GTA V Business Content

Remember that game that came out... GTA V, yeah, its still churning out fresh new content for anyone who still loves the game.

Fresh off the heels of the Valentines day massacre pack comes the Business themed update. It brings three new cars Albany Alpha, Dinka Jester and Grotti Turismo R and the Vestra Plane for the skies. All will be available through the online stores.

There will also be some new weapons to bulk your armoury, theres a new heavy pistol and a new carbine that will, like previous add-ons be available at ammu-nation for no extra cost.

You will also be able to purchase some new threads to make your character look as corporate as possible, suits, bling and even some business-esc tattoos may tickle your fancy.

GTA V's developers Rockstar North should be applauded for their free content that they are offering to players. They are giving plenty to their community and more than making up for their botched launch of GTA Online.

Nintendo's Crazy Investors "Idea"

Seth Fischer, a hedge fund investor in Nintendo wrote to the president of Nintendo: "Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher."  He also wants to push Nintendo into the Mobile realms of gaming, not for the gamers though, for the profits he will see afterward!

If you read a previous a previous blog of mine you will know about my displeasure toward microtransactions. I feel like if, and its a big if, Nintendo follow through with this the gaming world would turn away from Nintendo, which seems rather sad. This may seem small to the casual gamer, however, this would open the flood gates to Nintendo charging you in other games, want to pay £1 in a Pokemon game to capture your favourite pokemon?..... Exactly!

Happily Nintendo have previously said they aren't keen on the venturing into the mobile industry and they aren't looking toward free to play games either. I hope Nintendo will stay strong against their investors on this one, I feel like these investors have been playing candy crush too much and think that its the perfect game blueprint. Nintendo know better than this... I think!

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Previous Blog: Battlefield 4 Challenges

Battlefield 4 Challenges!

Battlefield 4 is quickly becoming a very playable game, the developers have fixed most of the bugs and the frustrations of the release version are long behind us! Check out 5 fun challenges here: http://www.thebootube.com/battlefield-4-challenges/

Titanfall Challenges

Check out my Titanfall Challenge list here: http://www.thebootube.com/titanfall-challenges/

The beauty of SSX Soundtracks

What makes the SSX games work? Some say the whacky gameplay, some may say the artwork but everyone agrees the the soundtrack on these games is consistently fantastic. Taking the game that is very good and pushing it to being a classic. Its like when you actually go skiing or snowboarding, its great fun, but music makes everything better!



Everyone has the song that they remember each game for, the song that is in my head right now is Young Blood by Naked and Famous on the latest SSX. Its most likely how it started a game, its mixed in such a way that it gives you goose bumps as you are about to shoot down the mountain, well, thats what music does to you! I'm sure the most recent SSX would not be as good a game without the help of a fantastic soundtrack, and the best part about the music is that it remixes to you racing, and the accented "its tricky" will remind fans of the series of the ever popular SSX Tricky.




SSX 3 features a soundtrack of predominately remixed tracks, but when the original artists are the likes of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Fatboy Slim and Yellowcard you know that the developers have been doing their music research in the best way possible. The music isn't mainstream and thats what makes it memorable, you can place your finger on where you heard that certain song which sparks nostalgia! (check out my nostalgia here)



The point of this blog is basically to say that some games are remembered because their soundtracks make the game that much more memorable, everyone could identify the chilling sounds of Halo, yes its a very different piece of music, but it makes the game experience better. SSX has just done this in a much more high tempo way! And I love it!

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Previous Blog: Twitch on Xbox one news

Xbox One Twitch Broadcasting Coming with Next Update!

Xbox One's March Update will bring more than just functionality extras! Twitch Broadcasting will be going live aswell, enabling users to live stream gameplay to Twitch.tv. This has been a long time coming as the PS4 had this function since launch.
Xbox plan on giving a better experience for twitch users as the PS4's version was described as "too limiting" by Xbox marketing lead Yusuf Mehdi and Microsoft wanted to get their twitch app right. Twitch is a highly popular broadcasting service that has been demanded by enthusiasts, hopefully Microsoft will deliver. 
Expected to be released ahead of March 11th

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Previous Blog: Taking it back to SSX                                                           Next Blog: SSX Soundtrack

Taking it back to the Old School SSX Style

I dusted off a classic game a couple of days ago after getting nostalgic about it. Talking to Alice and Robyn about their SSX experiences and I was surprised by the knowledge they had of the series! Ok so the main topic was around SSX Tricky, but that game isn't backwards compatible for an xbox 360 :( SSX 3 was still right up there with Tricky so I thought I'd play it!

