This morning I received an email from Microsoft Xbox.

“As part of our compliance program for the UK Online Safety Act and our ongoing investments in tools and technologies that help ensure age-appropriate experiences, we need you to verify your age so you can continue enjoying social features on Xbox.”

This amused me a lot, since apart from December when I dusted off and used my old Xbox after the winter storms blew up my PS4. my Xbox has been collecting dust for over a decade. The account itself is old enough in the UK to go to the pub and get pissed, since it is over 20 years old.

I believe if I was actually under age, I would either need a time machine, or a past life to be able to create the account many years before I was born.  Twitter had the right idea by saying anyone who has an account older than X (see what I did there) number of years is obviously old enought.

Some of the things in the UK my account is old enough to do :-

• Buy Alcohol (18 or 21 depending where in the UK)
• Buy Fireworks (18)
• Have Botox (18)
• Buy offensive weapons (18 previously you could only get none offensive weapons)
• Get married (18)
• Join the army (16)
• Drive a car (17)

Some of the things in the UK my account is NOT old enough to do :-

• Avoid age verification

Other then three days of no electricity, Storm Darragh left another nasty side affect. You see, when the power blew the neutral cable into the house was being touched by the live wire, which caused electricity to flow the wrong way through the house circuits.

It was a weird situation. I had no electricity since the cable had melted, so no electricity, all the trips were in the off position, as were the light switches. But even so, some of the lights in the house would flicker on and off as the electricity came up the neutral wires (You can see a photo of the damage and read more information HERE.)

After the three days power was restored, then I had to check all devices to make sure nothing had dies due to the power. The people who came to repair and test the circuit said any damaged items would be repaired or replaced (Although  I still have to see proof of this). Luckily I did not suffer too bad. One of the CCTV’s blew its power supply, My Internet Router blew, and my PS4’s insides died.

So during the holidays over Christmas I was without a gaming system, so out of boredom I powered up my old Xbox 360. I think it has been over a decade since I last booted up the old XBOX.

WOW. was that a blast from the past, seeing my  families old avatars, and friends list, It really brought back many memories of the late night online game sessions. So I have been reliving old favourite games, and mostly cursing at the poor graphics and slow speed.

I finally got around to getting Hogwarts Legacy, the open world Harry Potter game.

“Hogwarts Legacy is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games under its Portkey Games label. The game is part of the Wizarding World franchise, taking place a century prior to the events chronicled in the Harry Potter novels.”

I read all the books when they first came out, and I have seen all the films (as most people have) so I always intended to get the game and fly around using the killing cure on everyone I meet. Alas I have not been able to kill or curse any of the other students or professors yet, And while I knew spells that can blow up Trolls, I can not even break a padlock… Yet!

I say yet because I have not been playing for that long, I have yet to unlock most the spells and other fun stuff. Who knows what the game will bring.

Since the game is set in Hogwarts, there are the four houses and you will get sorted into one of them at the beginning. Apparently each house also gets a special house quest. And reading the reviews Hufflepuff has the best house quest. So I really had to think about which house to pick. I then remembered I can replay the game, so I could do 4 run-throughs to cover each of the houses, and make my own four person Hogwarts group. 

For my first go, I decided to play as myself. And while many people would assume I am Slytherin, and I can not blame them. While I am cunning, resourceful, evil and sneaky enough to be placed into that house, I am not so much Ambitious, which is the main character trait of a Slytherin. 

I am playing as the house, I assume I would get sorted into.  Ravenclaw.

Ravenclaw valued intelligence, knowledge, curiosity, creativity and wit. Its emblematic animal was the eagle, its representative gemstone was sapphires, and its colours were blue and bronze

There was a time, many moons ago (That’s 2010/2011 for those of you who are on decimal digital time) when PlanetPete, CampyPhil, MIAdave and myself along with the occasional extra would often play as a group on various XBox multiplayer games. Over time the group dwindled in size, the times we played grew less and less, due to new Kids, Job changes, work commitments, getting addicted to triathlons, etc. basically life itself got in the way.

Time went by, The four worlds formed again and yet again, As endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven, The moistures of the Earth, And the powers of the Sun and the Moon. All worked upon a certain rock – old as Creation, And it magically became fertile. That first egg was named Thought, Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, Said, ‘With our thoughts we make the world.’... But that’s a different story.

