Recently I've been playing [Prototype], following the story of Alex Mercer, jackass extraordinaire. It's a good game, the story goes like this: Alex wakes up in a morgue (literally about to be autopsied) and after an encounter with soldiers, realises he's bulletproof. After deducing that he's been infected with some sort of virus (dude, there's always a virus) he decides to go on a rampage to "Find out who did this" to him, and "Make them pay". I'm not entirely sure why, as i'd say being superstrong, bulletproof, able to leap small buildings with a single bound and simply run up tall ones, able to glide down to the ground from the empire state building or otherwise simply survive the fall would be a good thing. Some people will always just be ungrateful no matter what you do. Anyway that's the intro and as you play along, you get more and more info. The Virus was released in Penn Station. Some elite soldiers called Blackwatch (dude, there are always elite soldiers with a cool name) have been sent into New York to eliminate all traces of the virus, (yeah, because bullets work great against micro-organisms) and in particular, Alex Mercer.

Rather than hiring him and testing the limits of his powers and finding out what makes him tick with his compliance they decide to have a shoot on sight policy (District 9 is also guilty of this). Naturally, given that he's stronger and faster than they are, it doesn't go too well for them whenever a showdown occurs on the mean streets of New York. And boy howdy are they mean. If it's not the Marines jealously guarding their bases, it's the freaking annoying infected getting in your way. If you want to take down a hive, you have to fight the marines AND the infected. On the other hand, if you destroy a base you might- no, will kill a memory strand that's in there. Assuming one's in there. I've infiltrated a couple of bases (no easy task i promise you), only to find it devoid of anyone to consume.

Which brings me to the Web of Intrigue. Alex is slightly amnesiac, meaning he remembers things like siblings and past loves, but not how he ended up in the morgue. So occasionally, while flying around causing trouble, you might spot someone who does know all about the virus (well, their part in it anyway) and what exactly happened. You consume him, you gain his memory, and you learn a bit more about the story. There are a huge number of WOI targets (100+), but there's a slight problem with their acquisition: A large number of them spawn in infected areas so if you're not quick on your feet, one of two things will happen: Either a gorram motherfrakking tank will blow the hell out of your target, or a gruddammed stomm eating infected zombie will pimp slap the hell out of your target, meaning a 5-10min wait for the person to respawn.

I have no idea why they did it like this, or why they couldn't at least make the targets stronger. I mean, there are collectables in the city that you have to find, why couldn't they have made the WOI targets like that? As it is, I've been after a target at least 3 times before giving up and doing something else- Once i grabbed the wrong person and accidentally threw him at my target, second time the tank blew everybody up (talk about overkill, using the main gun when you have two machine guns), and third time, some freaking random zombie slapped the hell out of my target. I was so frustrated i unleashed a devastator attack and killed everybody in the area. The game is remarkably good though inane in parts (in favour of gameplay, it must be noted), and it is decidedly frustrating. The only reason i got through it, was that i played it on easy. I can't imagine doing it on hard.

Heh and to think, I was gonna talk about 3 different games.

No really, we will.

A common objection to the idea or possibility of time machines is that if they were going to be made, someone would have come back already. I think this is faulty logic, starting with the assumption that they'd have any reason to come back at all. If I had a time machine, I would not travel into the past beyond... 1970. I think that's when the modern age got born, with it taking off around the 90s. I most certainly would not go anywhere near 1950 and beyond. This is the time when everybody was afraid of sputnik (go see The Iron Giant), and then i turn up in a field with a shimmering piece of high-no, future technology? The Government (whichever one it was) would be on me so fast it would seem pre-planned.

Same with the future people. Maybe time machines won't be invented until the year 3325, and everybody suddenly realises that "Oh crap, I can't go back beyond the year 3000, because I won't have anywhere to dock my brain port, plus I get all those feeds from rsat-32ghd (residential satellite number 32, geographic channel hd. Naturally) and that satellite hasn't been built yet, let alone sent into orbit. But where does that leave them? well, it gives them 325 years of their own history to play around in. Hell, i wouldn't want to go beyond 1995 (primarily because of Win95), and even that is a last resort. I'd still have to deal with absolutely no internet connection, or at least be limited to dial up. And not the kind we all love to complain about either, I'm talking about the 9.6kbps era. Man, just thinking about it gives me shivers, no really. The things we take for granted are so interwoven into our daily lives, why on earth would we want to suffer culture shock from our own past? I'd rather have culture shock brought on by aliens.

