A little look at some recent games...

Little Introduction

Recently I have been hammering my PC (once again.) I went back to the Xbox 360 for Black Ops, but after the first month of brilliant gameplay, good community and of course great team play, kids start hammering the game. Naturally, I am all for the younger generation gaming and enjoy online game play with the facilites we have now. But I can't stand it when I am in a game, and just because I may not get 300 kills to 1 death, it doesn't mean they can start shouting abuse and having a go. Stresses me out, so I always end up hating the Xbox and visiting the PC again. In this short but sweet post I will briefly discuss two of my latest games I have been playing on Steam, and of course, the one game I cannot wait for...

Dragon Age 2

To begin with, I was a major fan of the first Dragon Age. Finished the game with each character, unlocked the endings etc etc. It was perfect, everything about it, apart from Sten... he was a bit creepy. But anyway, Dragon Age 2... how can I put this game in a simple sentence, covering the main points. Well actually, I can't there is so much to say about this game, I couldnt possibly describe it's unique game play and story in one simple way. Basically, all I will say is purchase this game. Preferably on PC, as everyone knows that RPG's are terrible on consoles. But anyway, the story (so far) is actually perfect. There are so many things included in the second one that you learn about through the first game (so I advise you hammer the first Dragon Age before battling through the second, it may help you out a lot.) Secondly, the option of importing your Dragon Age 1 character background into the second game introduces a whole new feature of gaming. Although you can choose one of three default character backgrounds, it's always nice to know all those hours played on the first game became useful after months of keeping that game save on your hard drive. The graphics within the game look great, on PC the graphics have DirectX11, so all the textures have tesselation. Making the game like ten times better and the over all appearance of the surroundings, characters and items look much better. The dialogue, character animation and lip sync is all spot on. Bioware really did do a brilliant job with all the small details. Also the new fighting styles within the latest engine are much better than the first Dragon Age, so the fights are much more realistic and gorey :) Anyway, I could write about Dragon Age 2 all day and fill my blog with facts and reviews, but the moral of this short review is "Buy the game... you won't be disappointed."

Lead and Gold - Gangs of the Wild West

Now, I'm not going to lie... I was never a fan of Red Dead Redemption, but a major fan of Red Dead Revolver. To be honest, I don't think I like RDR because it is basically Grand Theft Auto 4, but with horses... and I never liked GTA4 (expecting comments of hatred right about now.) However, I am a major fan of Team Fortress 2, and Lead and Gold is basically TF2 + Red Dead Revolver. The game play is great, the different multiplayer choices are brilliant and the feel to the game is great. Imagine heavy in a cowboy hat... that is Lead and Gold. I only bought it today from Steam so I haven't had much time to play it, but myself and my friend Matt were playing some of the co-op mode which makes you, the player, raid small camps for bags of gold and fight off waves of enemies whilst doing this. At the beginning of the game type the enemies are really dumb and they hardly fight back, but towards the final waves and as the player ranks up they A.I gets much smarter and the enemies become faster and have much better accuracy. So team play really pays off, especially when choosing the different character classes. I will most probably write an entire blog post about Lead and Gold once I have played more covering all aspects of the game, so if you are interested in knowing more, keep an eye out on my blog and I will post some information up soon.

...And Now The Game I Can't Wait For 

PORTAL 2. Enough said. Seriously though, the pre-purchase has gone through on steam... it is only a matter of time before my game library is happy once again. I really hope it delivers as much fun and challenge as the first one. Oh and btw, pre-purchase it now on steam and Gabe will allow you to save 10%. What a nice guy.

Anyway thanks for reading, I really need to start using this blog more often as I have so many things I want to discuss about games, software and programming, I just need to find the time and effort to complete all the posts, Thanks again. Buhbye for now.
Remtard.

Changes Occuring to the Blog

I am currently working on some changes that will be seen on my blog within the next couple of days/weeks. The main change that will be featured here will be:
 -  A new css stylesheet, but I'm going to try incorporate CSS3 for my interactive features.
 -  More game reviews, but covering more PC games rather than consoles.
 -  Software reviews.
 -  Cover some programming with advantages and disadvantages to different languages.
 -  General information

What I'm Currently Doing...

I have currently taken a step back from all the website development tutorials and learning the various languages like CSS and PHP as I am really interested in building mobile applications due to the heavy programming side of things.

I am currently working on a small application for the Apple iPhone, but as I do not have a Mac at the moment, the development is very buggy and tends to fail when I try and compile it into the cracked emulator that I must try it on. Also, the problem of me not having an iPhone means I cannot try the application on a real handset, but I am sure a friend or two will allow me to try it when it is getting closer to complete.

I can't currently give any details out to you guys as I havent fully understood what my application is about just yet. All I can tell you is that it will be a small game, with (I am hoping) 3 levels of gameplay as well as animated characters and enemies with anh interactive environment.

Apart from that, it is still all underground :) As soon as I have any major areas developed I will upload some images straight away and see what you guy think. I have no idea how long it will take me as I just work on it when I have spare time at home, but I will hopefully have it done in the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading :)
Remtard 

Our webpage is under development :)

Me and my friend Matt are currently working on our freelancing website that will offer Web design and hosting. Javacakes is a local company that offers services to individuals and small businesses in the North Wales area. We are taking on various jobs with some clients currently and have successfully finished some tasks that have been sent our way with positive feedback.