Time did pass.

We now arrive at yesterday, (Let’s sit and rest for a while. It has been a long journey of years to get from the start of this post to this point).

Yesterday during a Skype IM chat with PlanetPete about the TV shows, Dominion & Constantine he asked that immortal question “Games night?” Which you have to admit is a good suggestion for winding down after a Monday in the office.

9:30PM We were both online, in a XBox party chat and ready to re-live old times.

Game 1: Batman Arkham Origins

Well, this did not go so well. We both started the game, created a private match, joined and spent a fair while trying to work out how to start the match. We tried a couple of game modes, still no luck! It was about this time the small print of “Multiplayer 3-8 players” was spotted. We were 1 person short.

Game 2: Tombraider

This had a slight bumpy start.

*XBox Chat*

GGN: “There are two discs”

PP: “Which one is it?”

GGN: “I’m putting in disc 1” *DISCONNECT*

*SMS*

GGN: “updates!!!!“

PP: “It’s disc 2”

GGN: “typical”

Once we (and by we I mean me) got online and running off the correct disc, things got better. We were soon running about lost on maps we had never seen, trying to remember how to play tombraider and do those useful things like climb, jump, not fall to your death. Eventually we got the hang of it, and started killing each other in a myriad of ways. After a lot of fun it was decided PlanetPete won after he managed to kill the whole level by pressing something inside a sub and the whole place starting to fall down around us.

Game 3: COD Modern Warfare 2

We ended the night on the game that used to get played the most back in the day, since it was the one game we all owned. Due to the countless times we’ve played this there were no issues in starting a match, or needing to remember how to play. Within seconds of the game starting we were madly running about stabbing each other, just using grenade launchers instead of guns, and general madness.

Half an hour into the game and we were back in 2011, we had lost the years in-between, nothing had changed PlanetPete still had his love of BIG BOOMS and explosions, and I was up high with scoped weapon.

I thought it was just nostalgia that made me travel back in time while running around trying to stab PlanetPete (At least it was only a virtual knife not a training knife). But this morning I received the IM.

PlanetPete: Last night i went back in time!!””!”!!!

Remember, Games with old friends can travel you back through time! But oddly you can not use that time travel to get the winning roll-over lottery ticket! Paradox’s People! PARADOX’S!

Until Next time, and in the Voice & words of Wil “Play more Games!”

You may recall a previous post where I was playing “Katawa Shoujo” after watching along with  Metadating, which was one of the original Geek & Sundry shows.

If you don’t remember it, or did not read it, or maybe suffer from long term memory issues due to a alleged incident with a baseball bat (Sorry Dave) then you can remind yourself about it by re-reading the original Katawa Shoujo post

TL;DR

Basically it’s a visual novel style game where your choices and options dictate which of five girls you end up with. And where the game taught me that sometimes the best match for you is not necessarily the first person to catch your eye?

The Replay:

I was still a little bit annoyed about not getting the girl I wanted, So I replayed the game and made different choices with my life to get a different story. And I may have done a little bit of research to make sure I got the outcome I wanted.

It’s not cheating. It’s putting in the effort to get to know the girl? Oh who am I trying to kid, I cheated at the beginning to make sure Act 2 was on the path I wanted.

Anyway, Play-through #2 got me the Girl I wanted based off first impressions instead of personalities (Take that Game mechanics).

And I am man enough to admit…

Gods the Girl I picked from first impressions was an annoying, annoying thing. By half way through Act #2 I did not just realise how much a mistake this was, but I actually hated the character. I longed for the parts of the narrative she was not in. I missed the girl form Play-through #1. Hell I missed any of the characters that were not the girl I picked.

I have to admit I am impressed, It is really looking like this simple free game knows which type of woman I am better suited to than I do myself.

It is an eye-opener.

Also it’s possible that I have really bad taste in women!

You can download the game Legally & For free from :- http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/download.php

I have been slowly trying to catch up on a backlog of Films, TV Programs & YouTube shows. To demonstrate just how bad the backlog is. I’m currently catching up on Metadating, which was one of the shows on the 1st year of Geek & Sundry back in 2012?. (I know right.) So Metadating did a 2 part show on “Katawa Shoujo”

Katawa Shoujo is a bishōjo-style visual novel by Four Leaf Studios that tells a story of a young man and five young women living with varying disabilities. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV-style text box running on the Ren’Py visual novel engine. The game is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND.

