Terahawks Corner

The first of two new videos on the Youtube channel: Tiny Troopers is a top down twin stick shooter - anyone who has played the Call of Duty Dead Ops games will grasp the controls - with the schtick being that you can have several soldiers under control at once. It's very reminiscent of the classic 16-bit game Cannon Fodder and has the same issue of not being able to control individual troopers but is more light-hearted and makes for a fairly enjoyable game, with 3 separate campaigns available. The other free PS3 game of the month - Hyper Void - is also harking back to a classic game; in this case Tempest . Like in that game, enemies come towards you and your ship is restricted to only being able to move in one plane. It gives 3 difference types of laser weapon but there doesn't seem to any particular reason to choice a particular type of laser on enemies, other than your personal choice. There are 30 or so levels according to the Trophy descriptions - I felt no ...

One day my internet will work properly again - hopefully soon enough that I'll actually be able to play GTA Online on my Xbox One. It does encourage me to play other games at least, and Xbox buddy WatchingSeven and myself have been slowly working our way through the Nightmare campaign on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 . The concept behind this is great: take the story campaign of Black Ops 3 , swop out the original story for a bioweapon virus that turns people into zombies and go! Even the cutscenes are re-used and by altering the voice-over (and removing character voices) they have been able to put a story in that uses the locales from the main campaign and 'remix' it - helps when the levels don't need to be in the order that they originally were. It's also nice to be able to play zombies and be able to utilise the cyber abilities - however Treyarch also made the decision to alter how weapons are handled. The weapons themselves are the same as you'll fine i...

This month I was reminded that when updating software, you need to check the settings before using it in anger. So, new month means new subscription games. The first one that I pick was  Hand Of Fate on Xbox One: The game itself works well and I recommend it to anyone looking for a pick up and play RPG. However, when setting up to record it, my GameCapture informed me that version 3.whatever was available up from 2.2.some number. Ran the update, then went straight into the capture. I noted the updated GUI but didn't look any further, particularly as my set tags were there. It wasn't until I'd done the capture and moved it into MovieMaker that I noticed the commentary track was missing from the folder. Checking the raw files I also didn't find it there then realised that the commentary was embedded into the video - and as I didn't alter the audio settings when I started playing, the commentary was all but inaudible. However, because I have the audio ...

So, a little after the fact but there is a First Time Play up for the game Zheros. A side scrolling beat 'em up IN SPACE! The concept reads a little like Double Dragon in a Ratchet and Clank universe - the execution is a little more lacklustre sadly. Graphics are good but not great, audio does the job but is not outstanding, it does allow for co-op gameplay but with stereotypical characters but the worse part is that it's just somewhat clunky - something which is not that much of a desirable factor in any game, never mind a beat 'em up. There doesn't seem to be much going for this game, as you notice in my video: However, one thing it does have going for it seems to be an extraordinarily huge TrueAchievement score. For this 1,000 Gamerscore game, you could get potentially 25,194 points. To note though, at the time of writing, of the 26,200 members of True Achievements not one has completed it. A challenge perhaps for someone out there ... or an indication t...

This month's 1st First Time Play is Medal Of Honor: Warfighter , currently available for free for Playstation Plus subscribers for the month of January 2016. It starts badly for the game as it needs an update before it even starts. As I mention in the video, and have done previously, I do not understand why a digital download game requires post download patches. I've just purchased GTA V for my Xbox One and whilst that did require an update, it was also a physical disc - there's enough dlc for that game I understand why the disc isn't up to date. But for a game that I entirely download, which has been released for a period of time and which Sony will have decided ahead of time to release for PS+, there really doesn't seem to be any good reason. The opening level is shown in the video - the graphics are fine though not amazing but the sound effects are far too loud, a magnitude above games like Call of Duty or Halo which I also expect effects to be not...

So my last blog spot was a catalogue of woes regarding the October PS+ games. Sadly, November hasn't been much better. Positive news first: I have got a First Time Play for Dungeon Siege 3 up on the channel: Which does at least mean I've got it up whilst it's the November Games with Gold freebie for the Xbox Live Gold subscribers out there. So far better than Dirt 3 (for which I have no space on the console HDD to download), Walking Dead Episode 1 (downloaded and untouched) or Battlestation Pacific (video recorded but is unlikely to be uploaded now) However, for the PS3, I'm wondering if we'll manage to get any of this months games up and out. Let's see, we've got Beyond Good and Evil HD - which I have played previously so wouldn't technically be a First Time Play. I'm also not certain that the opening to that game would do it justice in a 20 min or so video. Then we have Invizimals on Vita and The Walking Dead Episode 2...

Next video is up on Youtube. First time playing the game Rain is now live at this link: https://youtu.be/Osr9NUdKkcw A first play of Mousecraft will follow - I'm just going through a technical difficulties patch with the video either not uploading, or the internet connection not working, or trying to upload with too much data traffic on the connection, or ... E2A: And here's the Mousecraft video, a day late but not a dollar short

The next video upload is (or at least should be) live once you read this. The next in my monthly First Time Play series, I take a quick look at the first level of Entwined . https://youtu.be/-sQw-LSKSIA It's a quick look as it's a quick first level - I've breezed through the next two levels in about as quick. Cant tell if it's an easy Trophy claim or if the 'story' mode is simple as the challenge mode is the meat of the game The graphics are lovely but seem quite derivative of Rez , Child of Eden , Amplitude , Insert similar game title here ... Can't decide yet if I'll take the time to continue with this one or not. I doubt I would have bothered with it if not for PSN Plus (much like Race the Sun last month really) Think it's becoming clear that Sony are putting PS3 onto the back burner and gearing up on PS4 (they just recognise that there are still a lot of players on PS3 ...)

Well, it's been a few months since the last update - my day job and family life conspire to minimise my time to update - though watching Achievement Hunter and Yogscast videos also doesn't help ... However, I recently took the plunge into game capture and now have a Youtube channel all of my little own. Reprobate Gamer Youtube Channel Still finding my way but I'm starting with First Play videos - the aim being 10 - 20 mins of my first time with a game and I'm picking games that are available via PSN Plus or Xbox Gold Live. There are a few videos live already and the latest is Just Cause 2 Still tweaking my settings - certainly my audio levels need some balancing on the capture (there's not much can be done in post if the audio isn't there to start with) as my commentary seems to drop out in a couple of places and the game audio was certainly too loud  I'm aiming to release a video a week at least for now - as well as the First Play...