Terahawks Corner

Well, I'm meant to be reporting on updates on Borderlands 2 . Sadly, Axton remains exactly where we last left him.  Partly because of real life and partly because the other two games mentioned last time have been slightly more consuming than expected. Chris and Piers got to the end of the their Resident Evil 6 adventure and now Jake and Sherry are not far from theirs. I've been having a little more fun this time with a hand combat focussed build for Jake (Melee, J'avo Killer and Combat Gauge Boost) - which has meant stockpiling amo has been easier. I customarily have breakout on, but haven't really noticed it on this run - except when fighting the Ogremon when its lack was very apparent. Meanwhile in Los Santos, Michael has just in the process of prepping for his first heist. I'm just now trying to decide if I want to go straight into the heist, or deviate for a few hours to bump up stats, money and weaponary ahead of the story missions. Which, let's be ho...

So, Two weeks into 2015 and second post has gone live. That's definitely an improvement from the last few years. Game updates - Up to level 12 now in Borderlands 2 and two more points gone into Guerilla - next level will see me max out Sentry and probably move onto Willing. Ticked off a few more side missions in Sanctuary and have left the story mission to assassinate assassins (missed the boss rush rank), chase mad doctors (and perforated by his hi-tech gun because of a rubbish turret deployment) and look inquisitively at the motel (decided to actually sleep than visit there just yet) Mrs Zombie Killer and myself have also brought Leon and Helena through their Resident Evil 6 campaign and are now back in China hunting B.O.W. with Chris and Piers. I'll note that I really don't like Chris's thank you calls in this particular mission - doesn't encourage saying thanks. The starting ammo also seems a little sparse considering that they are part of a armed response...

So, pretty much three years ago, a lone blogger went incommunicado from the blogosphere Now he's back, additional family members in tow, newer PS3 after the prolonged death throes of the previous orginal model and an internet connection that has fewer limits. I've looked to re-start the blog a couple of times in the years of having it and never really managed to get back into it once the family started to arrive. This time around, rather than just listing games and hinting at other posts that just have never appeared, I'm going to focus on my progress on one or two games and hope to maintain momentum (and a semi-regular posting schedule). My starting games is ... Borderlands 2 Picked it up as part of the PS Plus games and never really got around to it until now. Tempting as phase locking or cloaking was, the ability to have a turret on call was just too tempting and I'm currently Axton, having just hit level 10 in my first playthrough and in Three Horns looking ...

Blimey Where does the time go? I'm aware of just how long it has been since I last posted and while I haven't given up gaming (far from it) it is a little perturbing how little appears to have changed since my last post. Lets see, the Wii is almost exactly where it was a year ago. Wii Fit did see a few months of use but my daughters later bed time and her insistance on 'helping' by standing on the board means that the Wii has seen very little usage over the entirety of 2011 The DS is also very quiet. Ghost Trick is a very good game and is certainly something to purchase if you have any interest in any kind of puzzlers - it kept me engrossed throughout with a wonderful twist at the end though what it's replay value is I can't say. Haven't picked up any other games since and the commute home is now just for reading. The 3DS is tempting (as is Vita) but I think the better value these days is a tablet (I've currently got my eyes on Asus' transformer ran...

Like a zombie or a Hollywood attention span, I bring this blog creakily back to life. Apologises for the extended gap between postings - Mrs Zombie Killer and I now have a little terror of our own - still a little young yet to take part. Couple this with an anti-social job, a long protracted house move and an extended commute time ... I'll cover how parenthood has altered my gaming habits another time, lets get back to the gaming. Our long suffering DS is getting a little more attention now that I have a couple of hours of travel time each working day. And thus, I've finally found the Golden Apple! Yep the first Professor Layton has been completed (116 puzzles found and solved) and only one puzzle is still eluding detection. Can't get all the weekly downloads as the WEP encryption isn't good enough for our WPA enable network. So, the next couple of Layton games are waving their arms; New Super Mario Bros is also getting me interested and I've also added Ghost Tri...

Yes I know it's been a while since my last post - real life got in the way with all sorts of house moving work related newborn child adventures. Anyhoo - Nintendo remains as was. we've bought no new games, played no existing games and haven't even turned it on this summer. The PS3 has also been fairly quiet. On once a week to check the store. Still haven't run a backup and still have to purchase a larger HDD. Assassins Creed 2 remains in the disc slot and I have now at least got to all the viewpoints in the first area of the first city. Yes that's as far as I have played. When will I continue? Maybe tomorrow ... The big gaming news is that the X360 is at last fixed and working fine and while my first born new daughter means that playing time is at a premium, I have at least got to the end of Halo 3 . Gears of War 2 has also been completed and I've started online coop again with a friend. But the baby cries so I'm putting down the controller again. When do ...

