Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

MMMMMM

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

days away as I was from buying ye olde George Forman grill Playstation 3 it looks like i was wise to hold fire. Sony announced today the thing most of us already knew – the Orginal PS3 looks like butt and had to be redesigned! Lets all laugh at the early adapters.

lovely

XBox hypocrisy

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

47 days

So I got another XBox then. Weighing it all up and thinking with my wallet 89 Dinars as opposed to 170 for a PS3 means that I had no choice. In fact, the Xbox I got was cheap and basic – no hard drive (i could use my old one) and built in HDMI which was one of the main factors of me getting a PS3. The HDMI cable was cheap (not included natch) so it was a no brainer. I can use my old games and finish off Rainbow 6 Vegas at long last. Shocking. My first experience of HDMI gaming and its awesome. Not sure why but it just is. GTA looks lovely on it. It’s also quieter than my old one and the power supply is smaller. The disc tray is also more robust so it SHOULD last but I doubt it.

The weekend wasn’t great. Friday night was my first chance to hobnob with the big cheeses without needing to dash home to relieve my wife of the day shift. Started off OK. Drinks, small talk, Jokes. It ended with me being driven home as everyone separated out in a establishment full of old Chinese brass (definition 2). The bossman got his driver to drop me off. He went off with a ‘friend’. I think most of them do. Whilst married. I think. I was wasted. Saturday was self-loathing and XBox buying. Today more of the same except with added heartbreak. I don’t know, its kind of like numb at first when they go. Week one its all a novelty and I dare say week 2 will be as well but then weeks 3 and 4 kick in and then it gets really tough. Its kind of like being on a roller coaster – you go up before the big dip. I’m going up now. I’m looking at the calender all the time but I have to get through all of August and a bit of September and however I calculate it it gets no easier to deal with. We Skype as much as possible but its not the same. My son stares at the computer for a few minutes before wandering off. He doesn’t get it so shuts me out. I have to do the same. The hard part is re-opening again when you reunite. It takes time. The forthcoming week promises to be busy so there is something there that will take my mind off things.

47 days to go

Microsoft are shit

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

microsoft suck

Ah…so only a few Xboxes would suffer from Red Ring of Death. What a piece of shit. Was watching The Wire last weekend via my PC that I have steaming to this plastic piece of crap. That’s a whole new story by the way, streaming from a (windows Microsoft) PC to a (Microsoft) XBox. So complicated. So hit and miss. So…illogical. Anyway, after five years of trying to get a stream to work I hear BEEP and the whole xbox locks up JUST LIKE THAT. Frozen. I turn it off and turn it on and there, blinking at me, is the flashing Red Ring of fuckery. In essence it means it’s broken. Its also out of warranty. Rumour has it that 1 in 3 die like this. So I am left with a pile of Microsoft shit that is out of warranty. What to do in Bahrain? There are no authorised dealers on this rock so you have to go to some dodgy shop in the hope they know what they are doing but they don’t. I don’t trust them. I tried the towel trick and it worked. For a week. SO I can pay more loot and hope they know what they are doing OR I can stop throwing good money after bad and finally get a PS3. Blu Ray. HDMI. No Region shit. Just games. And Blu Ray. This is the point I actively start avoiding Microsoft now. No more PC’s for me and no more XBox. I don’t care how fly they are I’m not giving them any of my hard earned anymore.

50 days to go

10th July

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Oman then. Its OK.Not blown away but not that bad. Kind of sleepy and the national dress is nice and the airport is OK. Back home and then on to Doha the next day. Doha,Qatar is not great. A dry arid and much hotter desert than Bahrain. Somehow lacks a soul. The cornice is not great either. Glad to fly back to Bahrain. Work the next day was filled with not much apart from in-fighting staff and a dream to get back to the desert.

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Classic heat that I found looking for Chubb Rock on Youtube. Premo beat but Golden Era. Listen lyrics…

Friday

Friday, March 7th, 2008

And so perhaps one of the toughest weeks of my professional career ends. I started the week as the underdog and now feel as if I have climbed right back to the top where I was a month or so ago. It is inevitable there is friction if you are single minded but I think that’s now over. I can now work and work I am. Like a professional. My team is well oiled and my shifty client is putty in my hands. I love my work right now. My wife is also happy which is the most important thing. This afternoon I picked up a breast pumping machine so she can squirt some bottles of milk out and go and get a life of some description for a few hors at least. The sun is out and the sky is blue. I can now look forward to 48 hours alone with my family. Life is not much better than that right now.

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Friday, February 29th, 2008

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Days Of Ruin

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Copped this on Friday night after work in Wan Chai. Surprisingly hard to track own but got my copy for 230 HK dollars. Got pissed after work and had a wedding on Saturday so no real chance to play it until today. First impressions are OK. It plays the same as the previous AW games that we know and love but the Technicolor graphics are gone and it has become more  serious in style. Most game sites say that is a good thing but I must be alone in liking the garish and naive style of the previous outings. I liked the innocence the Japanese developers had adopted when it came to war. Now that is gone. It will take time to get used to for sure but I can see another five or so years of gaming in this cart alone. Any AW is that good.

Atlantic Crossing

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

Hot Rod

Being as I find myself home alone (more on that later) I have decided to be frivolous and carefree for the entire duration. Kind of like Lennon’s lost weekend I will do all those wild and wacky things that I could never do under the constant 24 hour observation of my wife. One of these things (and as rock and roll as I get these days) was to join Xbox live. I put it off as much as I could and, to be honest, I wasn’t in the slightest bit interested previously and still really wasn’t as I plugged the LAN cable in. I’m old school dun and I figure that games should be purchased from a shop, put into your console and then played. Multi-player? Go find some friends and sit on the sofa playing Mario Kart or something. Games were always self encapsulating experiences and had all you needed in the cart or disc. What other way was there? Well I seem to have missed the boat and now what is on the disc is only part of the package. So yesterday, kind of skeptical, I plugged my 360 into the internet just FOR THE HELL OF IT AND BECAUSE I CAN.

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XBox 360 review

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

360

Found this in my hard drive written a while ago. I thought I’d post in case somebody is still interested in a review of a console that has been out nearly two years…

My 360 was purchased last month. It was a toss up between which of the next gen consoles (PS3, Wii and 360) to go for but the 360 won out. Firstly, an most importantly, the 360 has far superior games. It’s really that simple. Both the Wii and the PS3 simply do not have strength in gaming depth. Of course, it depends on your tastes but I’m too old to be waving things at the TV playing a tennis game on the Wii and if I got a PS3 i’d have no games to play such is the dearth of anything decent on it. It’s a no brainier as far as I’m concerned. Plus, I’m a big FPS fan and the 360 has billions of them. I had a look around Times Square at the consoles in the flesh and my opinion of the PS3 was reinforced – it’s ugly and rushed. Anyone want to bet me when the proper ‘slim’ ( i.e. finished PS3) will be released? I’ll give it 2 years. Mind you, in sexiness terms, the 360 is no looker and the Wii wins this somewhat superficial contest.

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