Another conceit is the idea that a time traveller would announce himself as such. Yeah, because the first thing i'd do when travelling to 1973 would be to say "Whagwanninn bredrin?". You know, because they wouldn't be too astounded by (and suspicious of) my story so i'd have to break into future lingo to prove my claims. Come on people, if we wouldn't do it why do we automatically assume the future people would? For all we know,there are time tourists (along with the time spies, and time cops, obviously) among us, (you know, those people you saw when you were in college, and then again when you finished university and they didn't look any older) quietly directing the course of human technology- perhaps making sure the time machine itself will be invented, setting off a number of paradoxes that result in a rogue time stream that the time cops then have to shut down.

There's a movie in there somewhere, i'm certain of it. Anyway, for your amusement-
Twenty Fun Things To Do With A Time Machine

Actually, I think it will.

Through the vagaries of social osmosis, I am aware of the phrase "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". I have absolutely no idea how, when or why I know it, it's just one of those things. I think it was supposed to mean that (social) revolution was not something that would happen and then you'd be told about it, but rather that it's something everybody would be a part of at the same time.

Cue 2009 and half the world is on Facebook, and the other half is on Twitter. I'm on facebook, I find it a useful tool for keeping in touch with people I haven't seen (and barely remember) in decades. Over the last few days though, I joined Twitter, and i'm still not entirely sure why. Or what to do with it now. I'm following Major Nelson so I can get updates on xboxy stuff. I'm following IGN so I can get updates on news/developments/new games. Except, I already go to IGN every couple of days, and Major Nelson doesn't post stuff I'm actually interested in that much. I get that it's supposed to be a platform for "what are you doing?", but my response to that (no, really) is "who wants to know?" Both in the paranoid sense, and as a genuine question. Who really does want to know? The people who might be interested in what I'm doing already have my cellphone number, and as for making friends with similar interests... I already have a Gears of War 2 posse, and I'd really prefer something like facebook, so i could a) see what you look like, b) find out a bit more about you, and c) send a proper message, not one that's limited to 140 characters.

I dunno, I think I'm getting grumpy in my old age, what with all this new tech and "stuff". I want my technology to have true value, true worth. Right now Twitter just seems to have made people walking RSS feeds. I tried seeing which of my friends are on Twitter (because you know, Facebook juuuust doesn't give enough up to the minute information) but apparently none of them are. :/ So this is me, all dressed up and nowhere to go. Or anyone to go with. So... Yeah. I think the revolution will be tweeted, but it'll be by the next generation... more likely the one after that. Heh, I can just picture a Neo-Ché with an AK47 in one hand, iPhone in the other, desperately tweeting how the battle is going to all his foreign supporters.

Who then shake their heads in sympathy, and go right back to watching America's Got Talent.

Do you remember when cell phones didn't have loudspeakers? Or cameras? Or colour screens? How about touchscreens, do you remember when cell phones didn't have those? Hopefully, you do. Afterall it's been less than a decade since the first one hit the market. I remember my first mobile phone. It was a green Alcatel, i forget which model. Bought at Woolworths (may they rest in peace) for £35. It was so retro, it had an external antenna. This was circa 2000. it's screen was about 1.5cm tall, and it could only send text messages in all caps, and could only store 10 of them. I loved it to bits. Where am I going with this? Well the thing is, given the rate at which new technology is incorporated into everything, soon enough a time is gonna come when you won't be able to walk down the street without a cell phone advertising itself to you, via your phone.

A phone isn't just a phone anymore. Yes yes, old news but take a look at where this phenomenon is leading us to. The Alcatel phone i was talking about could only make calls. It could not record music, or play music, and forget about anything to do with image capture. But now, for a phone to even have a hope of competing in the market, it's got to have all these "features", that at least half of us will never use. The hard drives get bigger, the phones get smaller, the camera megapixel counts go up, and nobody seems to wonder, where will it stop? Take a modern-ish laptop. it's got the hard drive, it probably has a webcam built into the lid and of course, it'll have a media player installed with the OS. At a glance, it already does exactly what the cell phone's offering, and probably does it better. It's screen is bigger than the entire cell phone, it's hdd is bigger, and you can do other things on a laptop. Forgetting the professional uses- programming, image processing/design, etc, - it can play full length movies without worrying about a dying battery. It's a much better prospect for whatever the cell phone wants to do and with the availability of skype it even manages to encroach on the telephony skills of the phone

So... where will the two meet? Will phones get more like computers, or will computers get more like phones? Given the difference in usage, the former seems more likely, but does that mean phones will become obsolete? I don't know, but I do know i spend a hell of a lot more time at my computer (on the order of several hours a day) than on my phone and if my computer could make telephone calls that could be billed to my phone contract (as opposed to taking another contract with skype), with my contacts list seamlessly updated from phone to pc... I wouldn't ever use my phone for anything. Unless I was away from the computer... Heh, I can hear you say, "that's the point!". Except, it's not.

