Dominik Diamonds are Forever - FIFA World Cup 2014

World Cup 2014 review

The “World Cup Fifa 2014, super-duper World Cup, FIFA” game is basically just FIFA 14, with slightly fuzzier graphics and a more arcade style control scheme. EA wants £40 (That’s 8 whole Bison Dollars) for it.



I’m tempted just to end the review there to be honest. I can’t think of anything else you’d really need to know about this game. If you’ve played FIFA 14, you’ll essentially already know exactly what to expect. If you haven’t played FIFA 14, you’ll find this reasonably easy to get in to. The difficulty has been toned down quite a bit, so newcomers and casual gamers (Who I think are the intended audience to be honest) should be able to adapt and thrive quite quickly.



One good thing about this game is that EA have bothered to shell out the money so that every team is represented here, along with real player names and kits. I decided to celebrate the occasion by playing as Wales, who are normally left out on the standard FIFA titles.



You can choose to dive straight into the World Cup or go through qualifying. If you’re playing as a lower ranked team, such as Wales, I suggest you play through the qualifying rounds. As qualifying progresses your player’s stats increase over the campaign, which is essential if you’re playing as a team with weaker players.



The amount of friendlies the game makes you play though is outrageous. If you pick a team in UEFA, the game starts in 2010 and you have to slog through about 7-8 friendlies before you even get to play a World Cup qualifier. I’ve not tried other confederations yet, so this might just be exclusive to UEFA. Still, it’s a massive pain. I’m all for an odd friendly here or there, but this is just overkill and feels very much like padding.



There are over 100 teams in the game for Crepes Sake! That’s plenty of replay time for idiots like me who want to win the whole shebang with Cook Islands “for a laugh”. I’m less inclined to do this now, as I just don’t have the time to wade through all the chuffing friendlies.



The gameplay for FIFA games is something where if you’re used to computer games, you’ll probably be able to pick them up without too much angst. The two button system is great for rookies who want a more simplistic game. People buying this game will either be FIFA fans already, like me, or probably lapsed FIFA fans who feel like playing the game during the tournament. There’s something here that will satisfy both groups to a certain extent, but the price is just too high in my opinion. This should be £20-£30 tops I think.



The gameplay been simplified and feels a bit, what’s the word I need here?, squashy in comparison to FIFA 14. It just feels at times like you’re riding a bike with stabilisers. The graphics also don’t seem to be as tight as on FIFA 14. It just looks a bit misty, a bit fuzzy and a bit less defined on this game for some reason.



And why can’t I change the captain during the match? Seriously EA, why can’t I do this? I mean, it seems like a pretty easy bit of programming that even you should be capable of.



Anyway, even though there isn’t anything technically wrong with this game as such, I just can’t recommend it because it just isn’t worth the £40 they want for it.



Rating - 0/10, because you shouldn't buy it and less because it's actually bad, if that makes any sense?

Garth Crooks is Angry!

Garth Crooks is angry.



He’s very angry indeed.



If he was any angrier, he’d have to change his name to Garth Angry and move to an Angry apartment in Angryville and open an Angry orangery where he sold Angry oranges to make Angry orange cordial.



What’s raised his ire I hear you ask?



Simple, he’s annoyed, and justifiably so I might add, about Everton’s 2-1 victory over Cardiff at the weekend.



Find below, Crooks disgruntled comments. You can literally picture steam coming out of his ears



"After he scored such a lucky winner for Everton against Cardiff I´m almost tempted, if you´ll excuse the pun, to call the right-back ´Shameless´ Coleman. Particularly for celebrating his goal, courtesy of a mis-kick, by doing a lap of honour around Goodison Park.



He maybe should have apologised to David Marshall for the fortunate strike that robbed Cardiff of a deserved point. But the Everton defender has been an extra attacking outlet for Roberto Martinez this season and was in the right place at the right time to net once again.



Did you know? The Irish full-back is the top scoring defender in the Premier League this season with six goals - as many as Fernando Torres and Michu combined."



Quite right too Mr Crooks!



