors Edge, which is a great game in my opinion, and also Call of Duty: Deluxe Edition, which has both the Game of The Year Edition of Call of Duty and the United Offence expansion pack, and a game, which my mum picked out for me, because I took to long (heheh....) and she picked out a Basketball game, which, was only released in Italy, it was called Fronte Del Basket 2, for what it was, it was a pretty good little game, it's not nearly as good as the NBA 2k games, but it's still alright for €5.

I also found a reason to get Impluse, which is one of Steams main competitors, which was, up until Origin, the biggest, because I got a game called "Demigod", which was made by Stardock, who also made Impulse, and it installed Impluse with it, and if you create an account, you can update the game and get DLC for it, similar to Steam games, so I made an Impulse account, I'm sure you can guess what it is...

When we got back to Glasgow, I was greeted with a package, which was my copy of Stranglehold for the PC! Games for Windows to be pedantic, it was the Game of Windows range, it was a US copy, but of course, PC has no region lock, so it installed and played just fine, or should I say, beautifully? It ran at 60+ fps at high settings, so it looked and played brilliantly!

I finally completed the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D! Although with the New Wolf mod attached, the ending doesn't work, so I just watched it on Youtube. I also completed Episode 3 of Doom, I just have episode 4 to do, and then it's on to Doom 2!

Sunday 15th July 2012

It was Saturn week this week at gran's.

Me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Virtua Fighter 2.1, then after a while, Steven took over, and while we were playing, we were having a Digital vs. Retail debate, just as a chatter, it wasn't like an argument or anything, it was like normal chatting, we both agreed at the end that both had their ups and downs, which I can accept. We then ended up making fun of them, for example, when Giancarlo mentioned there are biscuits being put out, I asked, for a joke, "Are they Retail or Digital?", and when Steven took one of the game to have a look at it, I said for a joke "I don't want you're Digital Download hand all over my Physical games!".

Then me and Steven had a game of Daytona USA, which I accentually quit... we declared him the winner, as he was in front when it happened.

Then we had a race of Sega Touring Car Championship, we've pretty much made of an in-joke where while we play this game, we randomly slowly say/shout "Slooowdooooown!", because the game kept slowing down.

Then we had a quick game of Sega Rally Championship, before the game, I showed him the famous game over screen, then when we had our game, I unfortunately won... (The "You Win!" text is in red and "You Lost!" is in green, which implies that losing is good!)

Then we played the sequel of the game that redefined the fighting genre, Rise 2: Resurrection! Which in all fairness, is a good game, and he had fun playing it, well, at least I did.

Then we had a few games of Sonic 2 in the Sonic Jam collection.

Then me and Steven had a half match of Sega Worldwide Soccer '98, when the first half ended, Riccardo took over, I won that match.

Then me and Riccardo had a rematch, which he beat me 6-4!

Then me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Fighters Megamix.

After that, we left.

At home, me and Riccardo had a few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, 3 to be exact, all 3 matches I was Celtic and he was Chelsea, I won all 3 matches, with the scores 4-3, 9-6 and 9-3 in order, I written them down for the "Sliders Challenge" page.

Next week is PS1 week, time for some Vib Ribbon!

Sunday 1 July 2012

Retro Diary - 1/7/12 - "It's challenge, challenge, chalenge!"

Monday 25th June 2012

My Wolfenstein 3D PC collection (Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny) has arrived today... but they didn't work... However, I got the games working on DOSBox, which odd as they're supposed to be Windows ports, but at least I get to play them! As I mentioned last week, it came with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which works just fine on my PC, so that's good!

I also got my Brick Buster game, which is a lot of fun, considering it's a budget game.

I got my PC back!!!! ASUS have actually fixed it! It feels so good to be sitting back at my desk!

Yeah, despite my attempt to upgrade the PC, which would've voided the warranty, they fixed my PC, it seems to them the warranty doesn't matter, either that or they don't mind people upgrading PCs, ad they make graphics cards and all, and on their help website solutions to problems sometimes involve "removing recently installed hardware", they can't be referring to USB devices, otherwise they'd of said "devices"...

Anyway, I'm not complaining, my PC works fine (touchwood), so now I can play games in stunning HD (No really, 1080p resolution) one again!

Just in case, I'm only going to upgrade my PC once the warranty has run out, that way, even if it breaks, ASUS won't fix it, my mum apparently know someone who could fix it for me, sop it's not a problem, hopefully...

