Terahawks Corner

So below is the shortlist of titles for the alphabet gaming marathon I've scheduled for Sunday 22nd October 2017.  tinyurl.com/y9u8ho4j   Whilst my aim was to have one big title, one indie and one other, it's been largely influenced by what I have available to me, and by how well it would be portrayed, seeing as I'm no expert for any of these games. And, in some cases, it's limited by the starting letter (and I was fairly ruthless in using the official title - a lot more 'The' titles than i was expecting) My twitter feed  https://twitter.com/ReprobateGamer  has live polls for the next few days with all of those listed, along with an option to add your own. Do feel free to comment below if there is something you particularly would like to see - not much time left! Still struggling on Y as well ... Assassins Creed 4 / abyss odyessey  / asura's wrath Batman Knight / Blur / badlands Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger / Crysis 3 / chariot /  ...

I put up a video on the PS3 game Alien Rage : and made some throwaway comment about a search for what Sony thinks of PS+ What was about to follow was a lambasting of the PS+ service for PS3 owners - largely written in fact - but I started actually looking into it. Whilst Live Gold offers more value to me, I do owe both an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One, the later which I use for online gaming. So a lot of that I need to actually forget as without a PS4 I'm already missing out on a good chunk of available features. PS+ is 3 years or so older than the Games with Gold program and they were originally different beasts - PS+ was a follow-up to Sony's apology for the hacking issues when they offered Burnout: Paradise and a choice of 1 from 5 other games as an offering for the lack of service and lack of support at that point. It worked very well and Sony decided to offer a few games per month for an annual subscription. Multiplayer was still available for free on PS3. Meanwhile...

Based on a feature on Kotaku from last year, I've started tracking which games I play over a year. The full list is below but in total I've played 93 different games in 2016. Looking at the breakdown of games, I only completed the story mode on 9 games (10 if you count Destiny's vanilla campaign) but played 12 games that had already been completed in 2015 (or earlier). There were 9 beta's and tests (including one that I'm under an NDA for) and 8 trials and free weekends. This raises a slight question as to whether a beta counts as separate to the main game if the progress doesn't save across - I've taken it as not as it is the same game after all My Xbox Live and PS+ subscriptions do seem to be playing for themselves as those two schemes accounted for 40 of my 2016 games, and there are a number more that could be played. The remainder have all been paid for, other than Overcooked which was a gift from a Guardian Event (so thanks!) but this year I...

New Month, new Games With Gold, new video's on the channel. I'm starting with Xbox this month and we have an older game: the lovely Forza Horizon . I gripe about the arrow line that changes colour depending on whether you are at the right speed or not but it is actually quite helpful for someone like me who learn to race in the age of the d-pad (there was acceleration and not, and not the gradulated analogue that is the standard now. The other video is: Earthlock Festival of Magic . This doesn't fair so well. In part this is because only giving 15 minutes or so for an RPG means that it hasn't really got going. Of course, the game hasn't really grabbed my attention within that time either which doesn't bode well. Not that I'll be giving this game any time any time soon. Overwatch is on a Free Play Weekend 9th - 12th September, I'm part of the closed beta of Behemoths Pit People , my fire team is enthused for The Division Underground havin...

I'm noticing that a larger portion of my gaming these days is comprised of demo's, tech tests and free play weekends. The latest addition to the partial games taking up my Xbox One disk space is the tech test for Titanfall 2 with a First Time Play: and a following Thoughts of the Game vid: The game itself is quite enjoyable but the front-end is very cluttered and I'm going to predict that it's going to lose out against some of the other upcoming shooters coming out this season (not least Battlefield One ) and the larger names still holding their own ( Destiny , Overwatch , Halo 5 , Black Ops 3, stop me when appropriate ...). I do like this trend towards a more objective led gameplay. As popular as the deathmatch game mode has and is, I prefer this more team based approach to games (it's why I stuck with Unreal Tournament 2004 for three years) - I'm not the best aimer in the world so getting points for objective completions helps me and I'm a...

With May rolling around, that means new games available for download. For this month that means Sunset Overdrive on Xbox One: On Xbox 360 I think it's Grid 2 . As I'm a Burnout man at heart, this game is unlikely to be checked any time soon And finally on PS3, we have LocoRoco : And Bionic Commando 2: Rearmed [if you are reading this then I haven't yet uploaded the video] Rather than talk through the games in the blog (seeing as I do so on the videos), I'm instead going to sidestep (or strife if you like) and go into a mini-rant on technology, as I seem to do from time to time. The following is a first world problem. Depending on what point you read this, the chances are that there are three videos above. However, as I write this, there are only 2 video's and Bionic Commando is waiting. This is largely due to my internet connection which it can be easily guessed from those who watch the YT channel is not great. Ookla when we test it regularl...

this weekend, I've so far sunk 8 hours into the open beta for Tom Clancy's The Division . and I suspect that I'll sink a few more hours into it before it closes. First impressions are very good - it's basically a RPG with a 3rd person cover based shooter approach set in a virus ravaged New York City. I caught one forum comment liken it to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, which is actually a very apt summation of it's strengths and weakness's. It plays well, and it is a realistic vision of a city that is under siege from within - it's the trappings of video games that go towards breaking this (bullet sponge bad guys, for instance). As with ME3  multiplayer, it plays better if you have friends to go to town with and I like that the base of operations is instanced for each player. The Dark Zone area with it's PvPvE set-up works very well - though I wonder if it's a little easy to go rogue. That said, making it easy to go rogue was very satisfying when 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 ...

