Retro Diary - 15/7/12 - "Are the biscuits retail or digital?"

Wednesday 11th July 2012 - Saturday 14th July 2012

I'm back from my holiday in Italy, and at first it was boring, because I had no access to my games, but after I got used to it, I started to enjoy it a little.

While I was there, I bought a few PC games, there's something I'm jealous at Italy for, over there, you actually get free full games with magazines, I got Metro 2033 with a Italian PC magazine, the full game, with the DVD case in everything, for about €5, and it works fine, it's the full game, and even though it's Italian, you can install the game in English, so I of course did that.

I'll be honest, though, the game is kind of boring, for one thing, it's one of those games that forces anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field and bloom effects, I don't like those effects, they blur out the game for me, but if you want the high quality models and textures, like I do, you're going to have them turned on as well, because you can't manually edit these, you can only have what they give you, which blows!
Also, the game has all the stereotypes that any modern FPS parody has, a needlessly complicated story, players with gritty voices and seem to have tourette syndrome, and you can only do actions when told to, the the environments and dull and colourless.
To be honest, I'll probably keep playing to get more of the story, because as needlessly complicated as it is, I'm kind of intrigued by it, and want to find out how it unfolds.

While I was at Italy, I also came across a GameStop, for those who haven't heard of it, it's an American store, but it also had it's branches in Europe, except, for some reason, Scotland.
Anyway, over there, for €10, you can get 3 PC games, and it pretty much applied to all of them, which was awesome, well, it was a 3 for 2 offer, but most games were about €5 each, so it was about the same.
So I got a good few games from there, most notably Mirrors Edge, which is a great game in my opinion, and also Call of Duty: Deluxe Edition, which has both the Game of The Year Edition of Call of Duty and the United Offence expansion pack, and a game, which my mum picked out for me, because I took to long (heheh....) and she picked out a Basketball game, which, was only released in Italy, it was called Fronte Del Basket 2, for what it was, it was a pretty good little game, it's not nearly as good as the NBA 2k games, but it's still alright for €5.

I also found a reason to get Impluse, which is one of Steams main competitors, which was, up until Origin, the biggest, because I got a game called "Demigod", which was made by Stardock, who also made Impulse, and it installed Impluse with it, and if you create an account, you can update the game and get DLC for it, similar to Steam games, so I made an Impulse account, I'm sure you can guess what it is...

When we got back to Glasgow, I was greeted with a package, which was my copy of Stranglehold for the PC! Games for Windows to be pedantic, it was the Game of Windows range, it was a US copy, but of course, PC has no region lock, so it installed and played just fine, or should I say, beautifully? It ran at 60+ fps at high settings, so it looked and played brilliantly!

I finally completed the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D! Although with the New Wolf mod attached, the ending doesn't work, so I just watched it on Youtube. I also completed Episode 3 of Doom, I just have episode 4 to do, and then it's on to Doom 2!

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Sunday 15th July 2012

It was Saturn week this week at gran's.

Me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Virtua Fighter 2.1, then after a while, Steven took over, and while we were playing, we were having a Digital vs. Retail debate, just as a chatter, it wasn't like an argument or anything, it was like normal chatting, we both agreed at the end that both had their ups and downs, which I can accept. We then ended up making fun of them, for example, when Giancarlo mentioned there are biscuits being put out, I asked, for a joke, "Are they Retail or Digital?", and when Steven took one of the game to have a look at it, I said for a joke "I don't want you're Digital Download hand all over my Physical games!".

Then me and Steven had a game of Daytona USA, which I accentually quit... we declared him the winner, as he was in front when it happened.

Then we had a race of Sega Touring Car Championship, we've pretty much made of an in-joke where while we play this game, we randomly slowly say/shout "Slooowdooooown!", because the game kept slowing down.

Then we had a quick game of Sega Rally Championship, before the game, I showed him the famous game over screen, then when we had our game, I unfortunately won... (The "You Win!" text is in red and "You Lost!" is in green, which implies that losing is good!)

Then we played the sequel of the game that redefined the fighting genre, Rise 2: Resurrection! Which in all fairness, is a good game, and he had fun playing it, well, at least I did.

Then we had a few games of Sonic 2 in the Sonic Jam collection.

Then me and Steven had a half match of Sega Worldwide Soccer '98, when the first half ended, Riccardo took over, I won that match.

Then me and Riccardo had a rematch, which he beat me 6-4!

Then me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Fighters Megamix.

After that, we left.

At home, me and Riccardo had a few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, 3 to be exact, all 3 matches I was Celtic and he was Chelsea, I won all 3 matches, with the scores 4-3, 9-6 and 9-3 in order, I written them down for the "Sliders Challenge" page.

Next week is PS1 week, time for some Vib Ribbon!