We will be including all of the services that we offer as well as various packages that are available for hosting your web pages. If you would like to check out the site visit Javacakes.co.uk and have a look around. The site is still undergoing some major development as we are working on the stylesheet when we have time as well as working for some clients.

When are page is completed it will include a portfolio based page showing the work we have produced to give potential clients a preview of our work. We are also working on a forum that will be shown on our page that will host a community who enjoy gaming, computing and programming. The forum isn't hosted on our web page but it can be found at Javacakes Forum. So feel free to sign up and become an active user posting up content. But bare in mind the forum layout is very basic at the moment as we are trying to edit all the PHP files to look the way we want it.

Thanks guys,
Remtard.

Sweet...

Runescape will be good again!
Jagex have officially announced that they are bringing back the wilderness and free trade after a long awaited update. For those who play Runescape I'm sure you are as happy as myself and friends who play, but those who do not care at all for Runescape... you really should.

Web development
Myself and Matt have finally got round to buying our hosting for our web design and hosting free lancing so if you know of anyone who would like any work doing, send them our way ;D I will update this blog when our web page is completed and running smoothly, but until then we will be designing the layout and working on certain ideas we currently have.

Minecraft <3
I have started playing Minecraft again on a singleplayer and have once again remembered how amazing it actually is compared to other large scale games. I recently only noticed that the game title won the PC Gamer Game of the Year award. I am extremely impressed that a strictly coded game managed to beat other gaming companies that rely on 3D graphic design programs rather than programming methods to code the game from scratch.


This is just going to stay as a short post as I want to carry on posting on my blog, but currently there isn't much to discuss. When our webpage is up and running with a forum I will post the links up here and see what you think.
Cheers, Remtard.

I'm starting again...

Wow, I really haven't posted on this at all recently. Which really goes against what my original plan was when I made this blog but anyway. I just wanted to write about what's happening at the moment. Well basically, Cataclysm is fully released for World of Warcraft which is awesome. To be honest, patch 4.0.3 has to be the best thing I've ever seen in a game. The new WoW quests are addictive and much more inviting, so I can actually level a new character without getting bored, the graphics have been revamped, and to anyone who has played it... One word... Water. It looks amazing. Seriously, Blizzard have done such a good job with this new release and I can't see the game improving much more until the next expansion.

WoW cataclysm artwork

The new race additions to World of Warcraft are very impressive. I race changed my Night Elf hunter to a Worgen hunter, and I love the new look and racial advantages. If you are a WoW player you'll know what I am on about, if not... get playing. But seriously, if you have always been inbetween starting WoW and leaving it, now's the time to start. The game is balanced, the community is great and there is so much to do from a low level, including dungeons, PvP battlegrounds and questing. It's great.

Me and my friend Matt also sent off our UCAS forms and literally 12 hours later we recieved an offer from Huddersfield University to study Computer Games Programming. I was impressed that the forms went through that quick, fair play. 

Finally, I have been staring at a lot of Java code recently and spending a lot of time trying to figure out various applications that have been made for Android based phones. Just so I can try and make my own. After realising all of these were very complex I decided to try and make my own bot for Runescape. This was much more successful and the code was a lot easier. After around an hour I managed to script a bot to make my Runescape character walk forward, turn the camera and then dance for roughly 3 minutes and then repeat... pointless? Yes. Worth it? Definately. 

Old graphics of Runescape, the good days

It's been a while

I only realised today that it has been a while since I had wrote a post for my blog, so I thought I'd fill you in on some of the new things that have occurred in the time away from this.

Well, to start off, on the 27th I turned 19, which is pretty cool. No special age though, doesn't allow me to do anything else legally, so not much to celebrate really. But I did have some friends over and they bought their computers, so to give a brief example of what we had... 4 computers all hooked up to the internet and basically we played League of Legends and World of Warcraft all night. Geeky? Correct. Sad? No where near. Now to many people, celebrating a birthday in that way would be... well boring. But not for me, I love gaming and I love my friends. So why not combine their ultimate forces and create a night that I'll remember rather than going to Broadway (a local night club) and getting so drunk that I can't remember what I was celebrating.

On the note of online gaming, I just want to say a massive thank you to Blizzard, the creators of World of Warcraft, for releasing patch 4.0.3. It is possibly the best thing that has happened to WoW. There are new quests, new NPC's, all the areas have changed, and OH MY GOD the water is amazing. I cannot describe to you the excitement I have when I see water on World of Warcraft. If your graphics are set to ultra then the ripples, the reflection, everything... wow. The only downside to this patch is... you actually need a half decent computer to run the game itself. The graphics have improved massively and they have gone into great detail with them. Next stop... Tessellation. If they take advantage of Direct X 11 then they'll be rolling in the HD graphics.

Anyway, I'm going to stop here and go and enjoy some more World of Warcraft water. This is only a short post I know, but I will plan some new reviews, I bought Alien VS Predator the other day on Steam. I know it's been out a while, but I will come up with some sort of review for that and let you guys see it if you were planning on buying it.
Cheers guys x