I tried out Trackmania Nations Forever on the PC, and WOW is it a massive improvement, on my laptop, it ran at 30fps on low settings at best, but being how beat my PC is, I can run it highest settings at 60+fps, and it looks beautiful and runs beautifully!

I also tried out The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight! on it, same things, only it doesn't look as good, it still runs fantastic!

However, I wanted to play FIFA 12, but as usual, Origin is being sub-par, it was saying I didn't own EURO 2012, when I clearly bought it.

It turns out, and I wasn't told until I closed it and opened it back up that I needed to update it, it wasn't until I did, when it finally installed EURO 2012.

The problems didn't end there, though, I wanted to get saved on EA servers (yeah, great start), to my PC, I had to restart Origin 5 times before it successfully synced, and even then, it took 2 hours to do so, this is what you get when the evil overlords of gaming go cheap with everything...

After all that, I finally played the game, and everything was in order, although it took longer to load my data, I blame an update, because every other game I tired played the same as before. So I played the Italy vs. England EURO 2012 challenge, and then quite because I wanted to play other games.

Then I played a Co-Op Session of Portal 2 with my cousin, Steven, at first it thought it was my first time playing, because it showed the beginning intro which you only see when you first play Co-Op, so I tried restarting it to see if that was a one time thing, thankfully, it was, it loaded my data the second time, unfortunately, at that time, there was something wrong with the Portal 2 servers, because both me and Steven were both lagging like crazy and kept disconnecting.

After that, I saved up money for the past week or two to get a much of PC games for my new PC, so I ordered a bunch of games, including the Sims 3, Trackmania United Forever, and Stranglehold.

Tuesday 26th June 2012

I played my brother in FIFA 12, and I kept scoring against him, and he was scoring against me as well, I wasn't counting the score, but when I looked at it after I scored a goal, I realised I was beating him 10-4! Ooft! I'm a lot better at FIFA than I thought!

Wednesday 27th June 2012

3 game I've ordered have arrived today, Toy Story Mania, Toy Story 3 and Dreamcast Collection, all on PC. Also, my Stranglehold strategy guide arrived, although I've yet to receive the actual game...

Toy Story Mania came as a surprise when I found out about it, I thought the game was a Wii exclusive casual mini games game, and I was right, but I found out a year or so later, only in Europe, they made a PC version, I usually wouldn't have bothered with it, but since I was getting Toy Story 3 for the PC and this was less than £5 brand new, I thought "What the hey!", and ordered that alongside Toy Story 3 and a bunch of other PC games. I got it, and it sucks even more than the Wii version, half of the features don't work in this version, and by that, I mean basic things you have to do, such as shake the Wiimote/mouse, that doesn't work on the PC version, and it's just overall boring to play, but I suppose for £5, I shouldn't be complaining...

Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is brilliant! I've played the PS2 and Wii versions beforehand, and really enjoyed them, so I thought I'd get the PC version, because usually, PC versions of games are the best if you have the right hardware and a decent controller, and I had both (I use the Xbox 360 controller with wireless receiver!), and I was right, the PC version, is the best version at least from the versions I've played, it had a great Toy box mode much like the Wii version but has more and the game runs much faster, 60++ fps!

As for Dreamcast Collection, I wasn't going to get this one either, since I hate collections of old games, I think they abuse the original systems and deplete any value they have... but since the PC version of Dreamcast collection was only £1 brand new, I thought I might as well.

However, just like Toy Story Mania, I was disappointed with this one, it took, literally over an hour to install for starters, then I tried out Crazy Taxi, the controls were confusing as heck, and you couldn't change them, and most importantly, they ruined it by replacing the music, I understand Sega may no longer have the licence to use Bad Religion songs, but if that were the case, they shouldn't have bothered at all, it's just not Crazy Taxi without Bad Religion, they aren't any improvements in the game anyway, it's not even in widescreen like they claimed, it's in letterbox mode, they aren't any widescreen resolutions, so just stick with your Dreamcast original.

Thursday 28th June 2012

Ultimate Quake on PC and Twisted on the 3DO have arrived today!

Unfortunately, I've been having problems with both at first. With Twisted, my 3Do stopped outputting sound, although I soon realised it was playing sound, just very quietly, and found out when the system warms up, then it plays the sound at normal volume, strange, but at least I know what the problem is exactly, now to find out what causes it and how to fix it... oh yeah, and Twisted worked perfectly, so I can just throw my broken burnt CD away, I have a genuine properly, working copy now!