A mobile phone is not a mobile computer, (that's a laptop) or an extension of a computer (that's a pda) but it sure looks like they're going that way. The newest phones currently exist in an ill-defined niche of their own making. They're only called phones because they possess telephony capabilities (which computers, and hell, even the humble psp also do), and they make use of traditional telephone network systems.

This is just an observation on the nature of things... So no one will be surprised when their phones want to dock with the pc so they can get all the latest data from wherever. And yes, I know they already can. I'm talking about when they start wanting to.

When was the last time you played a video game on a console that had numbered levels? It was so much easier to say to you mates, "I'm up to Level 13" or "I'm stuck on world 3 level 6". Now you have to elaborate with crap like "I've just got past the bit where his mate gets poisoned by the mutant fish frog and you have to go down the black hole to retrieve stone/gem type thing that I need to take to [insert stupid plot points here]".

I finished GRAW2 again the other day. I generally play my games on easy, because they are primarily entertainment, so i'm looking to get as much fun as possible out of it with as little effort as possible. I don't consider that to be lazy, as i've already paid upwards of £30 for the damn thing and should therefore be allowed to take things easy. I mention this because i finished GRAW2 on a higher difficulty level, which i would have been unable to do if i'd finished it on that difficulty before. I like difficulties that stack up (like say Halo 3, where finishing it on Legendary gives you the achievements for Normal and Heroic as well), but i think that negates the possibility of future playthroughs. If i slog through the game on Legendary, and get the achievements for all 3 difficulty levels, then there's no reason for me to ever play it again. So, i first finished GRAW2 on the easiest setting, and having found out that it was an excellent game, i kept it for future playthroughs. It's really well done; and possesses an early view of the game direction that COD4 implemented beautifully i.e. the sense that "big thangs popping up in here". Where Ghost Recon had nuclear missiles, Call of Duty had... okay, shut up. Where the nuclear missile was detonated in Ghost Recon, In Call of Duty...

Okay okay it might sound like COD4 copies those two scenarios from GRAW2, but my point was that it's done very very well in Ghost Recon, and Call of Duty manages to hammer it home even better. So if you've played COD4 to death, and you're looking for something new (or rather, old), GRAW2 is quite cheap these days, and if you've managed to get a free Xbox, you might as well get a free copy of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. (Now you see why i say GRAW2)

Moving on, i JUST now finished The Bourne Conspiracy, and i gotta tell you, playing as Jason Bourne really impresses upon you just how badass he is. Watching the movies are one thing, because you see him on the screen and a small (but very much aware) part of you knows that the film studio can make him as dangerous/suave/gangsta as he needs to be to make an entertaining movie. But playing him? It's like playing the movie, in a good way. The hand to hand fights are fast and furious when they go right, but when they go wrong they devolve into button mashing fests because your button presses stack up so even though it looks like he's not responding, he will be in about a second or two. This doesn't help, because by now you've pressed all four buttons in order to get him to MOVE ALREADY! When he finally does, you see a sweet combo, but you don't know how you did it. The takedowns are pretty well done too, because they tried to capture the movie effect, and having seen what Bourne is capable of, no amount of xx, yy, up-down-back would do. They made it so he does all the work, and you just sit back and press the on screen buttons at the right time so he follows through perfectly. Missing a prompt isn't the end of the world (or the mission, bar a few situations), because when you miss and he fumbles, the enemies DO follow through perfectly, so whatever happens, you get to see a really good fight. They might have overdone it though, because towards the end of the game, i felt like i was watching him unravel this conspiracy (as opposed to actually playing it and unravelling the conspiracy myself), and pressing buttons at certain times. I plan to play it again, because i found it surprisingly short, and i like the achievements, because they're challenges such as complete a mission without using a shooting takedown, etc etc

The NXE came last week and for better or worse, the old dashboard is gone, bar a few diehards who refuse to connect to XBL. I like it, a lot. One question i get asked a lot about it is, what does it do? Short answer is: nothing, because it's not supposed to do anything. Long answer is: It's an interface that provides access to all your system functions while looking good, the last phrase being key here. It's essentially doing the exact same thing the old dash did, but better. It's faster, smoother (to look at anyway), and things are somewhat better organised. That's all there is to say, really. The only major addition is the Avatars, which look like a thinly veiled rip off of the Miis. One wonders if the threat of lawsuits is what detered them from copying the Miis wholesale. It's not like they HAD to go with that appearance for their avatars afterall. That said, i like the variety available for customisation although once i find what i like i tend to stick to it. I like the friends' list, but i don't like how you have to be online to see it. I understand that you need to be online to do stuff with it, what i'm peeving about is how it's just not there when you're offline (as in, not signed in to XBL). It's completely unavailable. Oh well. It's also somewhat slower on the marketplace, because it tends to want to load up all the pages at the same time, so i get a row of loading icons, and then they all show at the same time. I like installing games, my xbox is now quieter because there's no disc noise, hopefully it'll last longer since the disc is not spinning anymore. Installing games does eat up a lot of space though, i've installed about 4 games, and i'm down to about 65gb, from say 80. It usually caps at 90gb, take say 10 off for save data, videos, themes, and that's where i got 80 from.

