Overpowering gaming bliss.

I have spent a fair amount of time with The Darkness on the Xbox 360, and must admit it is the most intriguing singleplayer campaign I have played on a console in a while. Anyone who likes FPS' and gore should come out from the darkness and buy this game. I haven’t fully completed it yet but I am in no rush to do so as the important thing is, I am enjoying it which is something I haven’t done with some games in a long while.

I have been playing another game just recently which falls into the "fun" category and that is Guitar Hero 2, this also falls into the "frustration and hair pulling" categories and that’s just playing it on Easy though this is due to me trying to dominate Easy by hitting every note on every song, which isn't going so well. Never the less, I am thoroughly enjoying it for the most part. This really is a great game to break out the guitar from the closet for, especially for some mildly drunken party times as I experienced just days ago with my Birthday. That was a right laugh, though I suppose that’s the benefit of playing multiplayer either versus or co-op; hopefully the highly anticipated third instalment has online play as that will really get me rocking. Fingers crossed that the reports of GHIII coming with a wireless guitar are true; I can then jump up and down like some mad rock type person without the fear of pulling my Xbox 360 to its death.

I've recently played and reviewed the Xbox 360 version of the Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Apparently F4’s gamerscore is not overly difficult, so I'm hoping to get some more time with it as soon as I get chance to get me over the 30k gamerscore mark. The game isn't exactly the most enjoyable one on the market but then that’s the way things seem to go with movies that turn to videogames to make a cheap buck (I mean pound...). You can read my full review here.

I feel somewhat lost now as I have "every" achievement that Gears of War has to offer, yet I'm still playing it regularly. Oh well, fingers crossed for some spilled beans on the sure fire hit that will be Gears II, of which we can hopefully expect some news or more likely a teaser trailer of at the upcoming E3 Media & Business Summit next week.

I went to play Halo 2 just recently, my Xbox backwards compatible game that is and not the Vista edition. I am unhappy as I'm having problems with the damn thing. The downloaded multiplayer maps were downloaded using a different and now dead Xbox 360 console but with my hard drive on my replacement console I'm getting an error message telling the “Content you have downloaded is damaged and not usable", which sucks as I paid £2 to download the 2 recently released multiplayer maps not so long ago. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel as Bungie have announced that these maps are to be free to download very soon. Still, it's a bit of a pain in the arse as I've paid for them and haven’t really spent a great deal of time with them, just as well there only two quid or I would be moaning a bit more loudly. Fingers crossed I can get a new computer up and running soon and then do some Halo 2 achievement whoring with the PC version of the game, this lovely new bit of kit will also enable me to throw some edited gaming footage together which will certainly come in handy for site content, gameplay montages and our recently formed Community Gaming Nights, which should make things a lot more interesting and keep me on my toes that little bit more.

Wowww! As I finished writing this I just remembered one more thing which I spent some of yesterday playing and that was Rainbow Six: Vegas. I have rented the PlayStation 3 version of the game. Why? I don’t know really, my personal intentions were to put the games online play through its paces as Resistance and Motorstorm play absolutely flawlessly online with 0% latency issues – this is what I mainly expected to compare between the Xbox 360 version of the game. Yes, the PS3 version played online flawlessly with no lag what so ever for me, though I heard many people talking in one of the matches I played and these people were complaining about lag, I had none though but I shall continue to press on later and see if I encounter any such issues. I need to jump back online with the Xbox 360 version soon as I remember this being very laggy at times when the game would have over a specific amount of players, though after speaking to a buddy he assures me these issues are now solved – I’m not so convinced, but hopefully that is the case. After putting the PS3 version on, I then decided to do a little graphics comparison whilst I was their and the difference was easily noticeable. I think I may continue to do things like this as they seem to bring up a good discussion, though some may think I am biased towards the 360 version as I’m more into my Xbox gaming. Once I have my PC rig sorted out with a capture card, I’ll then be able to throw some comparison videos and screenshots together for more of these multi-format games. Anyway, I placed my character at the same exact location on both consoles in the first sineplayer level and switched between the Xbox 360 and PS3 input. The PS3 version does look good; however the Xbox 360 looked vastly superior in terms of vividness where as the PS3 version looked dull in comparison with many jagged edges noticeable on buildings, benches, poles and any other objects that were present throughout the Mexican Streets, assume the PS3 version has no FSAA (Full screen anti-aliasing). Sony fanboys, do not be alarmed as this does not mean the Xbox 360 is “better” than the PS3, it simply indicates that the PS3 version of Rainbow is not a fantastic port from the Xbox 360 version of the game. I am assuming it took the development team some time to get it looking as good as it does now, which is certainly a commendable job on their part if the rumours of the PS3 development process being vastly difficult to programme for compared to the Xbox 360, I would imagine it’s more difficult to port a game over and rework as opposed to making a new game based on one systems architecture.

That's all folks... I think I'm all blogged out for today, don't have much else planned at the moment though; I may be heading out later to watch Die Hard 4.0, should be an excellent action film and hopefully it's a worthy edition to add to the previous three when its finally released, on Blu-ray disc of course ;)