This Weeks Task - Get a Virtual Pet

This week we have to get a virtual pet and try to keep it alive for as long as possible. I chose to get my pet from NeoPets. My pet is called a Xweetok and I have named him SneakyMcSneak.



I shall keep you updated on SneakyMcSneak every week hopefully.

This weeks task - Play a board game

For this weeks task, I played a board game called Axis and Allies. I had never played (nor heard) of this game before until this week when a friend told me about it. Myself and 4 of my friends (also in the same course as me) sat down and played this game at about 9pm, and didn't finish until 3am!!!!

In the game, there are 2 teams, the Axis and Allies (duh). There are 2 players on the Axis team, one plays as Germany and the other Japan, and there are 3 players on the Allies team, playing as Russia, United Kingdom and United States. The game is set in and around 1941 where World War 2 is in full swing. The objective of the game is for one team to annihilate the other team, by taking their capitals and killing all of their units. Of course, a country or alliance can surrender as well.

There are a number of units in the game, such as soldiers, tanks, fighter planes, bombers, battleships, anti-aircraft, all of which are available to each country to buy. To buy these units though, you must have money. You get money by controlling areas of the map. At the each of your go/round, you total you receive money based on what you control. Each of these units can only move so certain number of spaces at a time (soldiers can move 1, while tanks can move 2). The game is turn based. Russia goes first, then Germany, then the UK, Japan and finally United States.

When it is your go, you can buy units, try to research new weapons/vechiles, make a combat move (attack an enemy or move in enemy territory), make a non combat move (move into space that is not controlled by your enemy) and finally deploy any new units that you brought at the start of the round. When taking your round, you must follow the above order (i.e. you can't make a non-combat move and then a combat move). Battles are fought by rolling dice. The more units you have in the battle, the more dice you can throw. Each combat unit has a number between 1 and 5 for attack and defense. If you roll a number below that, you take out one of the opponents units.

I played as England and was forced to surrender as it was so late. Never the less, I was at Germany's mercy, and it was only a matter of time before I was defeated. The Axis ended up winning the war, with Russia falling first. This wasn't really a surprise as my friend playing as the Axis had played this game several times before, when us on the allies had never played the game before.

I enjoyed this game. I had never played a board game like it before, and it was interesting to be in control of a country in the war, making tactics to try and defeat our opponents. We all had a good time playing game, having a good laugh throughout.

There is alot of concentration required to play this game I found. You always need to be aware of what your opponents are doing as well as your allies (do they need back-up), while at the time trying to form tactics of your own so that you can defeat your opponents.

I think this game if for people you like strategy games, and also people interested in WW2 will enjoy this game as well.

This game is very immersive. You get sucked into forming tactics and keeping a watchful eye on your opponents.

To win the game, the teams need to work together and form tactics. As a result, there is a high level of social interaction involved in the game

All in all, this is a great game that I recommend you play.

"Gaming is CRACK for kids"

Janice Turner has written a rant in the Times newspaper about children and video games. With comments like "These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain", its clear what her view is on the matter. She says that she won't let her children play any video games (but also says that they play the wii?!?). It's clear she needs to educate herself more on the matter of video games.

Anyway, the article is here.

Games I played this week

This week I didnt play a wide variety of games.

Call of Duty 4 - 6 hours.
Gears of War - 4 hours.
Crysis - 2 hours.
Unreal Tournament 3 - 1 hour.

Thats all im afraid. So my total hours spent playing games was only 13 hours. I blame college :(

My 3 game reviews of the week

I'm going to try and give a brief review of 3 games each week. The games I choose will all be games that I have played at some stage, not necessarily the week that reviewed it.

Gears of War - Xbox 360, PC
In my opinion, Gears of War is still the best game on the 360. It's a tactical third-person shooter made by Epic Games and is available only on the Xbox 360 and PC. Unlike most shooting games, tactics are important and Gears of War offers an excellent covering system. The game has some of the best gore available in any game, with bodies been capable of been cut in half with a chainsaw accompanied by some awesome blood effects that splatter on the screen, even blocking your view at times. With an excellent single player mode, and an excellent multi player mode, this game gets a 10/10 from me. A must buy.



Call of Duty 4 - Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter voted multiplayer game of the year for 2007. If you hadn't guessed it yet, it is excellent online introducing levels/ranks and perks (which can increase the amount of bullets you have, or drop a genade when you die, and increase your running speed to mention a few), something that hasn't really been done in online first person shooters. As for the single player, well I found it to be poor. It's very scripted, short and fighting respawns (you kill one enemy, and he is replaced immediately by another who does exactly the same thing) gets repetitive and drags on alot. Never the less, a very good game.8/10 from me.



Crysis - PC
Crysis is a first person shooter made by Crytek and is the first game in the Crysis trilogy. Using the CryEngine 2, Crysis is the best looking game available on the market at the moment. Set in a huge tropical island, the game features stunning water and shadow effects, to accompany the excellent graphics. However this comes with a price as the game is very demanding to run. As for the gamerplay, the main feature of the game is a nano suit which allows the player to go invisible, run faster, get tougher and stronger (not at the same time though). Single-player wise, it took me a few hours to get into this game, but then suddenly I found myself hooked until the end. As for the multiplayer, its good but there are better games out there like call of duty in the online department.Another 8/10 from me.



For the last few months I have been watching game reviews by Zero Punctuation. His reviews are funny but are spot on most of the time. He releases a new review every Wednesday at 5pm at the Escapist.

Here is his Crysis review.

Rockstar continue to fight for banned Game

Rockstar's controversial game Manhunt 2 is one of only two games to be banned in the UK. However Rockstar are still in a legal battle to get the game released in the UK, which is already available in the US and other European countries.

The game was initially banned in the UK because, according to BBFC director:
"Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game."

Rockstar appealed the and won for the ban to be removed, however the appeal has been overturned to Rockstars disbelief.

The Orginal Story.

Now the game itself is average, getting about 7.5/10 from reviews. While I don't plan to buy it, I feel this game doesn't deserve a ban (have the BBFC not seen Saw?!?!). Never the less I have a feeling that this ban isn't just because of Manhunt 2, but also because the creator of the game is Rockstar. Rockstar have a history of creating controversial games including State of Emergency, Bully, Manhunt and one of the most successful and best series in the industry, Grand Theft Auto. I kinda think of Rockstar as the Gandhi of video games, but with violence (in the games of course ^^).

Regardless, this could have a bigger impact, as the BBFC has yet to rate Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar's next game to be released on the 29th of April. If that was to get banned.........

My First Blog Post!!!

Hey, Im David Reilly. Im a 3rd year Games Development student in DKIT. I am interested in computer & video games of course ^^. In case you were wondering about my url name, Benzino is my gamer name that I use when playing games.

My favourite gaming platform is the PC, but I also have a Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. My favourite game genres are FPS, Action, MMORPG, RPG, Adventure, Platform and the odd strategy games. Baiscally I like most types of games. I have so many favourite games including Grand Theft Auto, Unreal Tournament, Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, World of Warcraft, Shenmue & Gears of War to mention a few. The games Im looking forward to this year are GTAIV, Far Cry 2 & LittleBigPlanet.

At the moment I am learning how to use the Unreal Editor and I am loving it. I also enjoy programming and 3D Modelling.

I think that sums up my gaming interests for this first blog.