Bioshock 2, Red Alert 3, Frightened Rabbit & A Bit Of Footie

One of the great minds of acting that appear in Red Alert 3 on the left there. The thing I find most amazing was that when I read on the back of the box "over 60 minutes of high def video sequences" I was disappointed. Only an hour? Genuinely want more. The game fits surprisingly well to a console with all your actions mapped to a wheel and there's shortcuts there to help build your power plants when you're scouting out with your team of attack bears. Yeah bears. There's dolphins as well. God knows what else, pretty sure there was a giant robot in one of the FMV's as well. Yet to persevere that far though. I can safely say though that this game was worth the £4 for Tim Curry's Russian accent alone. The bears are a mere bonus.

Polished off Bioshock 2 this week. Feel a bit let down by it, I played through on normal and never really struggled. The only time I died was when I forgot to use first aid. Still thoroughly enjoyed the playthrough. Highlights being the mad ambushes of splicers when collecting ADAM and wandering round the majority of the last stage with my sentry bot chums "Patches" and "Melissa". A solid sequel really. Gave the multiplayer a fair amount of time as well which was a let down. Ignoring the game crashes in the lobby which plagued me throughout it just was pointless. The servers will be empty in a few weeks I'm sure, they were hardly bustling when I was there anyway.

Two final things, got hold of the new Frightened Rabbit album which is fantastic. They sound bigger and brighter which hopefully will see them getting some decent mainstream attention. Current single Nothing Like You has hit written all over it. Also caught the League Cup final today which was both exhilarating and predictable. Vidic should have gone for the last man foul on Agbonlahor right at the start. Apart from that Man United deserved their win, Valencia and Rooney were exemplary and even Berbatov put a bit of effort in. Still wanted Villa to win mind. Oh well, maybe Arsenal have got a chance at the Premiership now. That's my last hope of Man United or Chelsea being embarrassed.

Being Human, Baftas & Bioshock 2

It's slowly become my guilty pleasure Being Human. In many ways it feels like a televisual equivalent of Modern Warfare 2. Trying to be gruesome, philosophical and humorous all in a show that is essentially like a slacker version of The Munsters. But it is endearing though and at times pretty good. This week's show was the best so far for me, a fantastic scene in which George (our werewolfy friend in the middle there) began transforming at a school parent's evening. Every imaginative parent's nightmare I'm sure. The BBC are good at making implausible rides of entertainment these days. Doctor Who has brought them a whole new appreciation for the fantasy genre as well. I'm sure next week's (what can be presumed to be final?) episode will also be a cracker. Roll on season 3 then as well?

Last night was also the Baftas, which smugly decided to snub Avatar. Well, deservedly so. Haven't seen this year's gold sweeper The Hurt Locker yet though. Hopefully it will fill me with joy and slightly confused feelings about my sexuality like Bigelow's seminal homoerotic masterpiece Point Break. Nice to see some Brits win the big actor awards as well, always feels like the Olympics where we're usually an outside bet to get in amongst the shiny. In awards given out by us. Brilliant. Also glad Moon won something, even if it wasn't Best British Picture. Reminds me, still need to watch Fish Tank too actually. And An Education. And A Single Man. Pretty much every film that won then.

Finally Bioshock 2 has tested my patience for it today. An unwarranted crash half an hour after my last save left me seething so much I almost dug out a Rage Against The Machine record. Almost, still clean. The crashing has been plaguing me in the multiplayer you see. Every fourth to fifth game will crash at the lobby leaving me staring at a non moving counter stuck on 57 seconds for a good while before I realise I've been got again. Come on 2K, this isn't on. What's worse is that you've announced 400MSP DLC for a game that is pretty much broken. I don't think I've even heard anyone asking for new DLC yet anyway. I think we'd all prefer a patch instead eh? As for the multiplayer when it works it's perfectly enjoyable. Personally I much prefer the brighter, tighter mania of Modern Warfare 2. Probably should have just left it at the already exemplary single player game then.

Gaming Tuesday (On Sunday)

Sequels are always a risky business for me. Not enough change and you warrant the point of it, too much and you fell like you're playing a different game. I got about halfway through Mass Effect 2 before I had to return back home and I'm still not entirely sure if I like it. I genuinely miss the Mako when the alternative is the dull as hell planet scanning. It's so painfully boring I didn't bother to investigate different galaxies for fear of passing out from lack of excitement. But the game has improved with the levels; variety, effective design, good dialogue and just generally well paced. So I guess I do like it then.

