First off before I start my first article here, I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure to co-own ThePeoplesRant for the past two and a half years for both the high’s and low’s we had there. Although slightly saddened to see it go down after all this time I guess it couldn’t be helped. May it rest in peace and always be remembered by its users. Hopefully not by the lawyers behind the McCann incident though haha.

I used to do a weekly article for TPR and will attempt to do a similar thing here. A weekly article regarding games, movies, news and the shit that makes life what is it. This article will contain a review for Fifa 10 (XB360), Aliens vs. Predator (XB360), Risen (XB360) Edge of Darkness (Movie), and The Flat from HELL.

I know most of the games I play are on the XB360 but this is because I have a larger friend’s base on the XB360 then I do my PS3. Personally I can note no difference in graphics for games on the consoles and those who say they can clearly need an eye test and to quit the fan boyism.  

Aliens vs. Predator has gotten some mixed reviews from allot of places. I can understand why, The Campaign offer’s three storyline’s to play through in whatever order you please. Each adds information to the others and reasoning as to why things are occurring. The story mode for this game is its winning feature by far. I could not put it down; playing as a marine you truly get the sense of “oh fuck my motion sensor is picking up movement! SHOOT! SHOOT!! SHOOT!!!” It keeps up the sense of an alien could be lurking round any corner or floor or roof or even in the god damn wall! The choice of weaponry is brilliant and keeps you alive (just barely sometimes) while not over powering you. The Alien storyline is a little hard at times due to the stealthy nature of the xeno and the fact they have to get up close and personal. Busting the lights and scaring the living daylights out of the marine AI is definitely a lot of fun.
The hardest storyline I played was the Predator; those pesky Xeno’s kept coming by the horde load and refusing to die.

The let down of this game is its limited multiplayer mode. The survival (horde) mode is brilliant and great amounts of fun when with friends. The other modes on the other hand can become rather stale and boring due to the repetitive nature and limited options when playing with friends, it only gives you TDM or Domination. This game was a disappointment to me (on the multiplayer side anyway) as I was hoping for great things from it, at least going from the previous AvP games anyway. I do hold out on some hope for the 2^nd one they are making though. My hope is they treat this as a test run somewhat and perfect the areas where they went wrong and make AvP 2 a game to make the genre proud.

AvP gets an 8/10 from me.

Fifa 10 is not my typical game. I’m not that into playing sports game’s really and the way I see it is that if I’m going to play a sport then I’ll go out and play it, Not sit on my comfy 6ft Fat sac bean bag and play it on a console. That aside, the game is actually rather enjoyable. It does lack the ability to play with friends online which I thought was a bit poor but it gives you the ability to create a ‘club’ that you and your friends can then face off against other clubs on an up to 5v5. As in previous ones (to knowledge) you can create a ‘Virtual Star’ and play as this person in whatever team you wish. Each match you are given targets to meet by your manager. I’ve not played this a lot and mainly played with my friends on the club mode. I’d say it’s a game to own for any sport game lovers though.

Fifa 10 gets a 6/10 from me.

Risen was something that caught my eye at one point and when I got my hands on it, I was sorely disappointed. There are allot of articles regarding this game and how it’s seriously flawed on the XB360 but not so bad on the PC. The game felt like a severely poor man’s Oblivion at best. What should have made it a brilliant and engaging game has made it a painful experience instead. I only finished about 20% of this game before I couldn’t take any more and sent it back. This is an RPG game to skip, go spend your pennies on something else.

Risen gets a 3/10 from me.

Edge of Darkness was an exceedingly dull and predictable movie from start to finish with yet another cheesy as all hell Hollywood ending. The storyline is the main characters daughter is killed and he goes looking for revenge against those who killed her. Seriously, the plot line is that simple. There were some amusing points/interesting moments as few and far between as they were. Like I said though allot of it is highly predictable (if you’ve seen enough movies anyway). At the end of the film is left me slightly wishing I hadn’t bothered.  Although it did amuse me to see that as of late there does seem to be a few poor ‘action’ films involving old male actors. Edge of Darkness (Mel Gibson), From Paris with Love (John Travolta) and there’s another but the name eludes me.

Edge of Darkness gets a 4/10 from me.

The Flat from HELL! I couldn’t give my flat a better name right now. Christ, everything that could go wrong with that flat as gone wrong at one point or another. Most recent was the boiler went haywire and sent scolding hot water (mostly steam) through the cold water tap/toilet water tank. That’s right we had volcano action in the toilet water tank, it bounced the bloody lid off. Within a minute of it starting I couldn’t see a foot in front of me when I opened the bathroom door (not joking at all here) Needless to say the corridor started to flood and the smoke alarms were going off due to the amount of heat being kicked out. Thankfully, the boiler ran out of boiling hot water eventually and it was all on for damage control. We had towels all over the corridor to stop it from spreading to the other rooms. After contacting the landlord to try getting things sorted out, he sent out some water extractor company to come soak up as much of the water in the corridor carpet as possible. A plumber also came to turn off our water because the toilet water tank parts (plastic ones anyway) had melted so water was just flowing straight out of it. The next day the same plumber came and sorted the pipes out so that we had cold water at least. Our heating and shower are both electric/economy 7 so it wasn’t too much of an issue. That same day it was decided it best to rip the carpet up as well as the lino in the bathroom at the advice of the insurance claim man. We still have no carpet or lino and no idea when the hell we will get them either. Thankfully though the boiler has now been fixed after a new one was sent and over 4 engineers were sent from the boiler manufacturers to fix the damn thing. The first one they sent knew NOTHING and I mean nothing. The guy didn’t have a damn clue what caused it and was more focused on trying to fob me off with a quick fix. A few days later the same company had sent 3 of their engineers to fix the problem, 1 was a senior engineer and the other two were installation. They got it sorted and apologized for the first engineer who was sent. From the incident occurring to the boiler being fixed it had been a week, it has now almost been two weeks and the carpets are still not god damn sorted!

This is just one of many things which has happened with this flat and I’m beginning to believe it’s cursed and in need of an exorcist! If there is a young priest and an old priest available let me know!

I figure I’ll leave news out of this one seeing it’s already long enough.

Quote of the week: Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
  - Robert Heinlein