They had split it into two 2 hour episodes so that they could show the game and discuss it while playing part of the 1st act, then give everyone a chance to play the game themselves (Its a Free Cross-Platform Game) and then they could play some more and discuss it in the second episode. I started playing while watching the second episode, where I discovered if you really messed up your choices YOU CAN DIE!

Luckily, unlike one of Metadating’s Presenters I survived without dying.

Katawa Shoujo

So the game starts with a quick back-story to explain what is going on and why you are now in a new special school. After this you are introduced to your new school and get to meet each of the main girls. You have to meet them all to make an informed choice right?

The Game/Story then progresses with you learning about the school, the people, etc.. Every so often you are given options, and what you pick influences the story, like those old “Make your own Adventure” books.

The Game is in 4 Acts.

• Act 1: Meet the Girls and get interested in one (If you fail you die)
• Act 2: Get to know your Chosen Girl and move from friendship onto Romance
• Act 3: Troubles and if you do not do well, A BAD ENDING
• Act 4: If you get to Act 4 you get a Good Ending.
• Also you can die at any time you totally mess up.

Playing Act 1,

I had picked out the girl I wanted and was playing to get her. She was a shy little thing, and at one point I thought I had won. She had stayed behind after class because I was finishing up some homework (I did mention it was set in a school). Her best friend came looking for her, and after a whispered conversation left leaving the girl in the class. She kept looking at me, and seemed to be waiting for me to notice her and talk to her.

Real Life me went “YES. I got the path I wanted, come on notice what’s going on”

Character me did his homework, nodded at the girl and left!

This annoyed me as being male I generally need to be hit with a baseball bat with the words “I like you” written on it to notice these things, and yet character me was more oblivious than real life me. I calmed myself down with a beer, and in spite I refused to share with character me.

It turns out, that making the choices I had, which in turn influenced the personality of the Character I was playing made me better suited for the personality of a different girl, rather the the one I had picked after quick first impressions. And the game had realised this. Who knew that the best match for you is not necessarily the first person to catch your eye?

This was too deep for both real life me and character me, and we had another beer.

Without any Spoilers. Act 2 went along fine, and I started thinking “Humm, OK my character could get along with this girl”. Act 3 was a bit touch and go, and I strongly suspect I almost ended up heading towards the BAD ending where we split up. But my overall brilliance let me slip into Act 4 and the Happy Ending…

Overall the story was interesting, and I have since seen the flowchart of the various ways the story can change based on your choices and am even more impressed with the writing. I am tempted to play the game again, with different answers to see just how much the path/story changes based on a single moments decision. (It’s the Multiverse people!)

You can download the game Legally & For free from :- http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/download.php

As mentioned in This Post We finally got Assassins Creed Brotherhood (Or ACB as it will be known for the rest of this post) working fine for us to play together, and we have had a few good games. Now there has always been the odd glitch, people doing the lag jump, or cries of “How did you get me, you were no where near?” And other slight but manageable glitches.

Only recently these glitches have got worse. Especially as we have noticed with PlanetPete. We think it affects him more because he has the Da Vinci DLC so has more characters, so when he plays his machine is kicking out more character types?

These glitches were expectational bad the last time we played. And I really hope they get these issues fixed for the final release in the Assassins Creed series. Let me give you a few examples.

You would see PlanetPete running and lock on with your hidden gun, you would get a clear shot locked directly onto his back, fire, and nothing.

You would be unable to lock on to press X (Kill) or B (stun)

If you did lock on, you would still be unable most the time to attack. At two points there was two of us trying to kill him while he was blinded by firecrackers and not moving, and neither of us could touch him.

The list of things like that is endless, to the point we wondered if he had some cheat on. That’s when we realised what he was seeing on his screen was different to us. So where we were all seeing his character, was no longer where he was standing, hence we could not kill him.

I love the AC games, but they really need to sort out their multiplayer for the next one. And not having to wait fifteen minutes to find/start a game would also be nice.

You may remember Assassins Creed from such posts as Assassins Creed Brotherhood AKA You can’t Run but You can Hide! and Assassins Creed Brotherhood Connection Madness. If you do, then you will recall that we had been hit with the dreaded “the session is unreachable” issue that a LOT of people seem to be suffering from.