The one benefit of getting back to Cornwall was having Bioshock 2 waiting on my pile of post. Apart from it wasn't. I had to spend a good ten minutes rooting around to find it. I can't express the disappointment of finding your pile of post to only contain a letter from BT and the TV license. Anyway, I did manage to get it in eventually and give it a whirl and it certainly is nice to be back in Rapture. In many ways, very little is different from the original. You're still guided through ethereal voices, learning the story through audio tapes and hacking cameras and turrets to conserve those precious bullets. Although the change of character means you feel a bit beefier than the previous game. Fights with a Big Daddy are no longer so worrying. Although fights with a Big Sister most certainly are. Given a good few hours to it already and I must say I'm thoroughly impressed. That's still without even thinking about the new "tacked on" multiplayer as well.

My bargain of the week is Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise which can be found in store at Sainsburys for £5. I gave a good hour to it in my "I can't find Bioshock 2" panic and it is everything you'd expect from a Viva Pinata game. Laid back but with more depth than your average well. Easily one of the most under-rated series of this generation. Bar the Party Animals one. That game is shocking. Also bought Red Alert 3 for 360 from Shop To for £3.95 but that hasn't arrived yet. Looking forward to the cheesy cut-scenes already.

I've also been continuing on with System Shock 2 which is more addictive than I first realised. In fact I was sat next to someone on the train today with my laptop out and was debating whether to boot it up for the entire journey. I decided in the end though that the lady in question probably wouldn't have appreciated me hitting monkeys in the face with a wrench next to her. Would have got awkward very quickly. I feel the need to rescind my comment about the poor voice acting. It gets better. There's just a few people on the audio logs early on that are very bad. One thing that must be said though, is that the game is fiendishly hard at times and will punish you when you're down. That's just playing on medium difficulty as well.

Champion's League & System Shock 2

It's a funny old game football sometimes, the last two evenings have a gone a long way to prove this. Firstly the fact that UEFA have deemed it necessary to stretch the Champions League out for the next 6 years playing half a match every fortnight or something. Even as a big football fan, it's nice to have a week where I know the football isn't on for a change. The action kicked off on Tuesday afternoon when Everton were forced to play their first-leg Europa League tie at half five in the afternoon. Apparently, Europa League matches aren't allowed to clash with Champions League games for television reasons or something. Madness, through and through. Would have been a great game for them if Distin didn't ruin it all with a red card and penalty in the dying moments to leave Everton heading over to Portugal with a slender one goal advantage. AC Milan showed their age later that evening by forgetting to score the millions of chances Ronaldinho kindly laid on for them. Scholes' impossible to re-create miss hit wonder and the gleaming forehead of Wayne Rooney put Man United in a 3-2 aggregate lead going back to Old Trafford. You'd think that many away goals would be enough. Finally, Fabianski learnt another footballing lesson tonight in that you should not face away from an incoming cross and always kick when passed back to. Arsenal were lifeless and lacklustre and more than deserved their beating. The slender one goal lead for Porto though doesn't rule out a Gunner's return at the Emirates. Also, very briefly, Newcastle 4-1 Coventry. Three points clear. Good to see us scoring again.

As opposed to watching a scary movie or reading Glen Beck's wikipedia I decided to find my unadulterated terror in classic Bioshock fore bearer System Shock 2. For an 11 year old game it doesn't look too bad, it's just beyond that head-ache inducing pixel nightmare you get when you try and play an N64 game. Meddled around for a little while, mainly trying to fix a bug in which your inventory becomes redundant as your character would rather blindly swing his wrench around instead of healing. It's creepy at times, although the voice acting is poor, the random rave music wasn't fun and the character models are terrifying in a mostly non deliberate way. It still shits all over any other game from '99 though (Half-Life before, Deus Ex after; that's all I can think of off the top of my head).

Moustache Effect 2 & Being Human

Nothing is more threatening than a well trimmed moustache. Why do you think so many people signed up to fight in World War 1? Because of Lord Kitchener's empowering top lip duster that's why. I however cannot grow anything resembling that level of bushy magnitude. I haven't shaved for a week now and I look like an orphan who's escaped from an abandoned carpet factory. This is the last time I try to grow a beard, it'll have to be. Anyway, I started playing Mass Effect 2 tonight on my bro's 360. Don't have my hard drive so I couldn't import the weird freaky Shepard from my original so I had to make a new one. Couldn't resist going for a John Water's moustache. Makes me laugh every time I see him now and if the game had any kind of realism it would cause all negotiations and firefights to break down the minute that wispy puff of hair is in the line of sight. Apart from facial hair antics the game so far is a great improvement on the original with combat, the galaxy map and even potential lays in your crew all bolstered up. Even the ship's doctor seemed rather taken with my mustachioed Shepard. Lots of the game to go though and still need to give the apparently improved side missions a blast. That poor old Mako.