How DARE a footballer celebrate scoring the winning goal in an important home game?



How DARE he be happy to have grabbed a goal that gives his team a valuable 3 points! A 3 points that increases enchances their chances of qualifying for Europe no less.



Seamus Coleman should be ashamed!



You know what though? I think Garth Angry is being too kind to Coleman, when he merely demands that he just apologise to the keeper.



An apology is simply not enough!



Seamus Coleman should be handed a 70 Thousand Pound fine and a 15 game ban. I think this is just about fair enough, and could even be considered lenient in the circumstances. And of course he should apologise, that goes without saying, but a simple hand shake in the dressing room isn’t going to cover it.



As soon as the match finished, Coleman should have got on the tannoy and issued a grovelling 10 minute song of apology, complete with intricate dance moves. He then should have made his way to the away exits and laid on the floor so the Cardiff fans could walk over him while they made their way to their coaches, uttering a sorrowful apology as they trampled over his nether regions.



Coleman should have then gone to Cardiff City centre and have himself tied to the Stocks, whereby the people of Cardiff could have thrown rotten fruit and vegetables at him. He then should have signed a legally binding contract that stated if he ever celebrated a goal in the Premier League again, he would immediately be shipped out to sea and fed to a swarm of Giant Squids.



Everton themselves should issue an apology of their own. They should also have been deducted 20 points and banned from European competition for at least 17 years, maybe even 19 years, just to make sure they learned their lesson and did their upmost to stop a player celebrating a last minute winner again.



This chain of events might go some small way to making the situation right, although to truly make this situation right would be nothing short of impossibility. Everton and Seamus Coleman have disgraced the footballing world this weekend. They have committed an atrocity. The city of Liverpool must wear this badge of shame for years to come.



Everton have committed the ultimate sin in football; being happy to win a match.



No wonder Garth is so angry







Read more: http://www.grandoldteam.com/news/fans-view/2014/mar/17/garth-crooks-is-angry#ixzz2xo2237Tl

This and That by Mikey Fitzgerald - Adrian Durham: Flying The Flag

Adrian Durham: Flying The Flag


On his Talk Sport “Drive Time” Show on the 12th December 2013, Adrian Durham once again brought his lack of knowledge and general arrogance to the fore. Durham's latest cause is getting Scottish sides barred from the Champions League.


On the show, with guest host Matt Holland looking on in almost stunned silence; Durham declared that current Scottish Champions Celtic should not be allowed in the Champions League because their league wasn’t competitive enough. He questioned what benefit it was to Celtic to have the highlight of their season being Barcelona coming for a Champions League contest. Durham essentially pulled down his trousers and took a massive dump over Celtic and Scottish football in general. Durham embarrassed the radio station he works for, the listeners who tune in and, most of all, his own country.


Sometimes we English like to question why the rest of the world looks at us with a mixture of contempt and derision. It’s for reasons like these. If it were up to people like Durham, the Champions League would be only for English, German and Spanish teams (With maybe the odd Belgian or Portuguese team chucked in). Durham has, on more than one occasion, taken a pop at Bundesliga and has constantly been on Celtic’s case for years. Durham is the living embodiment of the angry “Little Englander” who thinks that the Premier League is the only thing that matters and thinks people like the Scots, and the other “minnows” of Europe, should know their place and leave the sporting competitions to the “Big” countries.


This isn’t the first time that Durham as rallied against a smaller nation. Northern Ireland plays their home international matches at Windsor Park. Windsor Park is not a big stadium but it has been Northern Ireland’s home for a long time and the venue creates an excellent atmosphere on match nights. Durham spoke out a few years ago that he thought it was terrible and an insult that some of the world’s best players had to play in such an awful stadium. He went as far as to demand that Northern Ireland play all their home games in Dublin. The fact that Dublin wasn’t actually IN Northern Ireland didn’t seem to bother Durham of course. Who cares about a little thing like a country actually playing in their own country eh? Totti and Maldini might have to “lower” themselves to playing in a hostile environment and might be upset that the away locker room didn’t contain a vending machine and Foot Spa!


