A few months later, my PS3 had basically become a curvy blu ray player and I started asking myself “Why am I picking the 360 over this stunning console?”

Is it the controller? No, I’ve grown up with the Playstation controller and love its light weight and smooth analogue sticks. Is it the graphics? No, games like LittleBigPlanet and Killzone 2 prove that PS3 can walk all over the 360’s capabilities. Is it online? No, I barely play online any more. Is it the games selection? No. Most of my favourite games on the 360 have been multi-platform releases.

Last week I found the answer. Achievements.

Yes that’s right; this is yet another blog about achievements and the art of whoring them. What sort of gaming writer would I be without one?

On Thursday, I managed to cross the 20,000G threshold and since then, I have hardly touched my 360. Why? Because I can’t be arsed squeezing out enough achievement points to reach 25,000 yet. I always told myself that I would only buy games if I thought they looked good. I always stood my ground, shunning easy achievement duds such as Avatar and King Kong in favour of games that I thought would provide some fun or challenge. That is until I reached 18,000G at the beginning of the month. Once I reached that figure, something changed. I stopped giving a shit about gaming integrity and purchased Fight Night 3 (although admittedly it is now one of my favourite 360 games), Prey, Bionic Commando and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I spent close to £100 on games, purely to bump my gamerscore over 20,000. I can barely afford food this month because I wanted those sweet 2,000G so now I’m contemplating pawning my xbox for groceries.

From big budget affairs like the upcoming Bruckheimer produced Prince of Persia right down to the sort of low budget crapfests Uwe Boll has been known to create, game to film adaptations have always had a fair bit of stick, but why? Well in the case of Uwe Boll’s movies, it’s because he is a horrible writer and director, taking a film that shouldn’t even work as a movie and then writing a god awful script for it.

Don't worry Mr Boll, this won't hurt one bit. Honest

The problem with most game to film adaptations is that the game in question has a plot thinner than an anorexic cheerleader so no matter how faithful a rendition, there’s never enough  to keep the average movie goer interested. Take Mortal Kombat for instance. As much as I hate Paul WS Anderson for a) making so many inferior movies and b) for being the man who got to impregnate Mila Jovovich, his adaptation of Mortal Kombat was one of the closest translations I’ve seen. Including the complete lack of plot. Movie rating aggregate site rottentomatoes.com gave Mortal Kombat 24%, with comments such as;

Cheesy with no nutrients. But hey, anything’s better than Street Fighter.
Widgett Walls
Needcoffee.com

Like watching a lot of sweaty fist fights while trapped in the world’s loudest night club.
Scott Weinberg
eFilmCritic.com

Likely to satisfy only the core audience already hooked on video and arcade games, and even that’s not a sure thing
Richard Harrington
Washington Post

Why?!

Yet everyone I know who loved the games thought the film was a brilliant translation, so what do you do with a computer game that’s lacking a story worthy of the silver screen? Add your own spin surely. Wrong. Again, Paul Anderson is my target but this time with his Resident Evil series. The first film fit very loosely into the canon of the games, set in the infamous Spencer Mansion and introducing a new character to the series; Alice. On the whole, reviewers and fans alike gave the film a lukewarm response, some saying that the overall feel of the film was very true to the games while others thought the addition of Alice ruined the experience. Despite the lack of enthusiasm, the film raked in £8.72 million in its opening weekend and Anderson was allowed to make a sequel. This time, not only was he content with ruining the overall feel of the game, he actually decided to re-tell Resident Evil 3 by adding Jill Valentine, Carlos Olivera and Nemesis into Alice’s story arc. With disastrous results. Resident Evil: Apocalypse got a poor reception all round, but still it managed to pull a higher box office figure of £11.33 million in it’s opening weekend. As a result, Anderson was allowed to make his third (but unfortunately not final) Resident Evil Film, subtitled Extinction. This time, not only was Anderson content to piss all over the story of two more Resident Evil characters (Albert Wesker and Claire Redfield), Anderson also decides that he’s going to set the film in Las Vegas, a short time after the virus has spread worldwide, killing almost everyone. Extinction received pretty much the same reviews as Apocalypse but by this point most fans of the games had just given up hope for a decent remake.

Even a soaking wet Mila Jovovich can't save your movies Paul

The problem is, despite every game to film translation I’ve seen being average at best, I still find myself hooked. Disappointment after disappointment should’ve taught me not to bother watching any more but still I go ahead hoping that maybe one day, a game will have an excellent film based on it and with plenty of remakes coming in the next 3 years, surely one of them will be worth watching. I shall be keeping a close eye on the Cliff Bleszinski supervised Gears of War adaptation and Bioshock especially.