Started my Being Human catch-up as well. Still an enjoyable yarn really, I'm even starting to quite enjoy the almost questionable acting in some of the supporting cast. Although, it is guilty of shoe-horning in Twitter for apparently no fucking reason which is top of the list of annoying things in TV shows right now. Easily the best thing BBC Three have put out for a long while still, been a fair amount of time since those first two seasons of The Mighty Boosh. Even longer since Monkey Dust. Good ol' Monkey Dust, what a show that was. If only the BBC did an archive on the iPlayer like 4OD. Food for thought.

Misery Bear & No More Women

Thought I'd drop by, been a while and that. Not an awful lot to report though. Back up seeing my parents for the week now, which is nice. Not forcing myself to eat slow-cooked casserole as it's the only thing I know how to cook is a welcome change. Although knowing my 360 and a copy of Bioshock 2 are sitting quite happily in Cornwall waiting (please don't rob me) is not so welcome. Been a good weekend for football firstly with four (!!) matches shown over the weekend on terrestrial. Admittedly they were mostly shit but quantity is always a benefit when it comes to live sport, Crystal Palace and Bolton both put in good shifts today though. Wales' late comeback against a resilient Scotland in the Six Nations was easily my sporting highlight of the week. Great entertainment, hope Wales can pick themselves up from a poor start.

My proudest discovery this weekend is that of Misery Bear whose consistently depressing antics are heartwarmingly amusing. Especially for those who are not "feeling" Valentine's Day this year. Which is people who aren't children, disturbingly immature or terrified of upsetting their spouse really. Also been catching up on No More Women which is the little bonus show to We Need Answers. Easily worth it for the twee music and off beat commentary. The game also becomes more alluring but I can assure from personal experience it's difficult to encourage people to play. Tomorrow shall be a Being Human catch up I think and maybe watching the end of Gamer. Ah, I love the holidays.

Sonic, Chime & The Men Who Stare At Goats

This week saw the confirmation that Sonic is going back to his 2D roots this summer. Which is obviously good news, having played through the abysmal "Sonic The Hedgehog" reboot it's clear that Sega needed to revamp this big time (still not played unleashed, scouring the bargain bins). So what better way to get excited than to sit down with Sonic 2 on a very hungover Sunday afternoon. Before today I'd honestly never completed Sonic 2 either and I was surprised why I hadn't. I didn't even run into any problems until the Wing Fortress Zone which had one horrible segment jumping across guns. I certainly feel very accomplished beating it for the first time though and a nice little 35G for doing it was hardly a kick in the teeth either.

This week also saw the release of ambient puzzler Chime. The first thing that should be said is that a fair whack of the profits go to charity which is nice. Then it also only costs 400MSP so it's cheap too. I've not played it too much but it's quite laid back, not quite in the addictive puzzle realms of the classic Tetris or almost psychologically abusing drug that is Peggle. Hard not to recommend it though purely even for the first two points. The music is good too, the only downside for me is that I'm really bad at it.

Finally, in between my bouts with Robotnik today I watched The Men Who Stare At Goats. The film takes a while to find it's feet for me but once it does it's great fun. Fantastic cast as well with Clooney, Spacey and Bridges all brilliant. Especially Clooney, who sports a fantastic 'tache as well. Well worth picking up and giving a go, only wish I had the foresight to catch it at the theatres when it first came out. Oh well, that's pretty much my new year's resolution I think. Go to the cinema more.

Zombieland

In many ways Zombieland is like the American Shaun Of The Dead. It's bigger, louder, swearier and instead of going to the pub they go to a theme park. Americans eh? For me though it's what happens when you make a film that is a mixture of zany Japanese photo em up Dead Rising and the frantic, manic, unadulterated joy of Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead Rising: The Movie if you will. It's also cleverer than that sounds though, with some real wit hidden away in the movie, particularly in a bizarre scenario set in Bill Murray's house. The characters are as wafer thin as you'd expect and the plot hardly revolutionary. In fact the plot is pretty much that of a romantic comedy. Only with more zombies. But with nods to The Zombie Survival Guide in a rules system, a score that at times hinted at those oh so worrying strings of an impending zombie stampede in Left 4 Dead and even a few shots of a moving roller coaster car that reminded me of those very common mine cart sequences you used to get in Resident Evil. Anyway, regardless of it's originality it's easily the second best zomb-com going. Unless you're counting Dawn Of The Dead for unintentional comedy. But less not confuse it anymore. Good fun indeed.