Georgie's (sort of) 2011 Gaming Review

2011 wasn't a big gaming year for me. Well, it was kinda but with some highly anticipated heavy hitting games. I didn't buy many this year, I guess it started early on int year with me slight obsession with pre-ordering. The actual receiving of games began in April. So here's a quick review.

Portal 2

I loved the first Portal game, I really did. But I think you'd be hard pushed to find a gamer who didn't like it. The first Portal was nowt short of brilliant, but that was it's problem. It was too short. Granted it didn't outstay it's welcome but I think everyone wished there was just a little more game time. Portal 2 however was substantially longer in comparison but was easily demolished as it was so addictive in my eyes.

It carries on in the dark humour vein, has even more inventive game play an' is FUN. Yes it may be slightly frustrating at times but it is essentially a puzzle game with a slight action tinge. It's supposed to be frustrating at times, if it wasn't then where would the fun be?

I never had any major gripes with it, to be honest I can't really think of any.

On to September.

Dead Island

I was pretty excited about Dead Island after seeing all the garb that went with it, like that trailer that was all in reverse an' pretty much everyone was freaking out about it. I was in America at the time it was released in the UK an' I wouldn't be back for just over a week. So it was sat in it's little Amazon cardboard posting house in me room till I got back home.

Now let me get this out there now. I still haven't completed this game. Why? I forgot about it. To me it really is a forgettable game. Yes it had a lot of hype about it an' I was looking forward to playing it but summat did not just bode well with me. For some reason it just seemed a bit grind-tacular. Don't get me wrong I don't mind a bit of grinding but I don't think it particularly fitted all that well with Dead Island. It had fiddly bits such as repairing weapons an' creating weapons an' blah blah. Yeah I know it's for a bit of realism but it's kinda hard to get on with a game when you have to detour to do this, then realise you can't 'cause all you have in your inventory is SHITE.

Dead Island also has it's bugs. Realism doesn't exactly go that well with a game that looks plasticky an' is particularly obvious with it's rough edges. I was slightly disappointed with this game. And I love zombies, so really I should've been all over this like a rash. Meh.

On to October.

Batman: Arkham City

I am a HUUUUUGE BATMAN GEEK. HUGE! I adore anything Batman. I'm sure you may have realised that in some of me previous blogs. I loved Arkham Asylum, which really was a fun game. But Arkham City really did take it to another level. Everything in this game to me was bigger, badder (in a good way) an' better. The addition of having Catwoman as a playable character was pretty neat, even though it was a pretty short amount of time you did get to play her. Thought I do think it would've been nice to have other playable characters that had more to do with the main storyline. Robin made an appearance, it would've been cool to play as him in the main game. though you did get to play as Nightwing if you got the DLC for the Riddler's Challenges. But still, meh. That was about my only gripe.

Oh, an' there was the slight disappointment that Arleen Sorkin didn't reprise her role as Harley this time round, but instead Tara Strong filled her boots. Which just doesn't seem right to me, Tara Strong does little boy's voices; not the voice of a demented, criminally minded gymnast. Harley's Arkham City outfit is also my choice of Halloween Costume this year. :)

Now, November.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Love love LOVE the Uncharted games. I am actually in love with Nathan Drake. In fact, I had an affair with him on November 2nd when I received this game in the mail that morning then later that afternoon, my then boyfriend dumped me. So after the few hours I spent bawling an' screaming obscenities at the tit, I remembered he was preventing me from cracking on with playing U3. So in the end I didn't feel upset, but really fucking angry because the ex was keeping me from PLAYING MY FUCKING NEW GAME. So when the bawling an' the screaming subsided then turned to pure anger, I cracked on with U3 an' began to fill meself with post break-up Jaffa Cakes... a 36 box full of the bastards.

So of course it being Uncharted it was as always visually stunning, full of witty dialogue an' so on. It was missing summat though. But that could've just been me.

To be honest I had a hard time trying to get me head round the story. I know a lot of story now whether it be in games or movies or telly shows isn't exactly handed to you on a plate an' this is why I reckon it could've been me being slightly dim. Uncharted for me is pure entertainment in the sense that every single storyline has me absolutely ENGROSSED in it like it is me fave telly show I freak out about when I miss a few minutes. I think this was my problem. Yeah everything came together at the end but Uncharted is my soap opera where you have to play the game to advance to the next cutscene of deliciousness. I couldn't put it down.

Saints Row The Third

I can't stop playing this game. I really can't. I think I'm near the end of me third play through right now, then after that I'll probably start playing it again. This game has been quite possibly the most fun game I've played in a long time an' thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of it. It's over the top, totally ridiculous an' funny as hell. It's like GTA through an' through but just better to me. GTA has it's moments but Saints Row The Third just takes it even further, by sticking bright shiny purple oversized cocks on baseball bats on it.