Here’s a list of all the game to films IMDB.com lists as being released in the next 3 years

I am the son of Sparda....In miniture plastic form!

This ArtFX Statue of Dante from Devil May Cry 3 takes pride of place on my DVD rack, greeting anyone who enters my room, although he does share the limelight with a stuffed toy cat but that’s not important. My bedroom is filled with what are essentially toys, renamed as collectibles or “articulated figurines” to help self respecting adults like myself and the thousands of others who purchase them feel less like they’re suffering from a severe case of Peter Pan syndrome. Ryu of Street Fighter fame is preparing a dragon punch from the top of my Playstation 3, Marcus Fenix turns a grunt’s head into chum on my bedside table, Solid Snake furtively looks around my TV, Mario karts his way across my stereo and a Bullet Bill sits on my bookshelf, furious at his lack of movement. But my love affair with all things computer game related doesn’t end there, with calendars, wall clocks, badges, wallets, bags, CD Cases and peripherals all over the place, my room looks more like an Aladdin’s Cave of gaming than an area for peaceful slumber.  Maybe some new pillow cases will help.

Oh the fun I had taking hundreds of stupid pictures for my Burnout Paradise license before finally settling on the “startled cat” look I currently have, then building an army of Chewnicorns in Viva Piñata: TiP by constantly scanning the same Piñata card.

There’s still so much I have to do try out with the camera, like taunting people I take down on Burnout Paradise with a photo of my cheesy grin. Scanning my handsome visage into Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 so people know it was me they shot down for the 100^th time. See how well my poker face holds out in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em and of course, get drunk with some friends and create awesome films in You’re in The Movies. I can see me and the Live Vision Cam being friends for a long time, even if it’s just to send stupid pictures to my friends over live.

The Xbox Live Vision Camera is currently bundled with You’re in The Movies for £14.99 in store at Gamestation or £14.98 online at game.co.uk (compared to the £35 – £40 for a separate Live Vision Cam in most stores)

April 21st, a date that zombie enthusiasts and co-op loving gamers alike have been waiting for. For those who haven’t played Left 4 Dead, the premise is simple. You play as one of four survivors (Zoey, Louis, Bill and Francis) of a zombie apocalypse, with the other characters being played by either AI, friends or random people online. There are 4 campaigns to choose from which are all unlocked from the start and feature the sort of locales you would expect to see in classic zombie flicks such as stand offs on a hospital roof, chases through cornfields and battles in a deserted airport. On paper, and indeed playing on your own, Left 4 Dead does get very repetitive but play through it with friends and L4D is endless fun.

And to think people used to worry about ants at their picnic...

Now onto the Downloadable Content. The first, and not so major, addition is the inclusion of the two previously omitted campaigns (Dead Air and Death Toll) in versus mode. While this addition adds a fair bit more variety to versus modes, it really should’ve been included on the disc. The best part of the DLC is an entirely new mode entitled “Survival”. This mode pits the four survivors against hordes of zombies in a constant stand-off at a variety of locations, including a new area that’s never been seen in L4D before. The pace is extremely hectic with only a few seconds between hordes to grab ammo or heal, special infected quickly build up until you find yourself facing two smokers, a hunter and a tank all wanting your brains for a midnight feast and on the whole matches only tend to last around 4 minutes. The emphasis on team play and communication in Survival mode is particularly strong compared to other rounds as you constantly have to watch each other’s backs for special infected. Overall the DLC is very good and as it’s free there’s no reason not to download it. The only thing I would’ve liked to see is achievement points for lasting certain amounts of time etc. but the lack of new achievements doesn’t detract in the slightest when you actually manage to last long enough to receive a medal.

5: Kiddy Kong
The baby Kong first introduced in Donkey Kong Country 3. But wait, what’s that? This baby has superhuman strength! Whoever would have thought to combine these two disparate ideas…Ok so Kiddy Kong may not be the most annoying character ever created but he is an unoriginal and boring one who almost feels thrown in to DKC3 just to fill a Diddy-less void.

4: Knuckles the Echidna
Again, Knuckles seems to be a character purely created to drag out the Sonic series. Tails was cute and fluffy with a friendly face and a helicopter tail. In short, the perfect partner for a quick blue hedgehog, but Knuckles just oozes contrived baditude, which is made worse by the fact that he’s a pink/red echidna.

