MERCH!
Giant Bomb - a website about video games and the people that make them

Sweep's Blog: Loot Edition

by sweep

Hai team, hope you are all having a great eye-of-the-storm between Christmas and New Years. Mine so far has been pretty decent, with the exception of the mandatory Christmas family argument which hung over the entire affair like a rank hat. NEVERTHELESS, loot has been dropped by the festive mobs! Here's some shit that I got given under the pretence of religion: A New Sleeping Bag Before your mi...

Hai team, hope you are all having a great eye-of-the-storm between Christmas and New Years. Mine so far has been pretty decent, with the exception of the mandatory Christmas family argument which hung over the entire affair like a rank hat. NEVERTHELESS, loot has been dropped by the festive mobs! Here's some shit that I got given under the pretence of religion:
 

A New Sleeping Bag

Before your minds are sarcastically blown

 by just how mundane this gift sounds, please take a look at the following picture:
 This isn't actually a picture of me. You can still enjoy it though... Commence mind-blowing. It's a sleeping bag you can wear like a jumpsuit. It's snug as a freshly opened Tauntaun. Also it makes me look like a spaceman... More-so than usual.
 

Street Fighter 4 Arcade Stick

Get Hype!!(??)

 Get Hype!! The gem of my Christmas collection, this Standard Edition arcade stick has re-spawned my love for what I believe to be the best game of 2009. My Street Fighting skills have not been directly enhanced as a result, but the layout is such that I find it easier to remember which buttons do what, my capacity for combo's has been suitably enlarged. After all, I have only a little brain. 
I have also been scouring the giantbomb Street Fighter 4 boards for tips and I have to emphasise this site is fucking awesome. This Beginners Guide has been especially helpful, mad kudos to the kids behind that. The one difference the stick has made to my play-style is that playing as Ryu suddenly feels a lot more refreshing than my traditional Blanka. I have been reborn, so it would seem.
 

Assassins Creed 2

"It's me, Mario!"

 The first Assassins Creed game was a mixed barrel of fish. At times it flew high and gloriously bright, at times it trudged along the floor with the clumsiness of a one-legged elephant. 
  • Chunks of the game were reduced to what appeared to be a convoluted GPS
  • the story blurred into meaninglessness 
  • the characters became tiresome instead of endearing 
  • Jade Raymond 
But, enough of that! Assassins Creed 2 strides past the faults of it's predecessor - providing structure and meaningful progressions of the story that can be picked up and dropped off accordingly. The use of the Animus now feels clever as oppose to gimmicky, the gameplay mechanics have been ironed out and tweaked, the missions now require a subtle touch as oppose to blunt force. All this, whilst retaining wonderfully fluent free-running and exploration. Someone obviously sat down and thought long and hard about the direction of the franchise and they seem to have struck gold. In short, Assassins Creed 2 succeeds where the Assassins Creed 1 fails - in that it makes you feel like an assassin, instead of just a twat with a flashy knife...
 "PEACE OUT, YO!"

Unseen Academicals

A Diskworld Novel by Terry Pratchett

I'm a big fan of Pratchett's discworld books and, having read most of them, I requested this gift safe in the knowledge it would not fail to entertain. Not only does Unseen Academicals break from the formulaic approach of the other Diskworld books but it surpasses expectations by successfully tackling (aha) the diskworld spin on two fairly mainstream topics; Football and Orcs. The combination of the two, in the brilliantly realised world of Mr Pratchett, is a pleasure to behold. I was fairly impressed by the heightened sense of stylistic grace which adorned the pages of this book, the humours that repeatedly cropped up elsewhere have been dispatched and replaced with something that almost resembles literature. Jolly good, eh?
 
On top of all this I got an Electric Shaver thing which I have since used to trim my beard, for a given definition of "trim" and in-fact "beard". I now look younger. Considering i'm only 21 I can't decide if this is good or bad.
 
I have been thinking (it is a use to which I occasionally apply my pathetic brain) and I have some decent blogs lined up to tide us through the holiday season. I hope you are all having an amazing time doing fuck all, you probably deserve it. Have a fantastic New Years Eve.
 
Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep