Monday 31 December 2012

2012 Year Review

So, 2012 is coming to a close, and 2013 is right around the corner. Usually, I feel upset about it, and I still kind of am, but not as much as I usually would. Maybe I used to feel upset because it mean't it's one year further away from what I call "The good old days!", but if 2012 showed me anything, is that todays days can be as fun as the "good old days", if that makes sense.

The only thing news-wise I want to talk about is the 2014 Scottish independence referendum being made official, that, to me, was the only bit of news that stood out.

I don't know about anyone else, but after doing a lot of research, I support independence, from what I've read, Scotland can survive, even the head of the anti-independence campaign said we could, and not only that, it seems we'll all be better off. For starters, we can say bye bye to paying the BBC's stupid TV license...

Besides, I'd rather be Scottish than British personally, and I want to hear Scottish accents and the Scots language on TV!

2012 was a great year for video games, I'll list my favourites this year:

Train Simulator 2013 - I never thought I'd find a game like this to be fun, but here we are. I've been hearing a lot about the Train Simulator games all over the internet, and I even have a good few friends who have the game, and say they love it, so I thought I'll get this year's game, and see how it is, it's surprisingly addicting, however, I ended up spending over £50 on DLC just to get all of the Scottish trains and routes, and that was while the sale was on!

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD - It's a nice throw back to the classic Pro Skater games, and even though I have them on practically every system they were released on, I still
enjoyed HD, mostly for it's havok physics bails, in 60+ FPS!

Back to the Future: The Game - I know what youse are thinking "Wasn't the game released in 2011?!", Yeah, the downloadable episodes were, but I get physical copies, and the physical copy, which comes with all the episodes, came out in early 2012, so it counts! These games live up to the TellTale name in being absolutely amazing! Well, that and the episode actually came out on time *cough*Sega*cough*, *cough*Valve*cough*

Sleeping Dogs - Everyone has been talking about it, and playing through it myself, it's no wonder, it's a GTA clone, that I think is better than GTA! It's set in a fictional Hong Kong, and you play as an Undercover cop, sounds awesome, right? Well it's better than it sounds, the game has a combat system, that actually works! I never thought beat-em-ups could ever make it into 3D and work, but Sleeping Dogs achieved it!

Also, 2 games came out for the Playstation 2 this year! FIFA 13 and PES 2013, they're the exact same as their previous year counterparts, but at least the PS2 got games, also, apparently Square Enix is coming out with a Final Fantasy expansion for the PS2 next year, sure, it's technically an expansion, but since the PS2 out of the box doesn't have a hard drive, it'll probably be standalone, so it counts! It'll be out early 2013, Only in Japan...

2012 was also a brilliant year for movies, I'll go as far as to say it's the best year for films ever! Many fantastic films came out this year, the new Muppets Movie, Men in Black 3, the Avengers, Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, Ted, all amazing films in their own right!

As for the music of 2012, all I have to say is: OPPA GANGNAM STYLE!

As for what I've been up to this year, it's been crazy for me, all sorts of things have happened to me.

I've started development on a new game, as Stated before, called Rossies 3D, which will be a first person shooter that will run on the Unity engine! I am working with fellow Rossi member, and this guys a nutter, so with him on board, the games humour is guaranteed to be intact! I am very exited about the game, and so are others I've told.

I've discovered a new language, it's known as Scots, and it turns out that I can understand this language perfectly without studying it or anything, and speak it quite well, most Scottish people can!
So esentially, I'm fluent in a second language, without putting in any effort to learn it, brilliant! My guess is that we learn it through neds and it being used as "slang", so like English, we learn it as we grow up, kind of making it a second first language, if that makes sense.

Knawin the Scots leid wioot tryin tae lear it is afwu braw! Nou Ah can pit aw o ma gemmes intae this leid! Ah'll e'en pit thaim intae Spainyie and Italian an aw!

If you understood that, then give yourself a pat on the back, you know another language!

Aside from them, and playing a bunch of awesome retro games, not much happened, just all kinds of little stuff happening.