Well, it's been a quiet few months for Nintendo in our house - We picked up Professor Layton back in November and while it is a curious village, we're somewhere around puzzle 40-something and no further. Not because we've run out of hint coins (far from) - just haven't really felt like switching the DS back on since then. I did mention Chrono Trigger in a post a good few months back ( HERE ). That replaced Lunar Knights before completion though again I've lost interest in it long-term - still kicking my feet in ancient footprint tracking for those that know the game. The Wii has also been quiet though there have been a few flutterings of life - mostly Darkside Chronicles which mrs zombie killer received for Christmas and which we completed in short order. There's still Tofu to shoot and a fair number of S-ranks to unlock but the credits have rolled and the disc is back in box. It was replaced by Dead Space: Extraction which is not all that bad but doesn...

Funny how that synchronicity things works. Some time back, I'm left with half an hour to kill and wander into a Forbidden Planet - it was that or a coffee and I was waiting to go for coffee somewhere else so ... While browsing the book shelves, one title reaches out. More Digressions For those who don't recognise the reference this is a collection of columns from one Peter David (link to his blog to the right). Author didn't ring a bell but I'd recently read a couple of books of compiled columns and a quick flick through suggested I'd enjoy it. Bought it on the spur of the moment and it was as I read through it over the next few days that I began to recognise the author. For those big into Marvel, he did the stories for Hulk and Spider Man for a time, including the movie adaptations; DC readers may have come across his words in Young Justice , sci-fi buffs may have some of his Star Trek books on the shelf. How is this relevent to gaming? Well, Shadow Complex was ...

The monthly update - a month or so late ... Meh, I'm sure you all will forgive me I have been noticing recently the things around gaming on the consoles that would make things easier. If PS3 could enable much more background loading, that would be nice. If it could also provide a better breakdown of the contents of the hard drive, that would be another welcome addition for an update. While the Xbox 360 allows me to see exactly how much room is taken up by games, videos, demos, etc at once, the PS3 only allows for 'all the memory' or item by item, which is very dull. And I remember news stories back when Home was first introduced about being able to have your trophies onshow for friends to wander through and look at. How much longer will that take? I kinda like the idea of having a gallery of my trophies that I can walk through and examine in detail. Some point soon, Home team? Talking of Home, I am liking that companies are bringing out Second Life style mini areas for game...

So what's the latest this month. Well, as usual, I have far more games on the go than I ever get time to play. Lunar Knights on the DS is still ongoing - I believe that I'm coming to the end, though that isn't near completion. Probably a good thing though as Chrono Trigger hasn't been fired up since checking it worked a couple of months back. Valkyria Chronicles was the last game of choice on the PS3, one which I'm taking slowly but one that has really fired the strategy bug in me (oh god, another genre to want stuff from ...). Still haven't picked up any of the DLC though I probably should as the price increases have quietly started ( Age of Booty which I swear was released at £6.19 is now £7.99 - I'm really going to have to clear the decks before adding that one). And having worked our way through Lego Indiana Jones , I managed to track down a copy of Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga. This hasn't seemed as much fun, partly as I've still got the fi...

I mentioned that the triumvirate was complete in my last post. It seems I was a little hasty with that - After another bout of RROD and disc issues with a brand new Gears of War 2 , I finally bit the bullet and paid for a new Xbox 360 Arcade model. Why the arcade model? Well, we already had a 120GB HDD from an earlier ebay purchase. And in the UK there's a promotion that had a new Arcade model with 5 arcade games ( Uno, Luxor 2, PacMan, Boom Boom Rocket and Feeding Frenzy ) along with two wireless controllers, an internal 256 MB memory unit and two retail games ( Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda ), all for the same price as the vanilla arcade model. I can quite honestly say that none of the games were worth purchasing the console for, even for the easy Gamer Points, though Lego Indiana Jones has been a nice distraction for me and mrs zombie killer while we wait for Resident Evil 5 to come down in price. Gears Of War 2 is potentially a game worth buying the console for but ...

Firstly, eagle eyed viewers will note the new Trophy card - design is by xxDune. I've finally been able to add a few more trophies to the collection recently - on games I've actually wanted rather than buying games just to add numbers to the trophy collection. The games themselves will surprise no-one - Dead Space is the disc currently keeping the PS3 warm at nights. It's amazing how much more enjoyable a game is when I can move while shooting ... something I suspect me and Resident Evil 5 are going to fall out over. As a note, if you'd tried the Dead Space demo and got bloodily wiped out, the game itself is a little more forgiving. Or at least, you've had a little more time to warm up and work out what's going on when you get to that bit. Prince of Persia is awaiting my return to it, which if the wife gets the next Resident Evil could be a while. We all know how she likes her zombies - and it was her like of survival horror that ended up with Alone In The ...

Anyone reading a post or two down will note that I have both a PS3 and Wii - why don't I just go the whole hog and purchase an Xbox360 to complete the triumvirate? While I do keep getting tempted by the elite model (and my best man keeps clamouring me) I do already have access to one. At work. I'm not giving away where I work (here, at least) but there are times where we are 'on call' - where we have to be immediately available but don't to have to be actually doing anything. While this used to mean that we spent the time reading, over the last couple of years, we've managed to snag a plasma screen and hook a digi-box to add TV. Then a gamecube was going spare so it was donated. It's possible we spent a little bit too much time on Mario Kart: Double Dash Then work bought an Xbox360. This was actually to provide entertainment for Joe Public during events involving audience but mostly hasn't been used. We graciously said that we'd provide an ongoing sy...

