the background noise

As you may know I temporarily lost my mind to insanity whilst purchasing my PS4 and in my moment of fleeting madness I found myself purchasing a PlayStation Vita as well. Presumably I was acting on some latent urge to own one but that's probably rationalising my thought process to an absurd degree, assuming of course there was a thought process involved and not a mindless impulse to own more stuff. After owning one for the past few weeks I think I can now form my thoughts about it into an easy to digest blog format. Here goes.

Done and done. Completed Killzone Shadow Fall last night and the final verdict? Well in the spirit of truth and honesty its not a bad game, its somewhere between okay and good,  often threatening to get great but then  rarely making good on its promise. Its absolutely, resolutely somewhere better than adequate.

Okay so maybe, just maybe, in an entirely contradictory yet typically expected way, Killzone Shadow Fall might be growing on me, might be, just a little. Ejecting out of my spaceship in the upper atmosphere and sky diving through the ruins of a dead planet I can appreciate its makers are trying to mix it up. It's not all boom, shoot, boom! Even on that front, I gotta appreciate the sound design in this game. When guns go off in Killzone it punctures the air with a resounding bang. Feels like you're blasting holes in reality itself. Granted there is still no story or characterisation to write home about, nothing to tie this medley of kick-ass moments together but it'll do until I'm done with it.

Ah all the beauty of creation... KILL KILL KILL IT IN THE FACE! Killzone , a series where the peace loving people of somewhere or other are besieged on all sides by the faceless glowing red-eyed hordes of the enemy. Yes its generic sci-fi war at its most indistinguishable from any one of the countless sci-fi wars fought in modern gaming. A blast filled exploda-fest that does little to capture the imagination.

AAARGH MY BRAIN! Relatively game-free day today so this evening I took a break from body slamming the undead to play some more Resogun , one of the introductory offerings on the PlayStation Plus service. A blistering light show still burned onto the surface of my eyeballs it manages the double trick of being a showcase for the new system as well as being an insane twitch-fest.

Absent-mindedly browsing the iPlayer on my PS4 I catch sight of what just might be the greatest movie ever made to go by its synopsis. When you describe your main character as a 'troubled cyborg cop' you've pretty much won the battle for my attention.

Not pictured: my limitless joy! Circa 12.11 last night I walked out of GAME with a bag packed to the brim with all forms of wholesome Sony goodness. Not having attended a launch before I wasn't sure what I expected beforehand but what I got was less the horror of midnight retail and more an orderly, sane process where I got my console in super quick time.

So there's this teaser site ticking away the day, hours and minutes to something almost very Fallout related. There is the collective hope that Fallout 4 is on the horizon. Will it? Can it? Be it? Having played this series since its first atmospheric outing into the future past I can say I am very happy at the prospect. Very few fictional worlds bring it together like this one does, a retro future 1950's America warped, twisted and annihilated by nuclear hellfire but still very much there when you wipe away the ashes. It's bleak, funny and demented and if there's more coming I will be very much doing my happy dance.

Not long to go now til I get my hands are on some shiny new next-gen gaming tech. Think I'm most looking forward to Battlefield 4 , mostly for the nuanced characterisation, the resonant plot and the many onion like layers of intrigue woven into the single player experience.

Well that got serious for a moment there yesterday, not the intention I had when I started typing and to be honest conflating a product launch with real world tragedy seems dubious at best and wrong-headed at worst. Still think there's something in there worth taking away as you venture elsewhere into the internets, somewhere in there there's a moral of the story I am neither well-equipped or eloquent enough to make.

Happy Playstation 4 Day! Of course it is but the North American rendition of this glorious moment. The main event that is the European launch materialising a mere two weeks from now. Only the laws of time and space seperate me from my pre-ordered console now.

Short update two: the sequel! Also known as why won't this game bloody end? Seriously some games just nail the sweet art of pacing perfectly, others just pad it out to the gills. Sat down to complete Dead Space 2 last night only to find it is about two to three chapters longer than it needs to be.