And, so what if Celtic’s highlight of the season is welcoming Barcelona to Celtic Park? Is Barcelona not the world’s best team? Do they not have some of the world’s best players on their books? Just because Celtic operate within a league they win with ease, it should not disqualify them from taking part in club footballs showpiece event. It’s not like they get straight in either. Celtic, and teams from other teams with poor coefficients, have to go through a grueling pre-qualifying campaign before they get into the last 32 of the Champions League. If Celtic truly don’t deserve to be in the group stages then the onus is on one of the other teams to remove them from the process. Celtic survived the qualification round and thus were in the group on merit. That’s really all there is to it.


Durham has been out for Celtic on more than one occasion, going as far to call them a “joke” club. You could argue that Durham is just trying to say controversial things so that people are offended and then call up to the show to complain, thus netting Talk Sport a tidy sum in the process. To be honest, I personally find either to be reprehensible.


Either Durham is an arrogant ignoramus or he’s a money grabbing carnie.


Neither one would cover him in too much glory. Talk Sport has done an excellent job the past few years cleansing itself of trouble makers like Durham and his elk. Maybe it’s time to take this horse out the back and put a bullet in it, before it limps on to tumble over more hurdles?


Rant over.

Team Fortress Review Update......and shizzle

Team Fortress is proving very hard to play at the moment, in that no one’s ever online when I am and it’s online only. I’ve managed to sink about an hour into it and I’ve found it to be reasonable fun. There are 9 different “classes” of character you can play as and I’ve spent most of it playing as The Sniper (Self explanator9 and the Grunt (A big gun wielding nutter)


I’ve not played it enough to actually review it and it’s likely that I won’t any time soon, so I’ll “hang fire” (hate that term) on it for now and will get back to it at a later date. In the meantime, I’ll think of another game to review or I’ll do another movie review (Iron Man 3 is sitting on the side of my TV giving me a disparaging look for the past month. Poor blighter still isn’t out of the plastic). I’ve also got The Hobbit and Blade Runner on Blu Ray and have yet to watch them.

Rest assured, there will be something soon. I could complain about the day I had yesterday for endless pages, but I’ve done too much maudlin stuff on here in the past and now I want to do funny stuff or righteously angry stuff, as they give me the most enjoyment. A good rant energises every section of my body, but it has to be entertaining for the reader, otherwise I might as well go and see a shrink, who is at least paid to hear me complain.

You come on here for escapism. If reading me on a suicidal tangent is your idea of escapism, then you probably live in Luxembourg. However, if reading me on an angry, yet hopefully humorous tangent, is more your bag then I’ll hopefully be able to provide that in spades.

So yeah, this officially is a “fluff” piece. I’ve written purely to confirm to everyone that I’m still here. It’s a place holder, an interim champion, a short snappy bit of nothing disguised as something. I’ve just wasted your time really. Not much to see here. Go and have a nice cake or something. Hva eit on me (Metaphorically of course, I ain’t buying you no cake)

Ta

Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 3: Portal

Portal is an absolutely cracking game. I know another internet goon like me espousing the brilliance of this game must be getting redundant for some, but it really has to be said. Portal is up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mr Muscle Window Cleaner in the “everyone universally bangs on about how bloody brilliant it is” category. But it is bloody brilliant. It really, really, REALLY is!

Portal is a game that challenges and enthrals in equal measure. Once I started playing it, I really couldn’t stop myself. I’d finish a puzzle and say “Well, that was fun, time for me to go feed/clothe/wash myself now before I become even more a shuffling wreck than I already am”. But then I’d walk into the next room “just to have a quick look at the next puzzle” and I’d ultimately then complete another three in a row. I just couldn’t help myself. It was like when I had a box of 12 Krispy Kreme donuts and ended up eating half the box because I still had coffee remaining and I just couldn’t stop dipping them.

To try and explain Portal won’t be entirely easy but I’ll give it a go. Basically, it’s a first person puzzler. You play an unnamed female character that wakes up in a strange testing centre. You quickly acquire a gun that can create Portals in the walls of the complex. You then have to use said Portal gun to try and escape the complex itself. Sometimes you won’t be able to access certain areas before you have pressed a button or moved a block onto a switch to ensure the escape door remains open. In situations like these, you will need more than just the Portal Gun itself to make it to safety.

I’ve personally never been hugely fond of games that included puzzles. The original Tomb Raider games on the Playstation would sometimes drive me to despair with some of their fiendish and downright annoying conundrums. However, Portal never frustrated me in that way. I mean, it did frustrate me, but in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle. It didn’t contain the agonising frustration that made me want to use Tomb Raider 2 as a £40 coaster.

The difficulty curve of the game was set up just right for me. It eased me in gradually and by the time the puzzles started getting harder, I felt prepared to tackle them. Considering that I’m hardly what you’d call “good” at video games, I can only conclude that Portal has been weighted perfectly in regards to difficulty. The game doesn’t outstay its welcome either. It clocks in at around 3 hours and is paced to complement the run time exceptionally well.

As far as negatives go, I don’t really have any. The game is perfect for what it needs to be. If it was released on it’s own for £40, it would not be worth the money as there just isn’t enough game to justify that price. As part of The Orange Box though, it’s a veritable steal. I almost feel guilty playing it, as if I’ve unfairly got one over on the people at Valve.

If you don’t like puzzlers, I’m still quite certain you will enjoy this. I really can’t find a complaint with it. It exceeds everything it should have been and happily embraces everything it can be.

Portal is just amazing and if you don’t like it, you can go fist a Yak

Rating – 10

Play it, love it, praise it and have a pint of sunshine while you’re at it.

Up next, we finish The Orange Box by reviewing "Team Fortress"

Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 2: Half Life 2

It’s easy to see why someone would be scared of the dark. You don’t know what’s in it for one. A lot of movies and video games are set in dark and dreary places, with the goal to give you the willies. However, it takes something special to make you scared in broad daylight and Half Life 2 is a game that does this with relish.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I’d only briefly played the first Half Life and I’d found it too difficult and a little bit too unsettling, so I didn’t get very far in it. However, recently I’d purchased the curiously titled “Orange Box”, which is a disc with 3 games on it. Half Life 2 is one of those games. I started playing it not sure what to expect and within 15 minutes I found myself running across a roof in broad daylight being fired at by a helicopter without so much as a sandwich to defend myself with.

Half Life 2 wastes no time in scaring the fudge out of you, that’s for sure. The game starts up with a haunting and frankly disturbing video where a man encourages you to “wake up and smell the ashes”. You then find yourself walking through a dystopian train station while armoured guards smack you with a baton just to pass the time. After negotiating the train station and the adjourning square outside, I found myself in an apartment block, which was in the midst of a raid from the Gestapo. I then had to hot foot it to the roof while being chased by enough members of the law to inadequately police a 1980’s football match and promptly fell to the pavement below to be met with a sickening symphony of cracking bone and splitting sinews.

“How come every Half Life game seemingly involves me falling to my death in the first 5 minutes” I wondered aloud. After a couple more head first dives to the inviting concrete below, I managed to blunder my way into another building to be rescued by the resistance.

And that’s how Half Life 2 starts. I’ll repeat, that’s how the bloody thing STARTS!!!

Half Life 2 is a first person shooter set in a world where everything has gone to crap. Weird monsters constantly attack you and when the monsters relent for a few moments, super powered super cops attack you instead. In fact, one of my bigger criticisms of the game would be how most of the enemies you fight are so ruddy strong. At first you’re armed with just a crowbar but eventually you can pick up a pistol and a machine gun to help you with your villain killing ways. However, the guns are so ineffectual sometimes you could be confused with mistaking the bullets they contain for being made out of cotton wool.

At one point I was ambushed by an angry cop at a train station. Being no more than 3 foot away from him, and armed with my pistol, I not unwisely pointed the gun right at his head and promptly unleashed some lead on him. 3 bullets later and he was starting to show signs of fatigue, 5 bullets later and he looked a bit peaky, 17 bullets later and he finally fell to floor dead. I exaggerate of course, but seriously, this cop seemed to have a skull made out of Plexiglas.