  • Most Played Game Platform: PC
  • Most Played Game: The Sims 3 [PC] (According to my Raptr)
  • First Game Played in 2012: Motorstorm: Artic Edge [PS2]
  • Last Game Played in 2012: Bully: Scholarship Edition [PC]
  • Favourite Game of 2012: Sleeping Dogs [PC]
  • Favourite Film of 2012: Men in Black 3
  • Favourite Song of 2012: PSY - Gangnam Style
  • Favourite Gaming Moment of 2011: Me and Steven playing Robot Arena 2 for the first time (Not recorded on Blog)

Overall, I think 2012 was a great year, almost as good as the old days! I hope 2013 will be just as good!

Retro Diary - 31/12/12 - Last Retro Diary of the Year

I've been thinking of redoing the blog for a while, I kind of missed it, to be honest.

I will do them again, however, I won't be as active as before, 2013 is going to be a busy year for me, for starters, College is starting to take up a lot of my free time, having to do all sorts of assessments and test at home, (At least I can't say I have too much free time, I won't be looked down on as much, but not sure if that's a good or bad things, though.), and I'm working on my new game: Rossies 3D, which will be made using the Unity engine, so it will be easier (but it's just as genuine) to make games, so I hope I won't give up on this one...

Anyway, next year, you might be lucky to get more than 1 post in a month, but hey, being not very active is better than being inactive, right?

So without further delay, let's begin:

To sum up what happened between my last post and now, PC games, lots and lots of PC games! Most notably the Tony hawk games, which all have insane modding communities, making the PC a great platform for the Tony Hawk games.

I'll tell youse what I got for Christmas:

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland [PC]
The Orange Box [PC]
Train Simulator 2013 [PC]
Skateboard Tycoon 2003 [PC]
Snowboards Tycoon [PC]
Sonic 4: Episode 1 & 2 [PCDL]
Sonic Adventure 2 + Battle [PCDL]
StarFox Adventures [GC]
The Legend of Zelda: Ocerina of Time [N64]
Incredible Crisis [PS1]

A new PS2
and a bunch of Blu-Rays

May seem like a lot, but most of them didn't cost that much, so that kind of balances it out.

Train Simulator 2013 was easily the best game I got, it's brilliant, although it didn't come with any Scottish trains or routes, I had to pay about £50 worth of DLC to get them, and this them on a sale with 50% off, so usually, it would cost me about £100! The game is still fun though, speeding trains, derailing them, making them crash into things, it's good fun!

Sonic 4 is pretty good, but I can't help but think it's just a shoddy attempt to recreate the original games using 3D graphics, Generations is far better! in my opinion at least.

Sonic Adventure 2... It doesn't work, if Sega are going to be putting out 10+ year old games, they could at least make them work, they are lucky I didn't buy myself and that a Steam sale was on...

I only got Orange Box for the unlikely event that Valve goes bankrupt and you can't download their games anymore...

I've yet to try out the console games, but I look forward to once I get around to it.

As for the PS2, the one I had broke, it stopped reading discs, so I had to get a new one.

Did you know that the PS2 went through another redesign? Yeah, it did! They even made a new box for it, take a look:


I love how it's the same blue theme as the PS Vita and new PS3 and PSP boxes! It's clear Sony haven't forgotten about their good old PS2!

The PS2 itself went through a redesign as well, now the left of it is entirely piano black, and caught dust and fingerprints after 5 minutes! The only problems I had were that the power and eject buttons are now very small and hard to reach, and that it only came with an EU plug, it didn't even come with a converter! Luckily, I had one myself:


Looks alright, doesn't it? It works great, so all is good!

That same day, we were going to our grans for a Christmas dinner, so I brought the new PS2 along, seems only fitting, right?

We played a bit of Timesplitters, and that was about it... We spend most of the time chatting and watching Doctor Who, hopefully, we can have a proper week next year...

Well, that's all I have to say, see youse.... in my 2012 year review!