Update #5

I've found something out about DWG2 since the First Impressions I did, and that is that it seems like it's a very long game which will take a long time to complete fully. Even though I've only owned it for about a week, I'm already really looking forward to doing a review.

I have a copy of Chrono Trigger DS which I bought when it came out in the US; I got it imported as I'm from the UK. I'm trying to cut back on the amount of games I play at a time down from about five which is not manageable for me down to two so I can start completing and reviewing more games like this one and Broken Sword (which I still haven't touched yet!). Also I can get more time to play my Saturn.

You may have noticed that the link to my YouTube channel has changed. I have cancelled my SmallManGeorge account and began a new one under the name of TheSaturnMan. As you can imagine, with my Saturn collecting I plan to do a lot of videos on it in the long term, as well as covering a lot of other gaming stuff.

It's been a fun week this week. College days have been so short (literally a couple of hours) due to stuff going on, it's great as I got to stay at home more and do a bit of work too.

Swine Flu

OK by now I'm sure almost everybody has heard of this. I'm surprised that all of this stuff just seemed to have came out of nowhere all of a sudden, it isn't how the media built up bird flu at all.

I really think that a lot of people need to relax and just calm down about this. Sure, it's a new illness that we have little to no knowledge of, but I'm sure something will be done to help stop this thing. Yes people have been killed by this in Mexico, but it's not exactly cancer is it? The media would like to have us believe that this is going to kill us all; at the end of the day, the more they can report on this the easier it is for them to do there job, and will more than likely gain the media more money too. The more they report on this in their usual sensationalist fashion the more panicked people will become; it's just not doing anyone any good. In fact I've heard that thousands of worried people have already called the health organisations, and I guess most of them (like 99.9% of them) have nothing to worry about.

I feel sorry for the poor Scottish couple that came home from holiday with the illness; I think it was bang out of order how the media released there names and where they lived; sure they need to be in some sort of quarantine for the moment, but there's a possibility things might be harder for them in the future because of this and it will damage their relationship with their community.

First Impressions: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2

I must say, I loved the first Dynasty Warriors Gundam game. It was great to find a game of a good franchise with an anime series I really enjoy. I spent a long time playing it, but I couldn't help thinking that it seemed somewhat unfinished; the graphics weren't great; the gameplay was sometimes monotonous; and the Official Mode left out big parts of the plot. Keep in mind that I still found this a good game.

After getting this game today and playing it for a long time, they really did improve the game in the ways I wished it to. The gameplay's been improved significantly. The addition of giant mobile suits and armours really does vary the gameplay. The thrusters were tiresome in the last game as it took ages to get anywhere. Now it seems the maps have been scaled down a little bit and on top of that the thrusters are much faster, matching the fast paced action of the anime series.

Being a fan of retro gaming, graphics aren't really a big deal to me, but the graphics have been improved so much. There's now more reflectiveness to the metal of the mobile suits and detail which makes such a big difference. The same goes for the enviroments. They are no longer as uniform looking as they were before.

Of course there's many more mobile suits in the game. You can even play as the grunt enemies. The game really does have so much gameplay value. Instead of Original Mode, there's Mission Mode, where there's tonnes of missions for each character. Here you can build friendships and enemies with other characters and this will determine what happens in other missions.

The parts system has been masively overhauled. There are now parts for each separate part of the mobile suit, and you are also able to collect weaker and stronger parts. The mobile suit levels have been done away with because of this. Super moves are also improved with separate land, air and combo techniques again adding more variety.

What they've done here is build on the foundations of the last game. I forgot to add, online play is now in there too, this looks quite basic though and isn't really what I had in mind. They really have worked hard on this game, improving as many things as possible. DWG1 was a great game, but this is going to be even better.

Update #4

Sorry about the lack of posts over the last week; college is back on for me again so time is harder to come by.

Due to my Sega Saturn collecting, expect a lot of entries on that, I'm going to try and play it as much as possible. Half the games I have I haven't played yet so more First Impressions could follow.