In my last post I mentioned that I would shortly be able to be undertaking higher res recordings and also be able to start gaining HDD space. Anyone who's checked out ReprobateGamer on Youtube by this point will already have been able to guess the answer, as there is now a number of Xbox One captures up on the channel. Yep, finally joined the current gen of consoles with Microsoft's offering. The PS4 remains tempting but there aren't currently any games available on that system that I can't also get on Xbox One and I know more people on Xbox Gold to actually play with at the moment. The older consoles are still hooked up so there will be still recordings coming from them both (I haven't forgotten about the Gunslinger  playthrough that has been in abeyance since last summer) but I'm currently working on a Top Tips for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Zombies  newcomers which is definitely proving how much of a hassle MovieMaker is to use - predominantly that I hav...

Another week, another upload to the Youtube channel: Kung Fu Rabbit is this weeks lucky winner. I had planned to get all the PS+ subscribers October games up but suffered from a couple of technical hitches this time about. First was Kick Beat where the audio commentary ended up a couple of minutes longer than the visual and there is no sync betwixt them (ironic for a rhythm action game). Then I tried Chariot but forgot to change the title from Kick Beat , recorded it with the wrong name then mistakenly deleted it when starting to edit Kick Beat (right before finding the synchronisation issue. Finally started to record Unmechanical and middle of recording ran out of HDD space. Not my week all in all - 1 video uploaded out of 4 isn't a great result. But I do still have the footage from KickBeat so I just need to re-record the commentary and I can possibly even get two separate videos from it. And the little monster has taken a shine to Chariot so maybe there...

Following on from my previous post, I've finally managed to get the Twisted Metal first play up on the youtube channel: I end up being a little hard on this game - but actually it doesn't help itself. The graphics are not outstanding. It's possible that following immediately on from Crysis 3 may affect my view on this but then, I've also been playing Lego Pirates and Littlebigplanet 2 with my little monster and Twisted Metal is just a little rough around the edges visually compared to them also. The music is all guitar rock and heavy metal - which I don't have a problem with, but I heard Sweet Tooths theme so often just recording this video I was getting very bored of it. Especially as it's the music that plays (just once) from the XMB when it's the highlighted selection. There are also inconstancies within the game. As an example, towards the end of the mission played, I get a message to say that I've killed Sweet Tooth. But I'm ...

Next video upload onto the Youtube Channel. This time around, it's the turn of Crysis 3 . I manage the achievement for completing the tutorial level but miss the arrow in the knee achievement  The game seems enjoyable so far but I did spend a couple of minutes wondering around the port in the opening level as there did not seem to be any kind of objective marker and I missed the NPC as he headed off in the rain. The joys of video editing mean that that aimless wondering at least is not for public viewing (other than a few seconds with a life bouy ...) Link below Got this monthly free game out but missed getting a video for Pacific Battlestation before it came down from Games from Gold. On the Playstation side, I got Teslagrad uploaded and I've recorded one for Twisted Metal Online (which is the only other PS3 game on PS+ this month) - but I need to edit that video still so it'll only be a few days up before the next batch. Teslagrad vid below:

So, there I am in the process of setting up a Plants Versus Zombies walkthrough on the Youtube channel. I've captured part 4 (to be uploaded soon!) and was lined up to get part 5 recorded in turn ... ... when my little monster, looking for a change from Kinect based games, and having seen PvZ on the Android tablets is interested. Her and myself are now in what would have been part 8 and she is proving to be not too bad at slowing zombies down. That walkthrough series may be a little delayed until I can work out the most convenient method to restart from the beginning, ideally on a different storage device so I don't lose the progress that she and me have made. The series starts here: On the plus side, it also means that I can look to do the Nom Nom Nom acheivement on the first available level. Bless her cotton socks, I not certain that was her intent ...

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 ...)

Another week, another Youtube update. This time around it's a first play on the PS3 as I take The Unfinished Swan out for a waddle: This follows on from last weeks First Play where I ride out on Call of Juarez: Gunslinger : Not decided on my next video update but as I'm very likely to be in Los Santos with the upcoming DLC, it may well end up being GTA V related. There plenty of games to pick though so watch this space (actually watch the youtube space but you get the idea)

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...