First things first, it doesn't look as bad as I was expecting. Considering I was playing this on a 37  inch screen it didn't seem stretched, it was slightly blurry, but only in that 11 year old game type of way!

Now for anyone who has never played an SSX game, firstly, Shame on you, secondly, its a highly unrealistic snowboarding game where you get a ridiculous amount of air, flip and spin an unbelievable amount of times, whilst taking the board away from your feet and doing some funky skateboard-esc tricks. Its a very unique game, where Amped and Shaun White games went down a slightly more realistic road (they are still a touch mad but they are games!) SSX went to the Xtreme!

To be fair, SSX took the right route on this, its unique and I love playing the game because its mad! The tracks also make it crazy! Racing through a city of tight turns, then jumping over a 50ft building is awesome! Learning the best routes and finding the secret routes gives the games replay value! If you haven't played an SSX before I highly recommend buying SSX3 or SSX Tricky (if you have a ps2). These games are amazing, the A.I. can challenge you if you haven't mastered the game, the tracks give you endless fun, you can challenge yourself to get higher scores, the possibilities are endless.

The reason I'm not recomending the most recent SSX is not because its not good, it just lacks the crazy tracks from the previous games!

Go and get an SSX game and get playing, hopefully I should have a Lets play with Alice soon too!

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Previous Blog: DLC Discussion

DLC is it always worth it? (singleplayer focus)

Downloadable content has fast become the norm for most developers to bring to their games, in some cases this is great, bringing whole new worlds to a game that would previously be left to dust. In other cases, the DLC seems to bring limited extra content.

Borderlands 2 had one the the best DLC offers for the price, a season pass costing £40 got you 5 extra stories which were based in completely new areas! Each campaign was unique and bought extra items to the game aswell! The gameplay of each DLC was around 5 hours each of main missions and around 3 hours each for side missions. So for $40 you get around 40 hours of gameplay, theres a lot of bang for your buck here




Some DLC seems pointless however, The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion offered an extremely pointless DLC of horse armour... why on earth would anyone want this!? Paying £1.50 for something purely aesthetic seems a bit pointless, and really didn't change the gameplay in anyvway! Pointless may be an understatement here!






Some of the more pointless DLC comes from racing games, paying a lot of money for new cars seems impractical considering that the big games Forza and Gran Turismo come with more cars than you know what to do with! I agree, some cars are so special that you cant help but feel that playing a game will be as close as you will get to driving it! Most of the cars though... not worth spending money on.




DLC Quest is a game that makes fun of Developers using DLC as a way to make money out of releasing their games early, in some ways it makes a really good point of some content which may be made out as "essential" but in reality is pointless. It also highlights the games that need a day one patch for it to be playable. *cough* skyrim *cough*



For DLC to be worth while for single player games it should follow the borderlands method of DLC, new stories, new worlds, more content. I had a blast playing through Borderlands 2 DLC, it was fresh and offered more game instead of claiming to be a new game. Some small extras can be worthwhile if they offer a changeup in gameplay, however some games offer too much extra content and most of it could easily be released with the full game.
DLC will never go away, it just needs to be relevant and new, adding more to the game making me want to play it more!

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Get to know me Tag

Robyn  Did a tag and I thought I'd do one too, copied straight from her... beauty blog... this may get a little strange.
Anyway, shes cool and deserves a check, shes a master of makeup... whatever that means!

1.Do you have a middle name?
Its John, which makes me a DJ which is just wonderful!

2.What was your favorite class in school?
Does lunch count... if it does than I pick that! If not then Design Technology was alright I guess

3.What's your favorite drink?
Coca Cola... or Red Bull... tough, did this mean alcohol?

4.What's your favorite song at the moment?
Not a clue, my buddy played Oasis over the microphone on Xbox live so Rock n' Roll Star is in my head.

5.What would you name your children?
Bob

6.Do you participate in any Sports?
I played paintball and did tournaments and stuff in that, pretty cool when everyones shooting 11 balls a second at eachother! Do Fifa or Madden count too?

7.What's your favorite book?
Books... Old bear was good, lots of pictures!

8.What's your favorite colour?
PINK!

9.What's your favorite animal?
Dogs are cool!

10.What's your favorite perfume?
Urm... My girlfriend ,Alice wears some perfume... so I choose hers!

11.What's your favorite holiday?
Christmas with the family!