Speaking of First Impressions, Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 is released tomorrow and as a big fan of Gundam and the last game, for me it's a must buy, despite me not buying that many games this generation. As a gamer I've found I like the older stuff more than the games they put out nowadays where I think a lot of them are so similar.

Soon, I'm going to do something a little different. Due to family circumstances, there's going to be an unused car in the family, so I've been forced into learning to drive. I didn't really plan on doing it yet; time is short as it is with college and work, and although this may sound lazy, I like a lot of free time to indulge in my pastimes such as gaming. The furthest I have to travel is the next town which is easier by train, and other than that I pop into town which is a 20 minute walk but I enjoy it as it gives me some quality time with myself. But I guess a free car's too good to turn down. I'll post entries to how I'm getting on.

First Impressions: Sega Saturn

I've had my Saturn now for two days and I've been playing it quite a bit. I'm very happy for what I got for my money; on eBay they only said it'd come with four games, when in fact it came with eight! The games are all complete; disks in good nick, manuals, the little bits of paper inside the manuals and also the little game label things which Japanese Saturn games came with. The only problem was that some of the cases seemed to have got a little damaged in transit, but these are jewel cases we're talking about here, and I should be able to transfer all the covers and everything to new ones. The ST Key works great, but I now wish I'd bought the Action Replay 4 in 1 instead which not only allows play of any region's games, but also a cheat device and as a 1mb and 4mb RAM cartridge which some games need.

The games I've played so far mostly have an arcade feel to them. For example Sega Rally, which is a very basic racing game, part of the beginning of 3d racers in the 32-bit era alongside titles such as Ridge Racer, however this is a very different game to that, but they are both really simple to play with great gameplay to boot. Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Fighter Kids are very much the arcade fighter, again very simple to pick up and play like arcade games are. Unfortunately the other games I probably won't play for a long time as they are in Japanese and I don't understand a word of it!

The console itself looks solidly built, even though the plastic does look a bit cheap. The battery to store memory was a great idea, and shows Sega were ahead of there time with this due to data being stores in a similar vein nowadays with hard drives in consoles, although at the Saturn's time this technology was underdeveloped for consoles and the battery can run out.

The controller is nice and comfortable to hold. It's like a Mega Drive controller, but smaller making it easier to grip with your hands, and the addition of X, Y and Z buttons as well as two shoulder ones. These shoulder buttons seem a bit stiff, but still work well.

I'm glad I chose this console. I can see that I am going to have a good time collecting it; the games I've played so far have impressed me. It's clear that this console had a huge amount of potential which it didn't live up to; Sega probably shot themselves in the foot with the surprise launch.

Update #3

Welcome to this week's weekly update.

I still, still haven't got round to playing Broken Sword yet. Hopefully I'll get time to soon.

In an attempt to boost my gaming collection which I am starting I have just bought myself a Japanese Sega Saturn along with a regional adapter so I can play games from any region. I bought a Japanese one because a few Japanese Saturn games make use of the RAM slot which the adapter also uses. I am going to concentrate on building a collection for this console as well as the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

I've had no replies about my CV's as yet; if I do not receive one then I'll go and hand in some more, maybe to the same places as I've been told that works well.

As far as college goes I've only done a bit of work, probably won't get it all done to be honest. In fact, I'm not enjoying it as much as I once did, but I'll just have to wait and see how things turn out. If things don't go well I have my eye on BUFORA's Field Investigator course.

INQ1 Mobile Phone Review

For today's entry I am going to review the INQ1 mobile phone by the 3 network.

This phone is 3's first foray into the mobile phone market. It was released in December of last year and as you can see it lacks the touchscreen and other features that many other phones released around this time possess.

The navigation is pretty good but could be better. The slide menu works well and makes navigation very easy, but you can also access things from a traditional menu. This is one of my gripes with it, I think it would have been better to just have everything on the slide menu to make things a little less confusing.

It has a small collection of apps which work pretty well. Being a phone focussing on social networking, it is strong in this department. The Facebook app works really well and the scaled down version is nearly as good as having the real thing open on a computer's browser. Skype and Windows Messenger work well also and are also scaled down. You can choose to have contacts made from those on these social networking services which is a neat little feature. Other apps are things such as games as well as Google Maps and weather which is also useful. An email app is also featured, although this isn't the best. The app selection is small, but they cater for a range of needs.

