We’re having some work done on the web server over the next day or so and this may mean a temporary loss of GBS.

Hopefully we won’t be down for too long if at all.

I picked up a copy of Assassians Creed a few days ago, and although I’ve only had a limited amount of time on it so far, I’m feeling somewhat ‘meh’ about it so far.

As most of you will know, it’s been one of the most hyped games of the year, with many a column inch being spent on analysing what looked like being one of the stand out titles of 2007.  Whilst I don’t think it’s crap, I find myself questioning why it’s had soo much praise.

Maybe I’m just judging it too quickly given my expectations.  It does look gorgeous, control is difficult to get used to but soon feels comfortable, and the general atmosphere really helps to strengthen the setting.  The free-running stuff is also cool, as is scaling huge buildings.

Yet, already I find myself feeling that this is being used as a stepping stone for the game engine to test it out properly in a retail product.  It’s from Ubisoft, home of some top titles including Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and the change of pace from high tech 21st Century gadgets, to high tech 11th Century gadgets is welcome.  It’s come from a good pedigree but it doesn’t quite feel like it’s in the same league as those previous games.

Something about it feels a bit hollow, as though I’m being disassociated with what’s going on at times.  The immersion doesn’t really kick in.  It’s enjoyable sure, but I’m only feeling like I’m playing a game with a preset path, than being taken in by an experience.

At the time of purchase I was toying between Super Mario Galaxy or Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga (if you’re laughing, you obviously haven’t tried the titles top class simple gameplay.  It’s Star Wars for fecks sake!) as alternatives.  Now I can’t help feeling I wish I’d plumped for one of them instead.

Just not enough of it though. Almost a week after my last post, I have indeed completed a couple of games, but not as many as I like. There’s still this “not enough time in the day” thing that still messes up my plans. I suppose that being a bit shit at games probably doesn’t help either!

So pretty much a few hours after I posted, I actually completed Halo 3 on the Heroic setting. Seems I wasn’t too far away from the end of the game as I initially thought. Next step is to complete it on Legendary, but that’ll be an online thing with some buddies. Don’t know when I’ll get round to that as there’s hardly anybody on Xbox Live at the same time as me these days!

A couple of days later see’s Half-Life 2 completed, with Episode One following suite shortly after. I’m currently running through Episode Two at the moment. I thought that this game would start getting a bit tedious, and there where certains parts that did start to grate a bit, but I’m loving the twists and turns in this story. It’s a shame that I have absolutly no idea what happened at the end of the original Half-Life, because that wierd talking bloke that seems to pop up now and again is starting to geive me the creeps somewhat!

As well as HL2, I also decided to crack open Colin McRae Rally and have a few blasts on that. This is another game that has been sat around doing nothing pretty much since the days that I bought it! PGR4 will take yet another back seat as I try and get this completed too. Again, I still have a few other games to do, and I’ll get round to finishing them eventually.

Until of course, the arrival of Guitar Hero 3. According to my lovely wife, I won’t be getting my hands on it until Christmas.

We shall see…

With the run up to Christmas gathering pace (already!) and the list of “must have” games ever increasing, I think it’s time that I get my finger out of my arse and start completing as many games that I own as I can!

For the past few months, things have been so busy at home and at work that I just haven’t had the time to play, let alone complete any of my games! Taking the idea from a certain Bouncybhall, I’m going to sit down and get as many games done as I possibly can.

Firstly, there’s Halo 3. This is taking a little longer than I though, due to the fact that I’m trying to complete the game on Heroic. Everyone else I know has done the game on normal, but then gone online and completed the Legendary mode in co-op play. Unfortunatly, I wasn’t around for that small feat. When I do (eventually) complete the game (damn those hateful Flood levels), I’ll be happy in the knowledge that I didn’t just do it the easy way, as I have previously done in the past!

Next up is the excellent Orange Box. 5 games for the price of 1. Not bad at all if you ask me! The brilliant and humorous Portal has already been done, but I have yet to try and do the “extras” as yet. I haven’t even touched Team Fortress 2, seeing as I’ve never actually seen anybody else playing the damned thing! But the main star of The Orange Box; Half-Life 2. This has to be one of the best FPS’s I’ve ever laid my hands on.

In all honesty, I did have this on the Xbox when it was forst released, but again, I never got round to finish it. But with Episodes 1 and 2 thrown into the mix, I feel more compelled to knuckle down and get the bloody thing completed! But this game is HUGE! I have no idea how far I have left to go in the game (I’m on my way out of Nova Prospekt) and I’m dying to see what happens in the next two episodes. I think this is going to be one of those games that keeps me going for quite some time!

The next game that needs completing is PGR4. Well, in all honesty, I need to actually be in the mood to pick this up. I really cannot get into this game at all. It just doesn’t seem to be as good as the previous games, and graphically…yuk. I don’t know if it’s me, or if anyone else will agree with me. I just don’t feel like this game was a worthy purchase. But, I must get this bloody thing completed!

I have a load of other games going back from when the 360 first came out that also need to be finished, but the three above are the main priorities at the moment. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!

As of sometime after 9pm this evening Xbox Live here in the UK seems to be a rather unhappy place. Network traffic is moving very, very slowly and most functions within the dashboard cause the 360 to time out or crash.

Just a little earlier, well just before 9pm I was playing a nice game of Halo 3 matchmaking. Come back at 10pm for a bit more and the whole thing is unresponsive yet most of the net seems okay. Watching my friends list is like watching a group of people doing the Okey-Cokey. Signing in, signing out, signing in, signing out - I guess everyone else is rebooting their 360’s too.

Oh well, hope it comes up soon. I need more multiplayer action

As Call of Duty 4 comes out tomorrow I thought it high-time I completed Call of Duty 3.

To say I was surprised to find I’d only spent long enough on the game to finish the first level would be a slight exageration. I wasn’t surprised. At all. Because as is the modern gamers way of life a new game always captures the imagination and the older titles get left of the shelf even if they are only days old.

The same happened with Condemned. I recently bought that from the classics range and it’s very good - have I played it recently? - no!

Does anyone else have a habit of leaving games half-finished? Or does everyone else finish them off completely before moving onto the next?

During my daily work routine I often have to meddle in the powers of VB and occasionally C# depending on what I want to do within .net. Whilst trying to code a small app to work with our DMS, Visual Studio managed to throw up an error with an interesting tip.

“When casting from a number, the value must be a number less than infinity.” 

How I manage to subtract a constant from an unknown I’m not sure. Infinity minus one?