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I have honestly been debating my preorder of the full whack edition of The Beatles Rockband. £180 is to be honest a lot of cash to put down on something that, on occasion, I’m not sure about buying but when I see things like this video it chances my mind back again!

What a stunning tribute to The Beatles and their songs, the animation and artwork is beautiful and seeing Ringo’s quirky smile when he starts singing really made me smile. You can tell just by watching that video the attention to detail that has gone into the game.

I think while my interest in playing the instruments isn’t so high I am really looking forward to singing the songs. The Beatles music is generally just such a pleasure to listen to and to be able to sing them with these dreamscapes playing is exciting! Only one thing could make it better and that would be the inclusion of Blue Meanies!

Glove ?

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A long and arduous drive down to the very nether-regions of the United Kingdom was a pretty spontaneous, for me anyhow, decision that much to my girlfriends displeasure, she wasn’t going to be able to join me on as she couldn’t book the time off.

5 hours down and 300 miles later I hadn’t seen a single pirate, plenty of coastline but not a galleon to be seen or a sea shanty to be heard. I already had feared the chances of me finding the SCUMM bar were slim and when I got to Penzance this was confirmed.

In place of what I would have expected to be some pretty awesome pirate shops selling Cutlasses and Grog I stumbled across some very sub-standard town stores and a gaggle of emo kids who were probably running about 3 years behind the times. I guess fashion takes a while to get down to the west country.

In fact I think the ONLY pirate related thing I saw in Penzance was a small boat anchored in the harbour that was selling nick-knacks with a pirate flag, unfortunately I didn’t get chance to check it out due to the absolutely atrocious weather the UK has had over the last week or so.

My secondary objective, as my pirate search was looking to be coming up empty, was to try and find some arcades. Normally the British seaside is awash with arcades, especially old ones. I must have walked well over a mile in the pissing rain and stumbled across a single arcade.

I normally have a handful of games I generally expect to see when I go to an arcade, they are :

• Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
• Simpson’s
• X-men
• Bubble Bobble or Snow Bros (if I’m lucky)

What did they have in there ? Sod all, I was most distraught. The seaside had let me down, the closes thing to an arcade experience they had was the T2 arcade and that’s pushing it, the game came out for the SNES Super scope FFS!

Through my entire week of hunting for arcades there was one shining light of a game that I didn’t even know existed and something I will write a bit more about in pt2.

After Burner : Climax

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This … is fucking epic!

I own the first two on the original Xbox and the shocking excuse for a game that was the Xbox 360 one.
But this …. this is the return to the original that I had hoped for, hundreds of units, stupid “rock” soundtrack and lots of death! Even if they just follow the formulae of the original they will make me happy.

The games are so grand beyond their reception that they should be much wider known about, a great mix of Dynasty Warriors meets Lord of the Rings this is certainly what the Lotr’s games should have been more like!

Can’t wait

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Due to Sony being a bunch of ass fuckers the release for the 360 version of Ghostbusters, in the UK, has been delayed until October, so being the resourceful chap I am I imported a copy via EBay

After a roughly 9 hour run through the game I thought I would post a few of my impressions and why I think that them making the third film a game was an excellent idea!

Let’s start with the obligatory…

Who you gonna call ?

So the guys are back together, Ray, Egon, Venkman and Winston finally get their asses together for what essentially is Ghostbusters 3. The game is still set in same familiar places and feature the same cast members with only a handful, namely Sigourney Weaver and Rik Moranis, missing which gives the game an excellent sense of authenticity that personally I have never seen before in a game.

You could probably say the kind of experience they are going for is one of a kind. Rather than making a game to emulate a film they have made a game that should have been the film in the first place. Originally penned by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis to be Ghostbusters 3 the original script was apparently put on hold due to technology not being advanced enough to give the effect they desired. With Ghostbusters 2 being the success it was I guess they didn’t want to disappoint with the third entry in the series.

I think generally the game is a HUGE success. Honestly I very rarely finish my games, I think the last game I finished prior to this was Mass Effect. That was well over a year ago and I’ve had plenty of other games since, Fable 2, Prince of Persia, just to name 2 but I do get bored very quickly.

Ghostbusters moves along with a nice pace, through the entire game there was only one point where I got frustrated (fucking flying Cherub things), but generally its an enjoyable romp through an equally enjoyable storyline that needs to be experienced by anyone who is a fan of either of the first two movies.

Other reviews I have read commented on the inconsistency of the cut scenes which I would have to agree on, also on the lip syncing being off on a fair number of the cut scenes. Although if I hadn’t have read other reviews prior to getting the game I would have blamed this on my slowly dying 360 but it never really hampered the enjoyment of the experience.

I have had a brief bit of time with the multi player which was a pleasant surprise. For something that I honestly would have expected to be tacked on, it’s actually a very competent component of the package and has a lot of playtime and adds a lot to the game. With a co-op campaign and and experience system and a good choice of modes there is a lot of time that can be spent just busting ghosts and generally making yourself feel good! Because of course, bustin makes me feel good.

Without going on too much, it’s not one of those impulse purchases I regretted, a very enjoyable game that was well worth the wait and I’m actually fairly interested in playing through it a second time to get a load of the achievements I missed in my first run through.

So if you live in the UK you can either pop online and grab yourself a multi-region NTSC version or wait around for the PAL version in October, your call.

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Apparently .. I do ?

I have a strange obsession with trying every single type of energy drink I can, maybe it’s just on the off chance maybe one will turn me into a super-hero. Probably it is down to me constantly wanting to try new things, I think my favourite energy drink so far has still got to be the 24 CTU Energy Drink just for the pure genious of it! Although the target is to try Mana energy potions . Again, marketing gone mad but it sucks me in like a bitch.

Finished Ghostbusters a matter of hours ago,  and can hand on heart say that apart from one frustrating section, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was worth every penny. I look forward to ranting about it when I put something nice together.

Also just ordered the Dungeon expansion for Talisman, looking forward to the extra characters and rules it adds!