Quake Live was a slightly different story, Quake 1 installed and played perfectly fine, but Quake 2 and 3 didn't install at all...

With Quake 2, it turns out all "install" did was move content of a certain folder into a folder in Program Files, so I just did that manually, and it worked... sort of, I could only play it windowed, however, I found out about a source port called "R1Q2", which fixed this problem, so I installed it, and it worked perfectly!

Quake 3 Arena was a weird one, the install didn't work at first, but I could run the game off the CD, but if I were to do that, I'd have to insert the CD key every time I start it, so I decided to try it again in compatibility mode, and it worked!

Remember when I got Wolfenstein 3D and it only worked in DOSBox? Well, it turns out there exists a source port called "New Wolf", which not only makes the game work on Windows, but also supports higher resolutions, a bigger screen, and it runs much smoother! I've applied it to both Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, which, by the way, I found out if you cope the folder from the CD to your hard drive, you can make the game work without the CD, so I did that.

I've also discovered GZ-Doom, which is an extension of Z-Doom, it improves it even further, supporting higher resolutions, and makes 3D models out of the doom levels, so you can look up and down without it looking awkward! There are also tonnes of little things that make GZ-Doom that much better! I've also found some Doom PWADS, one is called "Call of Dooty", which makes fun of modern shooters! Another is "Doom Center", which is a town, it has a bowling alley, and an arcade, in the arcade, there's a duck hunt game which you can play using doom itself, it's pretty awesome!

I've played a Co-Op session of Portal 2 with Steven again, this time, with the server up and running like normal!

Friday 29th June 2012

The Sims 3 arrived today! I'm just about to play it...

...I've had a go, and it's absolutely brilliant, it's very addicting!

I've had a game of FIFA 12 with my brother on the PS3, a few, actually, and I've beaten him in pretty much all of them, one of them was completely mad, full of shots that ended up hitting the post and bar, one, in particular, my brother explained in detail, I had to wait for 5-10 minutes for him to type it.

EA claimed that you can pre-order FIFA 13 Ultimate Edition for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC, so I thought "Great! A PC version, I'll be getting that!", but guess what? No store have the PC version for pre-order, not even EA's very own Origin! EA: Trolls of the century!

I've been playing more Sims 3, and I was so into it, I didn't realise the time, so when I finished, when I stopped playing it, it was 1:15am!

Saturday 30th June 2012

Trackmania United Forever had arrive today, and it's awesome!

I've played another (partial) game with my brother at FIFA 12, we only play for about 10 in game minutes, until he left, neither of us scored...

We played a full game of FIFA 12 later on, we both did random teams, he ended up with Arsenal and I ended up with some Portuguese team... We played another game afterwards, I believe it was an El Classico

Also, I'm going to make a new feature of my blog. It'll be similar to "Horse of the week", but it'll be with my and my brother, and we'll be recording the scores of games we do, there's a twist, which, chances are, like Horse of the Week, we'll soon stop exclusively doing that, is that we'll be using sliders for our games...

My friend from college, Jamie, got the Sims 3 as well, just a day after I did, which is pretty cool, we've added each other of the community website.

Sunday 1st June 2012

It was 3DO week at grans this week...

I played a bit of Starblade and Need for speed first of all to get the sound on (It's quiet until it's been on for 5 minutes.), then when my cousins came in, we had a game of Twisted! Giancarlo technically won it, I say technically, we didn't finish it, but he got the furthest.

We had to leave after that, we brought our cousins up for the Euro 2012 finals (Spain vs. Italy), before the game, I played a bit of Sims 3, then my and Giancarlo played a match of Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the PS2, and then we played a race in the Motor Kombat mini-game.

After the Euro 2012 game, I showed Steven GZ-Doom, and a cool custom wad, which makes fun of modern FPSes, called "Call of Dooty", then I showed him Trackmania United/Nations Forever, and he said me might download Nations, as it's free, then he had to go.

I showed Giancarlo the Sims 3, and he said it looked like a lot of fun to play, and said he might get it, awesome, 2 people I know will (hopefully) have it!

After that, he left.

I'm going on holiday to Italy tomorrow, so there won't be a Retro Diary next week, but the week after, I'll be adding a lot to this site, like the Sliders feature with me and my brother being added.

Next time at our grans, it will be Saturn week.

Alright, see you in a couple of weeks!