I can't complain that much about it really. Some missions are annoying due to the difficulty curve being unpredictable an' more like a mountain at times than a curve. Oh an' it does crash sometimes, but thank Christ not like the Fallout games do. Eesh. O_o 

Oh, an' who doesn't love a game that has Hulk Hogan in as a voice actor AND the one an' only Burt Reynolds playing AS HIMSELF as the Mayor of Steelport.

Fucking Awesome. :)

Anyway, here's to 2012 an' all the damn pre-orders I made last year. Least a few of 'em actually have release dates now. XD

The shittest week on record

The boyfriend dumped me on Wednesday after a year. Not happy about that. Well am pretty devastated but cest la vie eh? He has all thse problems an' just isn't satisfied with only being able to email me to talk which is absolute bullshit. He hardly ever Skyped with me, I always had to ask an' even then it was hit or miss because being me being 8 hours ahead an' him having the compulsion to go to the gym every fucking night around the time I start passing out it hardly ever happened. He said he wanted to talk to me about all these problems on the phone or text me or summat. How would it be any different if he wanted to do that if I was 20 minutes down the road or half the world away? Contradiction there that is. An' I was ALWAYS available. Shit excuse. Apparently though I needed to be there. There were lots of options. Him coming here or me going there. But he didn't want to do either, one being he would have to marry me to get me there. But I thought people who loved each other so much would do anything, right? No, wrong.

I also think it was very unfair that he sent me the email saying "We need to talk" at what would be a normal time for him, but turned out to be half five in the morning for me. So of course, I checked me email when I woke an' there it is. I was worrying for the rest of the day until I managed to coax it out of him. I was actually sick with worry. That an' I kept bursting in to tears at work. Eventually, I got him on Skype an' proceeded to do the typical woman thing consisting of shouting, screaming, bawling an' so on. 2 hours later after that, him not really looking like he was bothered an' a ton of drawn out silences an' me just GLARING. That was it.

An' on that night (for him, morning next day for me) he mailed me saying that he'd booked a flight to Vegas where his race team were an' had asked him to go with them like the week before. So, while he's swanning about Vegas having a good time, getting drunk an' shit; I'm here doing my normal thing of working, gaming, working an' being miserable. Fucking charming eh?

His excuses were shit to me. I know people who go through a lot worse with LDR's, etc. He also never spoke about "us." It was always me bringing up "us" an' he always shunned the talk, saying we'd cross that bridge when we get to it. He also said he'd been thinking about this for a while now, but that was the first I'd heard of it. Am' not that much of a bitch nor am I that unreasonable that I can't be spoken to about these things an' have a discussion. No, he just didn't have the balls to actually initiate a discussion about it.

Which makes me come to this conclusion.

I have more balls than he does.

In fact all the shit I've gone through since high school have given me bigger balls than most so-called tough blokes.

If he wants to continue talking to me, that's fine by me. No skin off my nose. Brash, loud, abrasive an' forward I may be. But total cunt, I am not. The ball's in his bastard court.

Fuck it. I want me a rugby player.

IN OTHER NEWS!!!!!!

I completed both Arkham City an' Uncharted 3.

Uncharted 3 could've been better I guess. I dunno it was lacking summat that the first two games had. Probably a bit more humor an' a lot less repeated drama. Story was a bit naff an' all I stopped following what was going on about a third of the way through 'cause I got so confused. Still a good fun game though but bloody confusing, an' the aiming system isn't as responsive as usual either which is annoying. I might play it through again though when I got me good head back on.

On the topic of comics...

Everybody who knows me, knows I'm a DC girl. An' I have been since I was about 5 years old. Me particular DC vice was of course Batman. An' it still is, you honestly don't know how much I adore Batman. I dunno what it is but I always found watching the likes of the fabulous Batman Animated Series more enjoyable than watching the Spiderman or X-Men shows. I did watch them on occasions when well, Batman wasn't on or there was nothing else really to watch.

But what makes me laugh is this DC/Marvel divide. Yeah I must admit I'm not the biggest Marvel fan, never have been really. I just never clicked with the main Marvel characters for some reason. I also did think that a chunk of characters from the Marvel universe were pretty pointless. The main one that instantly pops in to me head is Jubilee from X-Men. An' I'm pretty sure a lot of people will agree she was pretty pointless. Fireworks. Pffffttt.

