Bioshockingly Good!

Well, I've had this game for 2 days now and i've put about 8 hours in over the weekend; and what an 8 hours they have been...Bioshock has to be one the the best games I've seen/heard on the 360, It's almost always just jaw dropping in its looks and it's the best sounding 360 game I've ever played.

I've put it on the 'hard' setting, as I do for most of the games I buy so I can get the most time out of them, and by doing this, get value for money...In the 8 or so hours I've put into Bioshock, I feel like I've already got my money worth and I've got so much left to do, as I've only just got to use the 2nd bathysphere (Think underwater lift) to take me to the next level.

I've jumped out of my skin a few times thanks to some really well done set pieces and I've had a fight with a big daddy (the deep sea diver guy in the pic).

This game also gives you some really tough choices in the form of saving or helping 'little sisters'. These Little Sisters were once normal little girls, but now they have been altered to harvest ADAM (a form or genetic material)from the dead. You can kill the protectors 'the Big Daddy' (not easy), and then you have 2 choices....Do you harvest the ADAM from the little sister or do you save the little sister by returning her to a normal little girl?

If you harvest the ADAM from her, then she does not survive but you get a lot of ADAM to use in the game...If you save her, then you will get a very happy little girl thanking you so much, but not as much ADAM (80 instead of 200 I think)...For many people this will be a no brainer as they will just go for the easy option to just harvest the ADAM from her as to make the game more easy...

I on the other hand had to save the first little sister simply because...Well how can you kill a child? Even if it's only in a game? (the game tries its best to explain that these littles sisters are not kids though and by killing them you're doing a good thing)....
I have a wee niece about the same age as these little sisters and I just could not bring myself to kill this virtual wee girl...The thank you I got from not killing her made me feel warm inside...Not many games can do that to you and it makes me wonder what other tough choices I will have to make during the course of playing this game....Did I do the right thing? Are these really monsters like the people in the game would have you believe? I'll have to play more to find that one out.

I kind of wish there was a 3rd choice though and that's to leave the little sister as she is...Happy to collect ADAM with her pal the big daddy by her side...The way she talks to big daddy in such a happy way makes you feel a bit sad for trying to kill one of them even if it's for the greater good (whatever that may be)

Anyway...Bioshock, if you have a PC and gfx card (with shader 3.0) or an Xbox 360, then go and check this out...The graphics/sound/story/fear/heart that this game has makes it something special.

8 hours in score = 9.5/10

Who's your Daddy

Tomorrow (Friday the 24th of Aug) the Xbox 360 and PC game 'Bioshock' goes on sale in the UK.

When I watched the E3 video in HD on my 360 last year I was blown away...I had no clue what the game was about but it looked amazing.

Since then, I read very little about it and just kept my fingers crossed for a good review...By this time I had it in my head this was an adventure captain Nemo type game (don't ask me why lol).

When the demo came up on marketplace a few weeks ago I was not blown away with it...Sure it looked amazing most of the time but it just was not what I expected...It was a horror type FPS (first person shooter)...Anyway, I played it and kinda went meh and that was that.

Then the reviews start to come in and I sit up and take notice, because this game has some amazing reviews across the boards...10/10...9.5...9.7...It just goes on and on.

So I go back to the demo with a different frame of mind and try it again...Then again and again and after a few plays I'm hooked...I almost missed out on this because I went into the game with the wrong mind set....tut tut!

Anyway, I now have this game on order and I can't wait to play it...I love a good story and this is the thing that's most appealing for me...I'll post my thoughts when I have it in my grubby wee mits.

Check out what it's about below

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html

Guitar Hero 2...I'm so dead!

I got 100% on the song 'Dead' in this amazing game...Probably one of the best games on the 360...It's sure as hell the most feel good fun you can have on the Xbox 360 at the moment.

When I got the game a few weeks ago I was not sure if I would be able to play it that well...Well I've done 100% on a few songs now, but since I really like this song on GH2, I had to post up a pic of my bands (JAMESROCKALOT;p) greatness...hehe!

ROCK ON!

ELVIS AND ME

Elvis died 30 years ago today, and if you don't know this then you must live on the moon. To celebrate the fact that Elvis is still as popular (in fact more so) than he was when he died, I'm going to tell you how I became an 'ELVIS fan'

I was 3 when Elvis died August the 16th 1977 and my mom was heartbroken; She had been an Elvis fan since she was a kid and had cried twice over Elvis in his lifetime. The first time was when Elvis got married to Priscilla and then when Elvis had died.

My mum was probably playing Elvis records since I was a baby, but my first memories of Elvis were of his movies and his first Christmas album; me, and my 2 sisters would play that album a lot (even if it was not Christmas). It was the Camden release and I remember the cover artwork so clear with Elvis in front of a lot of trees with his arms folded. As for the movies I remember them being on BBC 2 (I'm in Scotland) all the time and I always used to watched Blue Hawaii and GI Blues with my mum and even my babysitter at the time, she loved those movies so much and thinking back now, those are very happy memories...Elvis was already a big part of my very young life.

I was never a big fan of music when I was a kid and the very first song I can remember really loving was Making Your Mind by Bucks Fizz in 1982...Elvis music was always being played by my mum, but I was not a fan...Not yet anyway.

When I was at school and I was at a school dance, I would always dance like Elvis...I did not know this at the time though because I was really trying to dance like Shakin' Stevens who was huge at the time in the 80s and who was just being an 80s Elvis using a 50s style...Shaky was cool by this time and Elvis was not (at least for a kid of my age)...I would never admit to even hearing an Elvis song because you would just be laughed at school.

