Friday, September 3, 2010

Best Served Cold

Reading Joe Abercrombies Best Served Cold now and Im half way through it. This man will go down as one of the greats, his style of story telling is very gritty with a very dark humour behind it all. His First Law Trilogy was excellent yet I am finding this standalone book even more enjoyable. As in the trilogy, he puts together a crew of unsavoury characters consisting of criminals, murderers and psycos, pretty much a medieval Reservoir Dogs crew. Its excellent and is now in paper back.
I also have the highly anticipated Black Prism by Brent Weeks to read once this is finished as well. If its as good as his last trilogy then theres no chance of being dissapointed. Will let you know what I think of it when Im done.

Are reviewers right?

Im having a hard time agreeing with reviewers at the moment. I have just completed the Kane and Lynch 2 campaign on PC and found it to be an utterly brutal, gritty and raw shooter yet from the reviews I have read, this is meant to be an unplayable hash of a game. Yes there are a few bugs but put them aside and you have one of the most unique looking shooters around. I dont know what reviewers are looking for in a shooter, maybe they want everything to play like COD or some other personal favourite of theirs but Im tired of constant FPS and War releases. I like 3rd person and over the shoulder shooters. I like top down shooters and I like first person shooters. They dont all need to be made the same.
This was a fresh idea based in the slums and the high rises of Shanghai and I loved it.
I am also playing Mafia 2 on the PS3, another game that has been given a hard time by reviewers. Graphically it is stunning, the environments atmospheric and Im enjoying it hugely.
Its been a long time since I woke up in the morning thinking about a game I played the night before yet Mafia 2 had me thinking in the morning, wanting to pull a sicky so that I could spend the day sat in front of the tv with a huge back of twiglets and a Dr Pepper doing nothing else but playing the game.
The playability of the game is great, so once again, what do they want? A GTA clone? Its very story driven as is GTA, but maybe not as free playing. Im not a great GTA fan, completed GTA 3 and got bored with the rest. We are not all the same, everybody has unique tastes so always remember, read plenty of reviews as 1 review is just 1 mans opinion, nothing more.