All alone on the internet

I have just noticed how i have exactly 3 friends and 0 conversations on xbox-Live and PSN, so i have decided that it might make my online-life less dead if a posted my information, so here it is:

Gamer-tag: WOLLASSE
PSN-name: wollasse

feel free to add me as a friend, send me messages or verbally abuse me in playstation home.

Review: Burnout Paradise

I'm sitting quietly in my car. Outside the windows the world soars by. Suddenly my world is filled with the light of flying sparks, and the sound of metal twisting fills the air. A small car has ended my giant speed and my car has now been reduced to a burning wreck. Welcome to paradise city, the city of speed and spectacular crashes.


I have always been a bit of a fan of the Burnout series and its very direct approach to entertainment. Combining super fast car races, getting rewarded for destroying your opponents and seeing cars break into tiny bits in slow-motion has always been a winning formula in my book. The Last few years however have been a bit disapointing, with new Burnout titles being little more than re-releases of the popular Bournout 3. Bournout Paradise attempts to change that. The question is whether it is still able to maintain the Burnout soul from the prior games.

The first thing you will notice about Burnout Paradise is its new feature: The city. Where earlier installments used a simple menu system, this game is heavily based on free roaming in a big city. This is not really a new concept, but i have rarely seen a racing-game city that was quite as interesting as burnouts "Paradise city". It really has everything you could ask for: Busy city streets, mountains with hairpin-turns, a lot of interesting locations and a lot of exploration potential.
There is one big problem though: An open world doesn't compliment the ultrafast gameplay of burnout very well, and having to read maps is not generally what i associate with having fun. This problem however is swiftly forgotten, because this game does so many things right. When I drift through a corner using the smooth arcade controls and activate your boost this game comes very close to my videogame heaven. On top of that the amount of different event types has been improved, insuring that you rarely feel like you are just "grinding" to earn the next reward.

Another factor that really helps burnout is (and has always been) the technology behind. This game looks stunning. The light effects, and detail level of your cars and the city is constantly high, and the speeds you are able to obtain while the game engine renders this is incredible. I cant remember being able to drive this fast in any game before. The soundtrack and sound-effects are also very competent, with a lot of good music and some very realistic sound of metal twisting. There is a lot of recycling from especially the PSP versions of Burnout in the song department, and Criterions own songs are poor, but both of these problems can be removed by using the "skip song" button, and if you are anything like me you will quickly get a few favorites.

All in all i would definitely recommend Burnout Paradise to any fans of car-games out there. The map-reading pollutes the pure arcade experience a bit, but this game easily makes up for it by being very competent in all other areas, and it ends up being both very good entertainment and an improvement over its predecessors.

Story: None Gameplay: 9/10 sound: 8/10 graphics: 9/10

Overall: 9/10

Info:
Developer: Criterion
Publisher: EA
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Review: Limoncello

Today I will be presenting my first alcohol review, an to kick things off I have decided to start with an underaprreciated Italian drink; Limoncello



Limoncello is the Italian word for Lemon Liquor, and is often described by its fans as "bottled summer". It is a yellow liquid with an alcohol percentage of 20-30%, which puts it neatly in a category where it is drinkable in itself but also very competent as a component in a drink.

The taste of Limoncello is quite sweet, and the taste of lemon is obviously present. On top of that one might assume that there would be the taste of alcohol that normally plagues this type of drink, but this is one of the areas where Limoncello excels, as it only has a small hint of alcohol taste. This means that the taste is generally quite pleasant, and therefore quite recommendable, however the sweet taste has a tendency of becoming a bit too much in the long run. Luckily this is curable, as you can often mix Loncello with pretty much anything and get good results. Personally I have had a lot of luck with combining it with 7up, as the fresh taste of this particular drink compliments the sweet taste of Limoncello very much.

When it comes to picking the specific make of Limoncello it is important to remember that the tastes are very similar, and personally I would not recommend paying for the more expensive brands such as Limonce.
All in all though Limoncello is a pretty good drink, and a very pleasant alternative to more conventional alcohols.

8/10

GTA IV

First of all, let me admit that this can only be described as a "first look" at GTA IV, as i didn't have the patience to actually play this game until it ended.

After having played through Saints Row 2 and liked it almost as much as cup noodles, I decided it was time to dive into the king of the "kill stuff in big city" genre.

The first thing you notices when spawned into the big city of New Y.. sorry liberty city is that compared to SR2 this looks prettier. Not by much, but the light-effects and filters are more appealing and the city and cars seem more detailed. But then you pick up the controller, and suddenly any will to explore that you might have had is gone. Compared to SR2 the controls feel so heavy that it makes you wonder whether the Protagonist (Niko Bellic) has eaten a black hole, and although you can probably get used to it, it is still annoying in the beggining. The handing of the cars are also a lot more difficult, though this is not such a big problem as it actually makes driving a bit more interesting..

..until you get to a tollbooth or gets a harassing phone call from one of your annoying friends, because for some reason Rockstar believes that its fanbase wants to be interrupted every once in a while to go off and nurture a virtual social sphere. I found these small interruptions a bit annoying as they kept me from my real goal: to be entertained by shooting bad guys and/ or pedestrians.

Then it was time for me to try some of the missions. After all that's the whole point of the game. Let me first of all clarify something. I don't like the GTA IV storyline. I have no sympathy for Nico Bellic and his eternal worrying about killing people. This is mainly because his only motivation to do so is lack of money, something i couldn't identify with as a player at all as i spent most of my time running around with 20.000$ in my pockets and nothing to use them for.

The missions themselves are pretty alright and fairly varied, and it seems they have actually got the targeting system right this time. The only place you will encounter problems is if you die in the end of a mission, because then you will have to restart the whole thing because no checkpoints are present. To further add to your annoyance you will probably have to spend some time driving around and buying ammo before you are ready to restart it (or start another one). These 2 things was what ultimately killed my enthusiasm for this game. all the other problems are minor, bur lacking checkpoints in missions is an unforgivable sin to me.

As said i am probably not aware of GTA IVs full capabilities, but if i had to give it a score now i would say:

Story: 4/10 Gameplay: 6/10 sound: 9/10 graphics: 8/10

Overall: 6/10

Info:
Developer: Rockstars
Publisher: Rockstars
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

I also made a more positive review of this game a few years ago on my old blog:
http://gearandgames.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in how much i liked GTA IV before i tried the Saints Row series.

Another nice link

The escapist (http://www.escapistmagazine.com) specializes in gaming and gaming-related videos. i can recommend the "Zero punctuation" and "unskippable" videos.

This site requires that you care about games. otherwise you will be bored beyond what you thought was yor capability for boredom.

A Good Link

If you are sitting in your livingroom and feeling a little bored there is now a cure for it. No, it is not burning your furniture, its:

http://www.cracked.com/

This is a comedy webpage with about 3 new posts every day and frequent video content.

It requires quite good English skills and after a while you will probably get tired of their humor, but until then it is a great companion for postponing important work and keeping you from killing the nearest horse.

Regarding Saints Row 2

Just remembered something. if you live in Germany you should be careful if you decide to buy Saints Row 2, as it is often (if not most comonly) sold in a censored and edited edition with less violence and with several parts of the story and gameplay edited or completely removed. this is apparently quite a widespread trend among publishers as games are often deemed illegal by German authorities. Apparently the Germans does not believes that censorship goes against the whole "freedom of speech" thing.

If you want to know more about how the German entertainment is censored then this would be a useful link:
http://www.schnittberichte.com/

And SR2 specifically:
http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=5975611

(They are both in German, but I am sure Google translate can help you with that)