Anyway. FREE IPOD soon. SWEEEET

Peace

This is not a review, and as such might contain spoilers.

Okay, you played the first Fable, right? On the first xbox? Sure you did. You know all about how some dude killed your sister (but not really), then you found her, then you had to stop some renegade hero from destroying the world with ULTIMATE POWER.

Fable 2 is set between 300-500 years after the first game, in the same world. There are fewer places to visit, but man those places are HUGE. Naturally, all the advances time brings are visible in the world, the major (but not only) addition being guns. Awwww yeahhh. And not just any guns either, they go from flintlock pistols (Jack Sparrow FTW!)to clockwork rifles, and they're very well implemented. All the same things in the first fable are back, the thing is that while they might seem new, they're mostly just improved and exapanded upon. Like, where you could fart in the first game, in this one you can now extend the action, with dire consequences if you do it wrong or so i'm told (by the loading screen tips). I haven't had the courage to see just what might happen, but i strongly suspect it involves the words poo, and pants.

You can also get jobs now, because in 500 years the citizens of Albion wised up and stopped paying Heroes to be Heroic. I'm not sure "wised up" is the right phrase here, as there is now absolutely no motivation to help them out. If you need money, you gotta get a job, son. I like the jobs, they're a nice addition but i don't like how they're the easiest way to earn money. You can also gamble, and certain quests to give out cash payments, but gambling involves loss, and quests involve legwork so a job is by far the easiest/safest. Quests can get you dead, but we'll get to that in a bit. To make money, you can buy property (i've got my eye on this big ass castle but i keep getting sidetracked by more property to buy) such as businesses and houses, rent out the latter or live in them.

In Fable 2, Death is not permanent. Or even existent. When you "die" you get knocked out, lose all the experience orbs (gloowy, shiiiny orrrbs) lying around, and you get a scar. That's it. There is thus nothing to be afraid of in the more epic battles, because you respawn in the very same location and carry on with the fight. It does become a pain when you're hopelessly outnumbered, but that's it. In the game, you can also change certain cities/towns by your actions, but that's fairly limited in that there's only about two i noticed. There are probably more, but that's all i've seen. They're well done though, and i'm already planning a second playthrough, just to see what they would have turned out like if i'd done the other thing.

Ha, all this and i haven't gotten to the dog yet. There is no map in the game view, just in the pause screen, and even then you have to go into the quests/maps view. The dog is your in game radar/early warning system/sidekick/back up. He'll help you as much as you let him, by finding treasure in chests or buried. He's not really useful as a fighter unless you invest in him, but he's good for companionship, because otherwise it would just be you running about aimlessly in this huge world. With the dog, you can run around aimlessly because the dog will alert you to stuff you might have missed. He doesn't actually point the way to quests because there's a gold trail that leads you to your target. That can be turned off, and i think the dog might then pick up the slack as without the dog or the trail, getting around would be a major annoyance. He doesn't seem to be able to attack human or larger enemies unless they're on the ground, but that might just be me losing track of him. When i'm surrounded by 60 hollowmen, the dog is the least of my worries. He can be injured but not killed and it's in your interest to heal him as he won't be able to keep up and point out the all important treasure, plus all that whining gets irritating. When in towns he's well behaved, but the villagers always want to pet him, holding him up and making you wait for the animation to finish so you can check out that alley behind the shop. You can also name him (i called mine Dawg, because i'm a cat person), buy him treats, collars, a ball, and teach him tricks.

If you haven't explored the entire world by the time you finish the storyline, choose the family option. You won't regret it, and you can always start another game to get the other options.

There are lots more things to do, like get married, have kids, get married more than once, pick up prostitutes, have an orgy (no, seriously), start a party, get drunk, go on a killing spree, grow horns, and so on. It's... bigger, and better. There IS new stuff, but not a whole lot of it. What's there is extremely good though, and will keep you entertained for hours because what's not new has been drastically improved upon.

Watch out for Nicky The Nickname though.