3: Slippy Toad
The annoying, whiny toad from Starfox. In all honesty I dislike all of the characters in Starfox with the exception of Fox McCloud himself but Slippy is by far the most annoying with his high pitched winging and stupid face.

2: Quina Quen
Quina is a Qu. Whether that’s pronounced Kwuh or Cue I don’t know, but what I do know is that Quina is the most annoying character ever to appear in a Final Fantasy game. First of all s/he looks a mess, dressed like a cross between a clown and a chef with a stupidly long tongue constantly hanging from its gormless face. Secondly it actually makes Jar Jar Binks sound intelligent and thirdly it’s always trying to eat things. What makes it worse is Quina is actually quite a powerful character, which means having to put up with the annoying shit throughout the majority of the game.

1: Metapod
What the hell is the point of Metapod other than to infuriate you in the early stages of Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow? It’s move list usually contains “harden” and fuck all else, meaning fighting it with a low level pokemon gets progressively harder each round and trying to level it up means sending it out first then switching to a decent pokemon but leaving that one open to an attack. Even the fact that it evolves into Butterfree doesn’t justify how utterly rubbish Metapod is.

Let me start by saying that online gaming isn’t a new experience to me. I’ve played many a PC game online and had a lot of fun doing it but my first live experience, which involved me and a small group of either 12 year old boys or 30 year old eunochs who thought they were being clever by camping for the whole match and resorting to racism and rubbish insults whenever they were killed, was an entirely different beast. Now as you can imagine, this isn’t the best way to be introduced to a service you need to pay around £45 a year for, but this is the man who has over £100 worth of Rotostak caging for one dwarf hamster. The months that followed my plunge into the live community were strictly single player affairs, only leaving the comfort of one man’s mission to blow things up in interesting ways for the occasional COD4 battle with a few friends. That is until January. Cue dramatic music.

In January I was introduced to a site called ready-up.net through an advert for new staff writers. In January I joined the forum of said site. In January, dramatic pause, I discovered the fun side of Xbox Live gaming.

Question 1 – What is your most despised gaming ‘trope’ and why?
*runs off to wikipedia to find out what a trope is* I don’t know if this counts but I hate how games seem to tack on co-op modes, whether the game needs them or not. The why: because it just feels like a cheap gimmick to get people to play online. Failing that, the “big guns, big muscles, tiny brain” approach to most FPS characters is getting on my nerves because there’s absolutely no emotional attatchment to characters with a lower IQ than a bag of dead cats.

Question 2 – If you could be a character in any film who would you be and why?
I would be Cris Johnson from Next because a) it’s based on a Philip K Dick story b) it’s one of Nic Cage’s best roles c) the ability to see into the future would be awesome but if it’s only for a short space of time, you wouldn’t be expected to put on spangly leggings and become a “superhero”.

Question 3 – Which is better, jaffa cakes or hobnobs?
In an effort to avoid being stabbed for answering incorrectly, I’m going to say it depends on what mood I’m in.

Question 4 – Who would play you in a film of your life?
Apparently I look a little like Jake Gyllenhaal but I would like to see Keanu Reeves do it.

Question 5 – If you were to create a game of your own which genre would it be and what lessons would the story teach us?
Funnily enough, I have a huge stack of paper in my room full of game ideas I’ve scribbled down/drawn out etc. The most recent was the idea of making a FPS based around the animatrix episodes “The Second Renaissance” because it has such a great story to it. The story would be based around a kid growing up at the start of the trial of B1-66ER (the first robot to kill a human) and how he witnesses the abominations caused by both sides e.g. with the destruction and alienation of all robots, the machine city of 01 being refused a seat at the UN, the first strikes in the human-machine war, the machines torturing humans to find weaknesses, the creation of the 1st matrix program and the establishment of the very first Zion. The lessons learned would be very close to that of the animation so mainly focussed around the atrocities caused by both factions in war making them as bad as each other and how wrong segregating based on ethnicity/gender etc is

So as almost everyone is aware, Valentine’s Day has not only reared its ugly head but is close to swallowing us whole. So far it’s been a pain in the arse and here’s why. After much dispute with my girlfriend over the weekend as to whether we were going to buy gifts, I decided I would buy her Professor Layton and The Curious Village on DS because she’s been wanting it since Christmas and our local stores have only just started getting stock in.