So I think that's one of me main reasons why I never really got in to anything Marvel in a big way. The fact that I couldn't really understand the characters an' I didn't really like the stories either to be honest. But what cracks me up even more when it comes to the DC/Marvel divide is when fans from either side start bickering about things like continuity and how the characters are perceived. The latter obviously being something that is individual to the person. DC however though don't really

Many people would see Logan/Wolverine as a grumpy, gruff angry man all the time whilst others won't. Some people will see the likes of Superman an' Batman as one dimensional characters who just have a "human" alter-ego for the sake of having one. I personally don't think that Batman is all one sided. The beginnings of his story as everyone knows is what molded him in to the character he is now. An' throughout the whole Batman franchise he works bloody hard as Bruce Wayne, to keep his Batman alter-ego secret from everyone who mustn't know. (Even though a few select people, an' a few who shouldn't know do know his identity.)

The best thing about Batman though is the fact that he may actually be just as crazy as all the villains in his Rogue Gallery. This can be picked up on in the HUSH series, where you also catch a glimpse of the more violent, angrier side of Bruce Wayne/Batman that he tries so hard to suppress; or else he really would be no better than his enemies. HUSH is one of my favourite arcs in the Batman-verse, I suggest you read it if you haven't done already.

(Let me interject just for a moment. My cat Leon just left me a present. He jumped in to me lap, farted then jumped off. O_o Nice.)

Another thing I must mention, even though I haven't read many Marvel comics is that the DC "Multiverse" is incredibly varied. This is purposely there so writers can pick up from a certain part of a certain story an' give their own take on it an' see it through to their end as they see fit. That is absolutely fine by me, it gives more of an idea on how the writers see these character's they're working with thus adding to a different take on character an' story development. Which I do like. DC also carry on their original storys, but leave the multiverse stuff as is; only on some occasions parts of story's or characters are merged in to the offical canon; for example, Harley Quinn.

I never really got that with Marvel stuff; but like I said before I never read much Marvel so I could just be talking out of me arse right now but it's summat I figured from a bunch of Marvel fans on comic forums talking about DC an' the occasional lack of continuity. The only Marvel stuff I have in me collection are the Anita Blake graphic novels, but they were based off books. Published by Marvel though. Of course I bought 'em, me fave book series turned in to a comic book!

So that's the main part of me rant over. I'm a DC Girl. Always have been an' always will be. Yeah people might try arguing with me that anything Marvel is better an' the characters are so much more diverse than the DC characters. That's their opinion though. Yes DC characters may be quite gimmicky at times an' Marvel characters seem to have that breed of angst that can only usually be found in teenage boys. But that's how it goes. An' it still goes to this day that if there's a Marvel movie on, I'll only watch it if there really is nowt else ont telly.

This picture really does make me laugh. XD

But I think I'll leave this here for now, I could go on but I won't. I have plenty more Batman stuff to come out with int next week or so. So I won't drive you all mental with me Fangirling. :) 

Hopefully. Haha!

Just a quick one for now...

Indeedy. This week I shall be reviewing Arkham City AND keeping my followers AND whoever else reads this updated on the status of me Halloween costume.

'Cause I've been obsessed about the Batmanverse since I was a little girl. This year it's the Riddler.

I am mixing it up a bit though 'cause it is kinda hard to try finding stuff this close to Halloween. Like purple shoes that fit me for god sake. Or an actual NICE non shiny tie or even anything you can buy thats in FUCKING STOCK!! >_< Meh, more to come, like I said.

Balls to Harry Potter! What about Batman?!

So there were rumors going around a short while ago that the first trailer for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" was to be shown before everybody started going mental at the last ever Harry Potter movie. Oh boo friggety hoo.

Yes I have absolutely NO INTEREST in the Harry Potter franchise what-so-ever. I never read the books when I was younger NOR did I feel the need to read them as I got older. Because it's a kids book series. It wasn't written for adults, but they did do the grown up versions of the books where basically the front cover was more grown up, the illustrations were gone and the text size was probably smaller. No, when I was around 11 when the first Harry Potter book came out I had just started high school. And with a high school library comes a nice range of good books. So I went on to what would be considered difficult or incredibly heavy reading for my age. I threw meself in to Science Fiction an' classics. Books by Philip K. Dick, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess. I even read John Milton's Paradise Lost an' got bollocked by me English teacher 'cause it's a novel sized poem you study in Uni or College not in High School aged 14.

Either way, most Potter-Freaks probably won't have noticed TDKR's trailer an' if they did, probably dismissed it. But in my opinion it's an important movie 'cause Nolan has actually done something good with the Batman movie franchise. Especially after them atrocities I will not mention. Which brings me on to me next subject...