Another complaint I’d have is that on more than one occasion I found my character stuck on the scenery. At one point I actually had to restart the game as my character got hopelessly stuck on a corner, like a fly would get caught in a spiders web. I tried crouching, jumping and even tried shooting at the wall in futile hope that it would release me from its iron grip, but alas, it would not.

So that’s where you would deduct points from Half Life 2. That being said, those gripes would be minor on my part. The game is an atmospheric masterpiece. I found myself getting wrapped up in the action on more than one occasion. Sometimes a helicopter will come by looking for you. I leapt behind a crate and felt my heart start pounding as I snuck a glance round the side to see if the copter had left.

The game has a really nifty physics engine as well. Sometimes you will be called upon to stack crates on top of a see-saw so that you can access other areas of the game. It works quite well and I had a lot of fun trying to work out what I was supposed to do, without getting too frustrated.

Overall, the moody atmosphere and interesting puzzles make Half Life 2 a great game. Even with the slew of First Person Shooters that have found their way onto consoles, I would still say that Half Life 2 is one of the best you can get.

I’d like to discuss the story a bit but I honestly had no bloody idea what was going on and the game doesn’t really sit down and explain to you. That being said, the gameplay is good enough that I didn’t really care, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

I’ll give it 8 out of 10

Buy it

Coming next, Part 3 of the Orange Box Review, Portal!

Dominik Diamonds are Forever - The Orange Box, Part 1: Introduction

The Orange Box – Part One: Introduction

I’ve never been much of a PC Gamer. I still have tragic flashbacks to my youth when I used to attempt to play Actua Soccer 2 on my Windows 95 Packard Bell, which had a whole 16 MB (Count em!) of memory and a graphics card that would have barely challenged a ZX Spectrum.

I’ve just never really taken the time to properly invest in the sort of PC you actually need to play games with any reasonable joy. I did have “The Movies” on my old Windows XP PC as well as FIFA 07 and they ran reasonably well but they were also hardly games that required a lot of graphical power and processing speed.

As a result of my PC woes, I’ve been pretty much exclusively a console gamer through the years and thus I wasn’t a member of the cherished “PC First Person Shooter Appreciation Club” of the late 90’s and early 00’s. I did play Deus EX but that was on the PS2. My review of that is wildly simple, It's bloody good but I could never be bothered to finish it.

I briefly played the original Half Life on the PS2 and found it to be a strange and unnerving experience. From what I recall, it involved walking around some sort of super-secret science lab and the game wouldn’t let me do anything until I pushed a tray, possibly containing deserts and assorted liqueurs, into some energy thing, which promptly caused everything to hit the bloody fan and the entire world went to crap.

I then spent the better part of 15 minutes walking around with a crowbar, not knowing what the hell to do, before falling down an elevator shaft to my death. This being the days before you could hop on You Tube and watch a video walkthrough, I instead opted to switch the PS2 off and slink away with my tail firmly betwixt my legs.

When Half Life 2 came out on the PC I never played it and I didn’t care to play it when it was released on the X-Box 360 either as a part of the curiously titled “Orange Box”. For those who aren’t aware of said Clementine Holding Device, “The Orange Box” contains 3 games on one disc, these games being “Portal”, “Team Fortress” and “Half Life 2”. TOB was originally released way back in 2007 but I never bothered to check it out.

However, I recently watched the Zero Punctuation review of The Orange Box and it made me want to finally take the plunge and play it. So thus I purchased it and over the next 3 reviews I’ll be reviewing each game on the disc, starting with Half Life 2.

 

I've not got a specific timeline as to when all this will be done and I may do other blog posts in between. All I will say is that you can expect me to finish this review before North New Hampshire Wanderers win the World Soccer Super Bowl Series Challenge Cup (I'm hoping this will manage everyone's expectations to a satisfactory level)

So brace yourselves people, cos Mike’s going to be playing some games, and he’s probably going to do a really bad job at it! Huzzah!