Two days later
I’m walking around ASDA, perusing the games magazines for any interesting freebies when I see The Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2009. Now it’s worth mentioning here that the book was initially to be released a few days before my birthday in January but got pushed back a month for whatever reasons. So I pick up a copy, continue my shopping and then head home to tell everyone I know about my purchase. This is where my Valentine fiasco begins because the first response my girlfriend gives after telling her what I bought was “That’s fucked up my Valentine’s idea then”. Of course I offer to return the book but she must of sensed that I had no intention of doing so and decided to think of something else. I get my book plus a new present and my idea for her is still safe.

The next day (yesterday)
So I’m back in ASDA (I work near it so it’s convenient to pop in at lunch) and I’m on a mission; Pick up Professor Layton at any cost. I get to the games section and I’m in luck, they have a few copies left and it’s £5 cheaper than anywhere else in town so I buy it. As soon as I’m back at work I decide to tease my girlfriend a bit and tell her I got her Valentine’s present. She replies “please tell me it’s not Professor Layton, I bought it myself this morning”. Bollocks.

Today
So now, not only have I bought one of the few ideas for presents my girlfriend had, she’s gone and bought the present I actually got her. Now I’m not a romantic sort of guy (surprise, surprise), I’m not good at picking things like flowers or chocolates because I never know what would be best so I’m pretty screwed when it comes to finding a new present. Or am I? About 20 minutes ago, an idea struck me like a goat knocking a child over in a You’ve Been Framed clip. My girlfriend bought a 360 for her son at Christmas with the intention of playing it herself and one of the games she made a big fuss about was Dead Space. My predicament has been sorted, who needs flowers when you can blow body parts off of scary aliens?
As for Professor Layton, well let’s just say I love myself enough to justify keeping it.

10: Okami
It’s not often that a game lets you play as a spiritual wolf and even rarer that said spiritual wolf has a magic paintbrush. Not only does Okami Amaterasu look amazing, she also doesn’t speak. A trick that some game animals need to adopt [cough] Slippy Toad [cough].

9: Earthworm Jim
OK so without his robot suit Earthworm Jim would be pretty shit because he would in fact just be an ordinary earthworm, but with the suit he is the most bad ass worm you’re ever likely to encounter. He could kick a Weedle’s arse any day at least.

8: Tails
Granted he is usually found trailing behind Sonic or landing on spikes but sod it, he’s a fox with two tails. What’s not to love. Look at that face and tell me you don’t like him, I dare you.

7: Donkey Kong
The original pixilated primate makes an appearance at number 7, coming second in my list of favourite Kongs. As much as I like Donkey Kong, he lacks the personality that Diddy has but without Donkey Kong’s infamous battles with Jumpman we probably wouldn’t have had the two brilliant platform series that were Donkey Kong Country and Mario World.

6: Banjo
The long suffering partner of Kazooie’s annoying put downs and observations. The main reason I like Banjo so much is because he shares so many qualities with myself. Laziness, good manners and a pair of canary yellow shorts. I mean…um…..

5: Rachni Queen
The Rachni Queen from Mass Effect is one of the first creatures in a game that I have actually felt sorry for. Without ruining the plot too much for those who haven’t played it, the Rachni Queen has been locked up for experimental purposes, away from her “children” who need to hear her telepathic song to develop properly. You, as Shepard, have the choice to let her (and her entire species) live or die and my god is it a tough choice.

4: Jazz Jackrabbit
This choice is kind of on a par with Tails in terms of the logic behind it. I mean a rabbit with a gun? you’re onto a winner already, but mention that it was Cliff Bleszinski who co-created the game and you know it’s going to be brilliant.

3: Yoshi
Mario’s ever faithful dinosaur companion and highest rated reptile on my list. He’s cute, friendly and great to have a round if you have a turtle infestation but he does have an annoying tendency to run back and forward really fast if he gets hit by anything.

2: Diddy Kong
The best Kong in my eyes. As I said before, Donkey Kong was great but I’ve met greeters in ASDA who have a better personality than he did. Diddy Kong was the cool young Kong with his red cap and matching jacket. He is also a very loyal friend, launching a two monkey rescue operation to save his bestest buddy Donkey in Donkey Kong Country 2.

1: Fable 2′s dog
Here we are at number one, and it just goes to prove that dogs really are man’s best friend. Not only does he follow you obediently no matter how dark the cavern or how deep the water, but he also helps sniff out important treasure. I’ve played a lot of games and done a lot of things that would be considered at the very least, morally questionable. I’ve picked up a hooker, had my fun then killed her and took my money back, I’ve killed whimpering hostages without a moment’s thought and I’ve even tried to get the Grab Bag achievement on Turok but the only time I ever struck my dog in Fable 2, I immediately felt as guilty as a schoolboy caught during “private time”.