Don't cound on using this phone as a camera. The quality is good where you have a lot of light, but it lacks a flash or a little light and so 90% of pictures and videos are too dark. It just doesn't sems to pick up light very well.

However the phone does work well for music and videos. You can make playlists although these can be a pain to manage sometimes, and they also take a while to load. Without the provided earphones, the sound is tinny when coming through the speakers, but with them the sound quality is much improved and is good enough to be used as an mp3 player. There is also limmited integration with Last.fm.

Overall I think this phone is good for myself, casual phone users and people use use a lot of social networking services I think this is a solid choice. However for people who use their phone a lot or for people who want a little bit more, I think they'd prefer something a little more advanced.

RATING: 6/10

Twitter

Yes folks I've started using Twitter, and I must say I'm enjoying it.

In my opinion I prefer it to Myspace and Facebook as it's just a more simple premise; you just post what you're doing and that's it; it doesn't use any fancy bells and whistles. It just makes it easier to use.

Follow me at https://twitter.com/oOGeorgeSnellOo

Update #2

I'm going to make this into a weekly thing now, where I'll tell you my plans for the blog as well as what I've been getting up to.

The Broken Sword first look won't be up for a while yet I'm afraid, I know I said I'd do it soon, but I just have so many games to play right now and want to finish them first, after which I'll do reviews of them.

I'm also going to try and put out at least one blog entry a day to boost the blog's content.

In my own life this easter holiday's come at a good time, it's meant I can take a well earned rest from all the college work, but it'll be time to knuckle down again next week for the last week of the holidays I'm afraid :( . I'm also planning to leave my job at Sainsbury's and get one at Gamestation or one of the Game stores in the next town down from here, but I'm also going to try at Blockbusters too.

My Thought on Dragon Ball Kai

I only just found out about Dragon Ball Kai a few days ago, and I know this must be a lot later than many other fans.

I think it's a good thing they've touched it up a bit and re-released it, as far as the Shonen Jump anime goes, right now I'd say One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach are the most popular, the latter two I am not particularly fond of.

It's good that a new generation of kids just getting into anime will get a chance to see this great series, not necessarily in Japan, but in the US and the UK too where I think there is a good chance of it being released seeing as Dragon Ball Z is one of their most successful shows. For me, as a kid I'd watched Pokemon and Digimon before it, but Dragon Ball Z made me much more aware of anime and kind of kick started my interest in it.

From what I have seen, the animation has been improved but not to a massive degree. Things do look better quality wise though. I know it would have been a hard task, but it would have been great if the animation was the same quality of the opening and ending sequence which look eyewateringly good. The filler episodes have apparently gone too which obviously keeps things closer to the manga.

Cracked's New Website Design

Man I dislike the new style. It's just a mess, the layout was perfectly good in the first place, if it ain't broke don't fix it is what they say.

My main gripe is that there's just too much going on on all the pages, you just don't know where to look. White on black is also quite distracting. Hopefully I'll get used to it in a couple of weeks.

The Inbetweeners Series 2, First Look

The first episode was great. I'll start by saying that.

They did some really interesting things in this episode which I hope will continue throughout the series. Sticking a wedge between Will and Simon was a great idea, I really hope Lauren's character comes back which I think she will, as it was really interesting what they did there.

The best parts of the episode were the boat parts, extremely funny, especially the part with the fish.

There were also moments where I had my head in my hands and was watching through my fingers as there was a lot of embarrassing moments in this episode!

Anyway I suggest watching this series, it looks like it's going to be a cracker!

Update #1

Sorry I haven't posted any updates over the last week, I've had a humongous amount of college assignments to complete, and I still do!

Anyway I just picked up Broken Sword Shadow of the Templars, so I'll do a first look of that soon.

The Inbetweeners starts again tomorrow and I can't wait! One of the cast feels it's much better than the last series which was great so I have high hopes indeed!

I've been working solidly this week though and this could continue into next week, but I'll try my best to find time to update this blog whenever I can.