By this time my 2 sisters were Elvis fans...yep they were now fans, who had Elvis pillows and Elvis tapes, when we were on holiday they brought Elvis tapes back with them...By this time though I was what you might call a 'closet fan', There was a few songs on those tapes I really liked, but I had a reputation to uphold as a kid in the 80s and slagging off Elvis was what I had to do if It was called for in a conversation with my mates, and I would even say to my sisters "how can you listen to that rubbish" while I would listen to songs like 'I Slipped I stumbled I fell' in secret on my walkman...Yea, yea...I was a kid and kids will be kids!

I was 15 and pretty much went through school and the rest of my childhood as an Elvis hater…Elvis had been such a big part of my life because of my mum, that by this time I really did not like Elvis...Even those days of sneaking my sisters tapes to listen to a few Elvis songs I liked were long gone...My sisters had not been Elvis fans for a while as they were now huge 'New Kids on the Block' fans...my mom had not been playing Elvis much either for a number of years...Yep, Elvis was a thing of the past for me....BUT!!!! Then it happened...

I was sitting one night (no Elvis pun intended) with my sister Michelle and we were just having a chat and listening to music while mum and dad had a few drinks and they were a bit under the weather...My youngest sister had went to bed and me and Michelle put one of her Elvis tapes on...It was a tape she got from one of her friends years before, but she never listened to it much, If at all, as I have said; Elvis was not somebody she would listen too anymore...Anyway, we put this tape on and we just sat in a dimly lit living room singing these songs and having such a fun time...She laughed at the fact I knew a lot of these songs, and of course it was only now that she knew I had been sneaking those tapes of hers years before...I had not heard this tape though and I was blown away with it...I loved every second of it...This was not the Elvis I had ever heard before? That's because this was Elvis in the 70s and they did not have anything of Elvis in the 70s on tape or LP in my house...

The tape was ' Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden' and that night I had just saw the light of how great Elvis was...I was an instant fan and spent the next year listening to that tape so many times that I wore it out…Really, I broke it and I was devastated...I was 16 now though and working, so I had cash to buy myself some Elvis music, and what better way to do this than to buy a CD player and replace my Madison Square Garden tape with a CD of it...Yep it was Elvis in the 90s and this was 1990, I got a double cd of Elvis Greatest hits and the Madison Square Garden cd...I decided I liked the 70s stuff best and spent the next few months just buying 70s cds like 'ON STAGE'...Sometimes though I would get stuff I thought was 70s (because of the album artwork) and ended up with late 60s...The 68 Comeback Special, Elvis in Person to name but a few and slowly but surely (sorry;P) I got to like a more wide range of Elvis music.

It was not until a few years later though when the Complete 50's Masters came out and my mum got me it for Christmas...It was then that this 70's Elvis fan was just about to be even more blown away...WOW! How could I pass all this stuff by? What else had Elvis recorded? I wanted to hear everything, so I got book after book and I spent a lot of time learning about Elvis, and the more I read, the more fascinated I got and over the course of the 90's I collected a huge collection of Elvis music, I used books like the ‘Elvis Sessions' books by Joseph A. Tunzi to try and get every song Elvis ever sang, no matter how silly the song was, for example, if it was from one of his mid 60's movies...

I wanted them all and I spent time listening to them all over and over until I knew each one word for word...Today there's probably not an Elvis song I don't know every word to...If it's been released, I have it.

I also went back to those Elvis movies I watched as a kid and got them all over time on VHS, the more I heard/saw/read about Elvis the more of a fan I became...No matter what mood I was in there was always an Elvis song to fit it and I think that's why I'm a fan...Elvis just has a way to make you feel good...His voice when he sings, or that cheeky smile in even the most poor of Elvis movies just makes you smile and feel happy.

I love such a wide variety of music now from The Carpenters to Meat Loaf but nobody even comes close to the way Elvis music touches my heart.

30 years since Elvis died and 15 years since I became a fan, Elvis has been part of my life since I was born and always will be until the day I die.

Long live the king!


For all things Elvis visit

http://www.elvisnews.com/

IN THE SUMMER TIME

Well the weather has not been that great but at least there's been loads to keep me happy. In fact there's been so much that I've hardly been near a PC even though there's been loads of great stuff happening worthy of news....E3 has been and went and there's was a load of great content on Xbox LIVE ...The demos were not that great this year as there was not that many of them, but there were loads of HD trailers of some great looking titles coming in 2007....It's a pity that GTA 4 has been pushed back until Easter 2008, but in a way that's better for me as there's just so many quality titles out this year, I think it's a good move.

Top surprise for me at E3 this year was the Ace Combat 6 demo. I never like these kind of games, but after playing through the demo about 20 times, I have to say, I love this game and Can't wait for the release in Nov 2007.

July has been a funny old month for me with emotions running high...Some of my family decided to treat me like shite for no apparent reason and that hurt me a lot...It took me a few weeks to get over it, but what does not kill you makes you stronger right? It seems the more you do for people the more they crap on you and family have a way of ripping your heart out...I never seen it coming...but oh well...You live and learn.

On a positive note, my estranged sister Michelle turned things around by praising me to the max...after years of put down and mental abuse, she took me by surprise by acting like a Disney movie..Really...It was that mushy; but it felt really good and for the first time in many years It felt like I had 2 sisters and I must say; That was a most wonderful feeling....Will it last? I don't know...I really hope it does, but I'm not expecting miracles. (Christmas in July anybody?)

Elvis died 30 years ago on the 16th of Aug 1977...I'll be adding pics of my Elvis Collection and talking about the King and how I became a fan...Look out for that on my web site http://www.jamestalkalot.myby.co.uk/elvismain.htm

Bye for now and as Elvis would say from the movie Change of Habit...Have a Happy!