Game Review: Tales of Symphonia (GC) - Retrospective

This is a game I played a LONG while ago, almost four years. It took me around half a year to beat, and I played practically nothing else. The time it took was due to me having school to attend to as well as a social life to maintain, but that is neither here nor there.
So, after freshing up my memory as far as plot and characters are concerned (Thank you GameFaqs!), I sat down and wrote this little retrospective.

Game Review: God of War (PS2)

Brace yourselves for a tour through Bile-town, as I have some things to get off my chest after playing through God of War. Let's just begin with saying that an alternate title could have been "Overrated and overhyped". Yet, I have to say that GoW is by no means a bad game. But it isn't great either. It's a good game, despite all the horrible things I am about to write about it.

Format of my Game reviews

Of all the days to choose to publish this: Holocaust Remembrance Day. Political incorrectness, I am doing it RIGHT!

So, seeing as I am going to review God of War for PS2 in a bit, I felt it was an idea to write down the format I've chosen for my reviews.

It's all fairly simple:

Gameplay and Controls
Self-explanatory. Here I go through the game in itself; how it plays, puzzles and similar. I also go through controls, whether they are responsive or a flaming pile of arse.

Graphics and Sound
How the game looks and sounds. Nothing more, nothing less. Usually rated in relation to its platform.

Story
Also known as "why am I doing this?" or "why am I here?". If there's any kind f mythological creatures and such involved, this will get dissected here.

Summary
Pros and cons served up against each other with a final summation of whether the game was worth the hours it took to get through it.

And I will not give scores! Mostly because I suffer from a severe, life-long case of "cannot be arsed", but also because I think people should read the review and not just glue their eyes to a numerical score. Two games can get the same score on GameSpot from my experience, but have vastly different pros and cons.

This is more as an aid to memory for myself, so pay no attention to it if you don't want to.

The subtle art of miniature sculpture pt. 2

This is a sort of addendum to the last post, as I have had a think about sculpture in general. And a bit of an epiphany. No angry rant this one.

The subtle art of miniature sculpture

You might not have realised it, but sculpture, especially miniature sculpture, is a very subtle art indeed. And it is very different from standard sculpturing. And I am here to tell you why. Okay, I do not have any kind of actual education on this subject. All I have is more than 10 years of miniature painting to fall back on.

Here's the thing:
When you sculpt a miniature that is meant to be cast in metal or plastic, packed up and sold unpainted, you must take two things into consideration, apart from making a kick-ass mini, obviously.

Now this pissed me off...

Funnily enough, it has nothing to do with religious nuts, although there is plenty reason to be pissed over that right now. Let's just say that my religious nuts-o-meter went bust following the invasion of Gaza.

This is equal amounts of cute and sad---

The bird is cute, in all its meta-humour.

The owner is sad, in many different ways, for teaching his bird the Final Fantasy Chocobo theme.

And it's not just the Chocobo theme... Let it play out to the end, you'll see.

A mission statement of sorts:

To piss creepy fanboys off.

Well, of sorts, I say.

Why this all of a sudden, and what fanboys (and a few girls, no doubt)?

A Retrospective on The Sabbat Worlds Crusade background book

The reason I am writing up this retrospective on a couple of years old Black Library background book is that I have Xenology on my reading list, and I aim to review it from a Biologists point of view. To do that, however, I have to get my hand back in on reviewing shit. I also write this BEFORE watching this week's episode of Zero Punctuation, as I don't want to be "Yahtzee-fied".

So let's kick off, shall we?

He has a good point...

For all his dong jokes in Zero Punctuation, Ben Croshaw's first foray into mainstream media rams home a very good point.

Just wanted to say that.