keskiviikko 24. elokuuta 2011

Assembly '11

Assemly is the biggest LAN party held in my homeland of Finland. From the fourth to the seventh of august gamers got together in Hartwall Arena and did what people do when it comes to LAN parties.My highlights were:

The Jimm's booth:
I didn't buy anything but they had some great events like touchpad CSS and so on. And IMO they were prepared for window shoppers.

ES:
This shit kept me going when the small hours came upon us. I would pretty much have one with me all the time. The second rejuvinator was cigarettes. We honestly had a fag break every 30 mins.

Outskirts of Hartwall Arena:
We wandered outside Hartwall Arena and hilarity ensued as the ordanance people saw us. We split up and remained unharmed: yet it felt surreal and sort of awesome

Gaming in general:
It was liberating knowing that the couple days to come you could game as much as your heart desired. Nothing would stop you. And nothing did

My shitty PC:This hunk'o'shit accompanied me along Assembly. It only had an upgraded graphics card in it and the struggle with it was in the end quite rewarding. Next time ill hopefully have a better piece.






The Mainfloor: The hub, the center and the heart of Assembly. Everything from concerts to game finales took places here. Everytime you walked down to the mainfloor you would stand in awe astounded at the amount of everything that was going on.

Totalbiscuit: He was literally everywhere in Assembly. By the end of the four days he had commentated for 50+ hours, and it showed, nevertheless he still put up with the fans thus i got an awesome pic.


The ASUS ROG SC II event. Assembly made me a huge believer in e-sports. It was a crying shame that the preliminaries were stuffed into a small absess room. The same room was so packed when Stephano and Dimaga had their Z v Z that I could not finnish it. Luckily though the finale was held on the main stage.
After the first one hour game we were geared up for four more of those. After 2.5 hours Dimaga won 3-2 against Mana. Truly the highlight of the event






torstai 17. maaliskuuta 2011

A melting pot and plethora of everything


PS plus membership might be finally paying itself off. PSN plus members get a sweet little cloud to use. Every Gold member gets around 150 mb or so. What’s funny is that first I thought this was useless and the very next day I could have used this service real bad. Also PSN plusses will be getting early or just plain normal access to Infamous 2 beta. This factor might be the only reason I will buy PSN plus if I’ll buy it. I’m very hopeful that PSN plus will start to add more to its repertoire and make the pending decision a certain one 

I’m a bit ashamed to be Finnish today. Rovio’s head honcho Peter Vesterbacka stated his opinion on console games and their apparent downfall of ridiculous proportions. Boldly he states that console games and consoles themselves are dying out. I think that a small gaming company that really hasn’t done anything new in the gaming world and struck a major mother lode by releasing a re-hashed game that everyone who has played a little bit of flash games is already familiar with. I can name a dozen better games that are now online playable and are free. So please when you think of Finnish games think of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Stardust HD  


 
Homefront came out a couple days ago. And to be franc I’m not in the mood to pay and play another short game and/or a marketing shitfest. Five hours just doesn’t cut it no matter how good the multiplayer might be. What I am interested more so is the book. Looking at the reviews and general opinions the story and atmosphere and milieu and so on and so on is the best thing in the game and that is what makes it remarkable. It’s a brilliant move from them to put their eggs in a couple baskets;but being the cynicist that I am I think it’s rather the supreme marketing strategy that they had. Not everyone releases a billion balloons over Sanfran. But I’m excited to finally bring gaming into the English class without showing my ridiculous reviews and blogs and ending the teacher up in a state of uncontrollable hilarity.
PAX. Do I need to say more?
At least on the booth babe basis Duke Nukem Forever had it covered better than anyone else did. People have played it and apparently it suffers from clunky control syndrome. I’m a big fan of tight controls but what people said was also that the ridiculous humor and plain outrageousness of duke nukem will make up for a little case of stiff joysticks. Being as cynical as I am I will not believe this game will be out until I see it on the shelf and even then I will be in a state utter disbelief and flabbergasm.
The only game I’m sure to buy of the PAX coverage is Portal 2. What I find astonishing is that when you buy Portal 2 for the PS3 you will get it for the PC and MAC for free. Whether you have to have one steam account to activate this feature is yet to be announced. Otherwise I see a bright future of PC and PS3 gamers sharing the game and Xbox slowly being the left out kid in the school yard.
One other game that wasn’t as prominent that I am surely going to buy is Infamous 2. A new demo was playable showing the new cattle prod fights and cover that you can later fling at your enemies. Now that is pretty awesome.
One big title talked about was Bastion. Not really much has been mentioned except a scratch made engine and live commented play or something along these lines. Bastion was a big hit with the gaming biz insiders and is regarded a new Braid only better.
The shadowy figure of PAX this time was Rage; all thought IDtech shined bright and many titles still decided to stick with the unreal engine and IDtech in general not many big titles were shown off and only a little was mentioned of them.