BANE

Bane is one of my favourite characters from the Batman universe, next to the Riddler, Harley Quinn an' Poison Ivy. Yes I would've put the Joker but what's the point everybody loves the Joker anyway.

What made me actually do this blog is to put some misinterpreted bits about Bane straight. 2 that stand out to me more than anything else.

Number 1, What people think about Bane: Bane is Mexican. Or South American.

The Mexican thing actually come from me watching the "Bottom Half of the Internet." YouTube to be precise, after TDKR trailer was put on after some people had it in 'em to record the trailer before watching Harry whats his face. I checked out a few of the profiles of the folk putting down the Mexican comments an' most of 'em turned out to be American.

Here goes...

JUST BECAUSE SOMEBODY SOUNDS MEXICAN TO YOU DOESN'T MEAN THEY ARE!

There, I said it. I know about the whole Mexican thing. Seriously. An' just because he has that mask on which closely resembles that of a Lucha Libre wrestler which is primarily a Mexican thing; doesn't instantly make him Mexican either. Remember, it's also in other Spanish speaking countries too.

As for the South American thing, this one come from the fact that those who have seen "The movie that should not be mentioned" seem to have it ground in to them that Bane is a imprisoned serial killer from somewhere in South America. WRONG. That was part of "That movie that should not be mentioned's" storyline in order to incorporate Poison Ivy and Dr. Woodrue (aka Jason Woodrue/Floronic Man.)

Bane is actually born on a fictional Caribbean island called Santa Prisca which was colonised by the Spanish. (Think along the lines of Puerto Rico, but with a massive drug trade and violent gangs a-plenty.) Bane's father was to be arrested an' thrown in prison, but somehow managed to escape incarceration. He slept with a local rebel woman who became pregnant with Bane. A law on the island meant that Bane, had to serve his father's sentence and subsequently spent his childhood and his early adult life behind bars.

This is where it get's interesting. A lot of people are having a scream about Tom Hardy playing Bane as he is a "white guy" an' he shouldn't be playing a "Mexican." Get this, Bane's mother if you take in to consideration that Bane's mother would most likely be of Spanish descent. Bane's father meanwhile is known as Edmund Dorrence (King Snake) who was a British Mercenary working with the rebels fighting against the Santa Priscan government. So thinking about it, Bane is half Spanish, half British. But obviously being brought up on a Spanish colonial island, he speaks exactly like that.

Bane's Daddy

Number 2, What people think about Bane: Bane is a grunting caveman/wrestler/jock type guy with about half the intelligence of the above mentioned.

Bane is actually surprisingly clever. I mean REAAAAAAALLLLLL clever. During his time in prison, Bane subjected himself to various forms of body conditioning becoming super strong, well before his exposure to Venom. But he also got down to the ol' book learnin'. Reading every single book he could lay his hands on. He also found himself under tutelage of several other prison inmates who taught him anything and everything.

So even though Bane has absolutely no formal education, the amount of knowledge he accumulated over the years that stayed in his head; could to amount to several University degrees on the outside. Giving him a genius level intelligence. The man is also a walking Babelfish, got a ton of languages in that big ol' noggin' of his an' all y'know? This high level of intelligence was also the thing that let him figure out the identity of Batman an' by closely watching him over a period of time; he was able to figure out how to literally Break the Bat.

Going back to that ridiculous farce of a movie; (Thanks a lot Joel Schumacher, you shoulda just stopped at The Lost Boys you tit.) Bane would NOT have taken orders from Poison Ivy. In fact, he wouldn't have taken orders from anyone like the beefed up, stupid bulldog Schumacher made him out to be. Bane set out to become the worlds most awesome bad-ass during his time in the clink. He wouldn't take no shit from no-one! Especially some plant-lady.

Really, what Bane wants to do is punch Ivy in the face an' stand on her plants

So there you go. 2 main things that a lot of people continuously get wrong about Bane. Now I must add that this is not a complete thing I wrote here. I personally haven't read everything that Bane has been in nor have I seen everything that Bane has been in either. Think of this as more of a "Basic Stuff You Really Should Know" piece. I may have got one or two bits mixed up, it is kinda hard to figure out which story arc fits better coming from different writers an' all. That an' I have a diabolical memory right now. But I think most of it is correct from what I can actually remember.

Now let's hear it for Tom Hardy who's gained a fuckload of weight (again) to play one of Batman's most challenging enemies in the upcoming Dark Knight Rises. 

Oh, an' after a discussion wi' a friend earlier; We decided it would be pretty awesome if the Nolan Brothers had wrote Osito in to TDKR. :)

Even the big evil angry fellas have a soft side... Bless.