Looking Back...: Age of Empires

Having the summer off can bring times of severe boredom and having gotten bored of all the "new" games I own (despite not having played at least 5...) which led me to the conclusion that I play an older game that I haven't played in years. Looking through my PC collection, I realise that I had a good gaming upbringing with such hits as LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Rome: Total War (I was a violent child, it would seem). The game that caught my eye was Age of Empires. I have the first game and it's expansion pack in a single disc and it was my first PC game and quite possibly one of my first video games. :') Playing it brings a sense of nostalgia as I remember the day of just starting a death match and spending the whole game deforesting the trees on the map... Simple times.

From the perspective of my present self, I feel that the core game play is still top-notch and I am very sad that Ensemble Studios (the developer) went bankrupt; I love(d) 2 and 3 too.

Still; I have forests to chop down ;)

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Cool Youtube Users: PewDiePie

Unlike the other two Cool Youtube Users I've mentioned, I have only just become aware of PewDiePie's existance... And that was due to my fascination with Happy Wheels. In any case, I found PewDiePie and have become a "Bro" due to the clicking of the "subscribe" button and with that comes great responsibility to sit through about 30 minutes of videos from the youtuber... And I love it!

A bit of background info would not go amiss, perhaps; PewDiePie is a Swedish guy living in Italy and he releases gaming videos of him playing (mainly) horror games with other video games coming in to lighten the mood. Despite the use of horror video games, PewDiePie always makes me laugh in his videos with his amazing reactions to anything scary (escpecially Slender XD) and his constant stream of obsenities in his wacky accent that just makes the whole experience very enjoyable. It's not just that though; his gf plays in some videos with the comments full of "THEY MAKES SUCH A GREAT COUPLE <3" etc. and they do seem to feed off each other (in the comedy sense)

As mentioned before, he has played a horror game called Slender about 10 times over all in 5/6 videos... The link below is for his first Slender video and it's the one that got me hooked on the Swedish youtuber... Tread carefully :P

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZMBG4Pn3Sg&feature=relmfu

BF2

About 6 months ago I bought BF2 after thoroughly enjoying BF: Bad Company but I didn't really play it that much; just completing the campaign and getting to about level 5 in multi-player. After a bit of stressful week, I decided that a release would be good in the form of BF2. The reason for this is that it fuels adrenaline rushes that I hardly experience and it feels so good to "kill" an @$$&**£ that has been sniping me for the last 15 minutes. The result is that I'm quite addicted to it with several hours everyday being dedicated to being awesome at the Engineer class or trying to level up the other classes. Either way, I usually have a lot of fun playing and may even get BF3 at some point in the future... I am really behind the times. xD

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Wow...

Yep, it's been quite a while. No excuses for it either... I just didn't feel like writing as it turns out. Lots has happened in that that time too; I've mined diamonds in Minecraft, been shredding guitar on Guitar Hero III etc. but the most exciting thing has been the introduction of Skyrim's new expansion pack/DLC... Dawnguard. Set in the normal world but with a whole host of new things to do/fight/collect/use, it really has added several 10s of hours to the game. At the moment my character has levelled up on the Vampire Perk tree and has several of the perks available that allow it to use daemonic powers that can suck the very soul out of enemies... NICE. It's just added something new and fresh and it was well worth the 1600 MSP.

If you have Skyrim, have played it to the brink of exhaustion and thought that it was time to put it away for a few weeks/months/years... well, you'd be wrong. :P

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Ignoring Past Excuses

As the title suggests, I have ignored the rule of not buying and playing Minecraft and I now play it often... and it's great! Really, really good and I can't believe how good it is... The way that the map you play on is randomly generated (mine's called "Brave New World"), the fact that you can do anything you want with no constraints and that your friends can come into your world and help you build that amazing skyscraper you had plans to build or you could go into their world and blow their house up by inviting some creepers to stay ;)

So far, I have built a mine-shack that is next to a mine I have dug with the finding of iron, coal, gold and redstone being one of the best experiences in gaming. Near to this is my main house in the middle of a body of water with a bridge of sand joining from all directions at the front of the house... and I'm proud of it! That's why Minecraft is so great; it takes the idea of crafting and if you put the effort in, you can create some truly amazing pieces of art/architecture.

I must go, "Brave New World" calls me.

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Sorry

I haven't been doing this blog for about a week now thanks to exams :( and just generally chilling when I'm not. The main news is that Minecraft comes out on Xbox Live this week and it looks awesome!! I've never played Minecraft on the PC but my friends have and they're all addicted so I can't wait. Plus, there's a lot of Internet culture surrounding the game with Newgrounds, YouTube and Reddit full of Minecraft videos, articles and references... many of which I don't understand but I hope to soon!

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Cool Youtube Users: freddiew

As you probably know, I enjoy playing video games and I like watching videos on YouTube to do with videogames so when someone comes around who uses games as their inspiration for their videos then it just seems natural that I become a massive fan of theirs. Freddiew is one of those people with videos that include real life Mario Kart, GTA and a first person Mario Bros. video that I just love as they are based on video games but also very original, also.

The newest and my most favourite video is that of "Skyrim Badass" that is basically being an @$$ in Skyrim in real life. With the life-like graphics and the sword-fighting choreography, I love this video and I have watched it many times already...

...and it's not just because I love Skyrim!

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