This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of ‘Alan & Pete Play…’ videos. We have a lot of fun playing video games and wanted to share the experiences we have, particularly as the results vary from hilarious to terrible…
Blog Archives
Alan & Pete Play – Grand Theft Auto Online and more Dead Island
Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/user/alanandpeteplay
Twitter – https://twitter.com/AlanAndPetePlay
Since my previous update we’ve taken this ‘Alan & Pete Play’ thing a lot more seriously, and have uploaded a few more videos of us generally arsing about on both Dead Island and more recently Grand Theft Auto Online. In the former we attempt to edge ever closer to completing the game (spoiler: we don’t) and invariably get torn apart by zombies, and in the latter we try everything from evading the police to trying to get a jetski down a narrow river.
Gaming Under The Radar – Company of Heroes
These reviews have proven to be quite popular on this site, where I critique video games that have been largely overlooked by the community. Previous titles Ive covered include Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing and Shadows of The Damned, and today’s is THQ’s and Relic’s strategy game Company of Heroes.
While I was searching for the right word to sum up this game in one word I nearly went with ‘innovative’ or ‘ambitious’ but there is only one word to describe Company of Heroes – revolutionary.
It’s Been a While
Apologies for the lack of updates, yikes, this year! Life has unfortunately kicked my arse for the last nine months, mainly with work and reaping the benefits of my employment by actually going out and doing stuff. This isn’t a personal blog so I won’t bore you with those details, so here’s a quickfire recap on a few of the things I’ve missed lately.
The European Football Championship was excellent this summer, of course with Spain winning it after murdering Italy 4-0 in the final. I must admit that shocked me, I was convinced Italy at least stood a good chance of winning seeing as they had a rock-solid defence and Spain more often than not played without a recognised striker. Good to see Torres back to his best in the Premier League coming back to recent events, the league is as exciting as ever now that Manchester City have joined United and Chelsea to make it a three horse race for the title this year. Lots of money has been spent as always, Eden Hazard in particular looks to be a fantastic acquisition for Chelsea as does Santi-Cazorla for Arsenal. I can’t see them challenging for the league title this year but it would be nice to see them beform consistently between now and May rather than choking towards the end. Time will tell.
Mass Effect 3 is one of the biggest releases of the year
Video games, always a favourite of mine. We’ve had some belters this year with the amazing Skyrim, the new Hearthfire DLC is something I’m interesting in purchasing as building a detailed property is a feature I’ve always wanted Bethesda to expand upon. Good call by them, I’ll try and stick a review up once I’ve played it. Guild Wars 2 is out as well of course, but I’ve not had the chance to play that either just yet. Luckily it’s my birthday in almost exactly a months time and that’s very high on my list of DO WANT! so again more thoughts and opinions on that when the time comes, no doubt that’s just as fantastic as the first one. As for games I have played I finally got around to playing and completing all three of the main Uncharted games, which on the whole were fantastic but in my opinion gradually got weaker as the series progressed. It’s still a memorable experience though and one any PS3 owner shouldn’t miss, so go play them if you haven’t already. Mass Effect 3 was another big release earlier in the year, and my goodness did that get a reaction. No doubt you’re aware of the controversy surrounding the… rather poor ending, but thankfully that’s been rectified and the new ending is much, much better. I can honestly say that the final half an hour before the original ending is the most incredible gaming experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of being on the edge of my seat for, again that’s a series well worth investing your time in if you’ve not already done so.
Gaming Under The Radar – Shadows of The Damned
For the next part of Gaming Under The Radar I decided to go with Shadows of The Damned, a third-person shooter resulting from a collaboration between Goichi Suda (No More Heroes, Killer7) and Shinji Makami (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry). The game shares a lot of similarities to resident Evil 4 in terms of gameplay, as you follow demon hunter Garcia Hotspur into the depths of the underworld to save his true love in a humorous and gory adventure.
Despite the pedigree of its producers and other established names in the gaming industry (composer Akira Yamaoka for example, famous for his work on the Silent Hill franchise) the game sold very poorly, with only about 50,000 units being sold in North America in the weeks after its release. It’s hard to understand why as the following review will hopefully explain.
Devastating The Obvious 