This all changed earlier this month when a friend was casually playing Fifa 11 and suggested I should try it so we could play online together. I immediately snubbed this idea as the game was not available on Steam. However after some thought I looked around at EA’s own digital download. Their asking price was £24.99. Too much for a game a I might not enjoy. I could order it from Amazon for around £18. I added it to EA shopping cart anyway and was presented with an opportunity to put in a voucher code. A quick Google later and I bagged myself 20% off, I then accidentally navigated away from my basket and was further presented with a “please don’t leave without buying we will give you a 10% off your purchase”.  Sure fine, OK, I thought but i already had 20% off so that will just override the 10% offer. Wrong. It deducted a further 10% off and I ended up paying £17.99 for the digital download. Not bad.

Not bad indeed, as it turns out I’m hooked on this. I absolutely love playing online teamplay. Damn you Mr Ellis.

Within Temptation – The Unforgiving

Much awesomeness. Can’t wait for the second season later this year.

Portal 2 – April 2011
This one was a no brainer. Love Valve. Love Portal. Love co-op.
Crysis 2 – March 25 2011
Really enjoyed most of the first one. I need a game to stretch the legs of my graphics card.
Duke Nukem Forever – May 6 2011
Need I say more? Apart from this one is Steamworks compliant so a retail copy will activate on Steam!

DC Universe Online has been taking up a considerable amount of my time recently. I’ve been on the look out for a new MMO over the last few years (my last being Star Wars: Galaxies) but nothing had caught my eye. It was only until a friend banged on to me how awesome DC Universe is that I decided to give it a go.

The game focuses more on “end game” content rather than endless levels to go through. The level cap is set at 30, once there however there is still a lot of fun to be had, especially with SOE promise of constant content updates (the first hitting this month).

Hero (Left) & Villain (Right)

I had more fun playing this then Black Ops, which says something, but at the same time this has to be one of the most awful games I’ve played. This is purely arcade sniping. This is the fun bit. I really enjoyed sneaking around, lining up my shots and never really got bored of it. What I didn’t enjoy was the fact that I ended up constantly walking into invisible walls. Combined with the fact that the AI seemingly went between plain right dumb to super spidey senses. The worst was the damn right laziness, badly designed, awfulness of the (few, thankfully) run and gun missions.

It a shame as this game had so much more potential.

Sirenia – The Enigma Of Life – January 21 2011

Within Temptation –  The Unforgiving – March 25 2011

Leaves’ Eyes – Meredead – April 2011

Delain –  ? – Spring 2011

Also in my tradition of not following what’s happening until well after it has happened I thought I better give ReVamp a listen too.

ReVamp – ReVamp

The band was started after the break up of the excellent After Forever. To quote the ever accurate Wikipedia:

ReVamp is the self-titled 2010 debut by Dutch symphonic metal act ReVamp. The album was released in Sweden and Finland on 26 May 2010, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Spain on the 28 May 2010, and the rest of Europe on 31 May 2010; it is set to be released in USA on 27 July 2010.
The album is the first release by lead singer Floor Jansen since her previous band After Forever’s self-titled album of 2007.

So I have finally got round to playing Bad Company 2 single player and have just finished it this afternoon. Previous to this I also recently played and completed Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor, both I thought were shit. In single player at least.

This makes a refreshing change to the stuck-on-railtrack approach that the previous two mentioned games took, most likely too Consolised. The destruction system really shines, and everything look very pretty in all of its Direct 11 glory.  The story was simple yet enjoyable, not taking itself too seriously, I actually managed to engaged with the characters of the squad. All in all I am glad I took another look at this game in single player after so quickly dismissing it upon first release (I’m sure being able to max the graphics helped a little! :p).