12.Have you graduated from High school?
Yes. Miracles do happen

13.Have you been out of the country?
Been to Florida 3 times, Portugal a couple of times, France many times, Switzerland once and Monoco for the Grand Prix last year!

14.Do you speak any other languages?
Spanish a bit. Hola

15.Do you have any siblings?
Older bro and sis, I'm the young gun!

16.What's your favorite shop?
Does loot crate count? They are awesome

17.What's your favourite restaurant?
Viva Brazil, an all you can eat steakhouse in Liverpool! It is top

18.Do you like school?
I like home time and friends.

19.Who are some of your favourite Youtubers?
Roosterteeth are my most watched, I also watch NerdCubed, his editing is great and extremely funnny

20.Whats your favorite Movie?
Cars!

21.What are some of your favorite TV shows?
Breaking Bad and Walking Dead right now. I also love a bit of Simpsons and family guy. Ok I also watch some of the old Pokemon now and again!

22.PC or Mac?
PC, gaming is easier

23.What phone do you have?
I need a new phone, my Samsung galazy S2 is showing its age horribly!

24.How tall are you?
Tall enough

25. Any pets?
A beauty of a golden Minature Labradoodle named Pebbles or Pebsy or Pebs or Pebsysaurus
depending on what shes doing

That was fun, your move internet! (try it and post the link)

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Previous Blog: Standby for Titanfall                                                            Next Blog: DLC Discussion

Standby for Titanfall

The Titanfall beta... Man that was a blast! I've never seen so many people being in "need" of a code to allow them to play 6 days of a pre release. In fairness to Respawn Entertainment, they did an AMAZING job most of the time i forgot i was playing a beta! There were very few bugs reported, I only had one issue when my dead body floated in mid air! The servers held out very well, hopefully they will hold up for release, they said they pushed the servers as hard as possible!




I found that one of the best things of Titanfall was not the Titans, although they were extremely fun as well. I loved how well the Pilots moved around the map, transitioning from wallride to wallride felt natural and quite easy to master, it was also a way to get up high quickly and gain some simple kills on unsuspecting players and a quick way to rodeo a passing by titan!
My gameplay of Titanfall seemed different from most, I generally employ an impatient run and gun style in shooters, this seemed to work extremely well in Titanfall, with the wall running and building tops it allows for quick flanks and some highly unusual tactics.

Titans were a powerful ally to fight alongside, whether it be manned or on an auto setting, the easiest way to survive is to get in a titan or stay by your titan and use it as a distraction to rodeo enemys!
Respawn have done an extremely good job at balancing gameplay, titans are powerful, but clever tactics mean that any pilot can take one down, just don't try it alone! Weapons seemed balanced throughout, each having different situations suiting them, the only weapon i didn't touch was the sniper, the game play was too fast for me to want to use it.

The graphics don't really matter for Titanfall, the game is built on its gameplay! However the graphics are pretty good, everything looks clean and quite sharp, I never had draw distance issues, so all good on that front.



Give me Titanfall now is the best way to conclude this. Believe the hype, its as good as its expected to be, all thats needed is for the game to have plenty of varying maps to keep the game fresh then it will be perfect!

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Free to Play Games (and why they suck)

Free to play games on mobile phones are quickly becoming the most popular games worldwide. This could be viewed as a major breakthrough for the gaming industry, free games equals more gamers which could make more serious gamers and possibly game developers.

The most popular free to play game over the past year has been candy crush saga... ugh! Firstly I want to point out that the developers (king) stole the idea of this game from an individual developer who created his version "candyswipe" in 2010. Following on from this there has been a legal debate about trademarks and its all complicated because its legal (sigh). Basically the big company is pushing the little guy around.

http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10958290.html                                                                              
                                                                                            Candyswipe                    Candy Crush

Now for the main reason for this blog, free to play games are the greatest con in life, its branded on the app store/google play/app social as FREE. This seems great at first however it gets ruined by the game not exactly being playable if you don't buy extra lives. When I buy a game i would like to play it for as long as I like, when I like! Candy crush wants me to buy lives or harass my friends into playing it, NO, not cool! When your friends stop giving you loves theres an option to buy lives... on this game that was meant to be free... thanks king. $0.99 seems cheap, but when a game was meant to be free it seems steep.

Although i dislike candy crush, i have seen much worse for the free to play games, the best example for this is Dungeon Keeper which was a fantastic game for pc, when they brought it to phones however, they ruined it!