Following on from my mention of trophies in the last post, I've updated the blog to include a gamercard linked to my PS3 profile. Seeing as I haven't even loaded up UT2004 since Christmas, it's a little strange to keep the Xfire profile up. So that's gone and now I broadcast my (lack of) trophies to the world. Credit to the design goes to Deathvein. Though Sony mentioned way back when that trophies would be a part of Home, I had totally forgotted about the idea of trophies until the V2.4 upgrade for PS3 (And by the way, updating the system on PS3 is a little annoying - anyone want to tell me just why it can't be done in the background ... the download at least ... sigh) I don't know how many sites online are built to discuss trophies. When I set out hunting for more information, Google sent me to www.ps3trophies.co.uk . It's a fairly new community but there's a good vibe going so I'm keen to support them. The UK bias helps but it's fully inclusiv...

Yes, I know - it's been forever since I lasted posted. That big huge rant on backwards compatibility then nothing for nine months So, what's going on in my world of game? Well, on Christmas Day a shiny white Wii took up residence next to the TV. Initial response was pretty good - we managed to get both mine and my wife's parents up and playing on Wii Sports and Resident Evil Chronicles was enjoyable (hey, you knew we'd have bought that). The niggles have slowly crept up on us. The Virtual Console is good and the fact that you can use old Gamecube controllers on most games has saved me buying yet another controller - but the whole Wii points thing is a little unwieldy - particularly if you are trying to transfer Stars from old Nintendo accounts - It took me from december to early August to get all my Stars transferred (and I only had a few thousand). Nintendo have this rubbish idea that you can only purchase one Wii points card a day online and that they only have a ...

I've just been reading this months EDGE magazine. There's an article on the PS3 in there in which Ray McGuire, MD of SCEE, defends Sony's position on making the new PS3 model lose it's backwards compatibility. This was done to try reduce the costs involved in manufacturing the PS3 which costs Sony - the company loses money in selling PS3. Now I get reducing specs to reduce the cost (the other features missing from the new model include 2 less USB ports, 20Gb less hard drive, and the memory card reader) but I'm afraid that, for me at least, the backwards compatibility is non-negotiable. We all know that updating and improving consoles doesn't necessary mean that games are also improved. Games like Space Invaders, Defender, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Secret of Mana, Sonic, Metroid, Zelda to name but a few are regarded as classics on the systems that they first appeared upon. That's not to say that new consoles don't bring improved gaming to existing IP (an...

As mentioned in my earlier post (ISP V2) we need to buy a new modem to replace the existing Voyager that wasn't playing nicely any more. We finally took the plunge with a Netgear wireless ADSL modem router (at least partly cos we were setting up a laptop for Mums use and had no way to check the onboard Wifi card was working) Our PC is connected into one of the four available wired ports and set-up took about 10 minutes - a few minutes more to add the encryption, switch off the SSID and only allow connections from the laptop MAC via W2PK. Since then, it's mostly performed pretty well. The computer says it has a 100Mbps connection, though that of course makes no different to our broadband rate and it's nice not to have to turn the desktop on to get a connection via the laptop. I have had the internet connection just die once or twice though - I don't know if Pipex are watching me after nearly going over the download limit in August (I had a broken leg - there wasn't m...

I still remain a firm fan of UT in all it's flavours but I did spend three hours on Halo 3 at the weekend: This was on the co-op campaign with a friend who has already completed once. In those three hours, we managed (with me first-timing Halo 3 - and only experience with the demo of the original Halo prior) to get someway into mission 6 (of 9). It looks gorgeous, sounds amazing, and surprising slow. Anyone jumping floats in the air for several seconds, and there's no dodging. Even the fast vehicles like Ghosts seem to take an age to come about. With two players, Halo 3 was good fun, despite all that. My partner in crime knew (mostly) what needed to be done and I am always able to flank opponents. He is a much better driver than I am but I am probably a better turret gunner. I do have some good memories now of that session (in no particular order): operating a mounted gun in a Warthog and using his zoomed in sniper view to watch my tracer fire and take down the sniper he was ai...

Just a link in this post to an article on Gamasutra that is for the positive of video games http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1443/how_killing_people_with_my_dad_.php

I did post some time ago with the WoW version of Avenue Q's The Internet is for Porn. As I have never played Wow or Guild Wars and I am aware that there may be a hint (just a hint) of rivalry between the two, I'm posting the Guild Wars version as well. Watch it here While I mention the WoW vs Guild War thing, have a like at this movie as well: Can't touch this Is it wrong to think the only difference is that Guild Wars only has human characters? [don nomex suit]