If you have not read the previous articles, or have no understanding of the mentioned issue I’ll provide a quick recap. *Wayne’s World recap music*

Me & PlanetPete can join a group and play together no problem, and CampyPhil & MIAdave can play together no problem. BUT if anyone tries to join the other group they get “the session is unreachable” So neither PlanetPete or Myself can play against the other two, and neither of them can play against us.

Now our original thought was that maybe it was an odd routing issue, with them being in a different part of the UK to us, Well luckily PlanetPete went to visit them and took his hard-drive with him. And with his hard drive plugged into MIADaves’s xbox he was able to join me, yet with MIADave’s hard drive plugged in “session is unreachable”

It makes no SENSE!!!!

Well PlanetPete recently purchased the Da Vinci DLC, and before installing it he deleted all the previous system updates and the downloaded Animus Project Update 2.0. He then bought and installed the Animus Project Update 3.0 (Da Vinci). After this we discovered that we could no longer play online together, but he could play with CampyPhil & MIADave.

SO. I deleted my DLC & updates. I then decided to work upwards in order. Animus Project Update 1.0, Animus Project Update 2.0, then started the game and let it do it’s own system updates. After this was complete I tested playing against CampyPhil and was able to play fine.

It seems to me that there was a conflict between DLC versions. PlanetPete & Myself downloaded ours a while before the other two. So there must have been a change at some point which causes a conflict. So if you are getting the dreaded “session is unreachable” while trying to play with friends, then delete all downloaded content from your XBOX Dashboard, and re download them.

Let us know if this solves your conflict.

A happy GreatGothNinja prowling the roofs of buildings hunting his pray with a concealed gun.

Modern Warfare2 (MW2) is the sixth instalment in the Call of Duty (COD) Series. And its a game I’ve been playing a bit of recently, since it is the lowest common denominator among the group of :- PlanetPete, CampyPhil, MIAdave, StabbyJason & Myself. And since we’ve been playing private matches a lot, I’ve been plying TDM online to unlock better weapons/perks.

Playing online I have noticed the voice channel is now mostly filled with insults, threats, and abuse (a lot more than it ever used to be). And its all aimed in the same direction. Against anyone staying in one spot  (Camping) or using sniper rifles, or scopes, thermal, claymores, or any tactic or action that is not just running around with a high unlocked gun and shooting (Run N’ Gun)

Now the main contention seems to be, that if you do anything other than Run N’ Gun you are 1)Cheating, 2)Not playing the Game correctly, 3)Scum, 4)A noob, 5)INSERT ANY DEROGATORY TERM, 6)Not worth playing with, 7)etc.  And you should just quit playing the game since your cheating is ruining it for everyone else. All this with more filth and swear words than I ever heard working on building sites.

This abuse has got me thinking. If snipers, scopes, thermal, are cheating and are not to be used then why does the game have these weapons, accessories, & perks? Why in the default class list you are given is there a sniper? since you can not Run N’ Gun with a sniper rifle?

Also why is anyone not doing the Run N’ Gun wrong? the game is set up to handle multiple types of game play. Some people like running about and shooting when they see people mindlessly, where as other people prefer the more stealthy killing of snipers, knives, etc.  Why is either one wrong? the games Modern Warfare, and warfare has many ways?

So can we please just accept everyone plays games in different ways, and just get along, If you keep getting killed by a Camper when you run into one building, stop running in, try throwing a grenade, or run about another part of the map.

The one that gets me is I’ve seen some of these people who verbally abuse campers until they quit the game, hide in a corner and shoot people then a bit later run to a different corner and hide to shoot people, well is that not “Camping“?

So people, we are all gamers, lets learn to play nice together, and if it really bugs you people using the weapons, perks, & tactics the game providers, then maybe you should find a different FPS that does not have those weapons and go play there, and let those of us who don’t mind what tactics people use to be able to play the game without listening to the abuse.

Footnote:

I’m adding this out of fairness, I do like the sniper in COD, I like sneaky, stealthy, clever kills. I like using my brain, and I remember my ACF training, “see without being seen, kill without being killed“. But saying that, I have 1of5 classes set up as a sniper, the other 4 are run n’ gun classes, so I play both, and I don’t mind what other people do.

Hell, maybe we should start accusing those with huge HD TV’s as cheating as they can see better than those with small old TV’s?