In dungeon keeper you must dig out areas to create an area for monsters to live, you play against an A.I. in a strategy type of game, so speed is needed. if you try to dig out a block it will make you wait 24 hours till its done... it was instant in the PC game. You can speed it up using gems, and when you can buy 500 it seems like a lot... but not so! you use about 250 gems to instantly finish the dig, so each block is £1.50... Aparently the most popular option is 2,500 gems for £13.99, which will get you a total of 10 blocks dug out... Its definitely not worth £13.

Theres a simple alternative to this, pay for a full game and PLEASE don't buy micro transactions, they are ruining the gaming industry as these are being placed into full games now too. You can buy the original PC game for around £7, it plays the same and will be more enjoyable and cheaper!

Rant OVER!
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What to expect from me!

I like writing about things that come to my noggin, facebook isnt really the best place to do that, twitter doesn't give you enough characters to write anything meaningful, blogging... Perfect!

This blog will mainly be about gaming, however it will include lots of nerdy extras about TV stuff and sexy merch. Hopefully you will enjoy the read as much as I enjoy taking the words out of my head and putting them into pixels on your screen!

New stuff should be daily! I hope!

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What happened to local multiplayer games!?

Do you remember the days when all games came with a local co-op mode? Some games even played better when you played with someone else, some of my favourite gaming moments have come from playing split-screen co-op with a friend!

I bought an Xbox One when it was released, I love it like bacon, its great, however! Theres an extreme lack of co-op games and games that are worth playing split-screen at all. The main exclusive co-op game was dead rising 3, which is a fantastic game however its co-op has been plagued by non stop issues with xbox ones party app (which sucks!)

I was never able to play dead rising with my friends because the party chat always caused problems. It frustrated me to the point of selling it, it wasn't worth keeping after two completions. I also felt like the story was a secondary point, not too much of an issue as the game play was epic

Spartan Ops was the biggest disappointment for co-op, with only 6 levels available to play with your favourite buddy, the co-op was almost a waste of time, finished in around 25 minutes. Not cool Vanguard games!

A game that really should have local multi-player is Peggle 2, 

Its game play is addictive, its so easy to play yet so difficult to master. It has an extensive library of levels and an on-line 4-player mode yet there is no way to play 1vs1 on the same Xbox... Why!? Have game developers forgotten their childhood gaming memories? Everyone played local multi-player games because there was no xbox live or PSN. This is the game that should have a local multi-player!

I must confirm though, that I love playing multi-player games online, playing shooter games against people who actually have a brain and will change tactics on the fly are much more fun than A.I. that you can walk up to give it a hug and then kill it. 

I want to play games like halo, dead space 3 and gears of war, games that use the 2nd character and link him or her into the story. Gears of war did this perfectly, I felt very emotional at a certain point on the third game.

I don't want developers to throw in split-screen multi-player as an afterthought, they need to start making games with the purpose to play with friends through a story, it makes it more gripping and the game becomes a lot more entertaining. Recently I've found myself playing single player modes just to get achievements and thats not how games should make me feel

 Online gaming has revolutionised the gaming industry, multi-player is great, however can we have games that are local co-op so we can bring people over to play games like we used to, PLEASE! Its a win win for both sides, your games would be better and we would enjoy them more!

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Previous Blog: Loot Crates                                                                                    Next Blog: What I do!

Loot crates are awesome!

On a random search around the internet for new exciting things I stumbled across a funky website called lootcrate! They specialise on sending their subscribers a small of cool nerdy items (loot), me being me decided I wanted in, so I subscribed thinking that £18 ($29) was pretty good.

I received my first crate yesterday! Its such a great feeling, I can only compare it to Christmas, theres 5 or 6 gifts that you have no idea what they are. I felt like a kid again! After opening it you can see why people enjoy this company so much, the surprise, the variation and the craziness of the gifts is fun and refreshing. This months came with a t-shirt aswell,

The T shirt is game related featuring well known characters like Donkey Kong, Bomberman, Master Chief, even Tetris is paid homage to.

Other items included this month where a dunny kidrobot, which is a collectable figurine. There are loads of them too, very well made and the art work is fantastic! There was a bow-tie which was funky and apparently exclusive to lootcrate, bow-ties aren't something I will wear often if at all though... I will probably hang it somewhere... There was a code to an online comic that I havn't looked at yet. Theres a catbug (I LOVE CATBUG!) badge, a sticker and possibly the greatest valentines day card ever, "I love you more than bacon," (you really love that person) much better than the normal valentines rubbish.

Loot crate is a quirky idea and a lot of fun monthly. The variation of items is perfect and the quality of service is great!

http://mbsy.co/lootcrate/1714203

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