Monkey Island Special Edition

A remake of monkey island has always been a dream of mine. It was one of my favorite Amiga games, and the first point and click adventure that I completed.

I much as I like hearing of remakes, they commonly turn out nothing like the original. Thankfully this is not the case with monkey island. So for fans of the original what’s changed? Well the graphics have been redrawn for HD and voice acting has been added. As you can see from the screenshots below, the new graphics style fits in well with the game and inwould even consider it an improvement. Of course I like to take a glance at it in it’s orginal from time to time, and you can do this at any time by pressing the back button. The game then seemlessly blends between the two modes which is really cool.

So what about the voice acting? What can I say it’s great! The pirates sound like pirates and the main characters all sound as I would imagine except for gov marly. My favorite voices have to be that of the circus brothers hearing them argue in their accents is so funny. It’s the insult sword fighting though that benefits most from the addition of voice acting, with the tone of the insult reply changing depending on if they are right or not.

Of course to people not familiar with the game this is all giberish, which is a good thing as you will have the experiance of completing this great game ahead of you. An experiance that should not be missed. I don’t want to give much away to new comers but you play a wannabe pirate named guybrush who ends up having do save the day. The game is very humerous and has a well written story. Gameplay is your standard lint and click affair where you pick up, use, push/pull things etc to progress.

This article was written on my I phone

Remote Download Initiated

Will need some sort of remote device to turn my xbox on. My mum has trouble finding the power button.

Brought Battlefield 1943 – I hope someone turns my xbox on before I get home

I decided to test out the purchase online feature today that microsoft has for xbox live content. Being a fan of the battlefield series I want to get my hands on BF1943 (released today) as soon as possible. Now I purchased it along with worm Armageddon 2 while at work, the only problem is I need to get someone to turn my xbox on before I get home from work so they can download. I think it would be nice if there were a way to wake up the xbox when it receives a new download queue, but these games are pretty small so its not so much of a problem.

Will comment on the two games after playing them. Hopefully 1943 does screenshots like bad company did.

NXE Slowing Down Live

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I had trouble downloading the media update from live. It seems now though that live in general has slowed to a crawl. The marketplace is pretty much unusable, I tried both the new windows version and the 360 version. I managed to get the photo party software on my xbox, but that was only because it was on the spotlight menu. It seems once  a download gets going its fine, its just the marketplace navigation that is the problem.

Not sure if this is related but gears of war is so laggy its unplayable online at the moment. I would of thought the game servers would be seperate but it appears the nxe rollout could be affecting games too.

Windows Live Revamped

Did you like the old windows live interface? No me neither, and it was a nice surprise to see a completely new interface in the newly released live update. The “everything must be a shade of grey” look is gone, and replaced by a pleasant easy on the eyes experience.

There are still some issues with highlighting buttons with the mouse but hopefully these will be gone soon. Using the keyboards fine its just when you hover over a button with the mouse sometimes the button underneath it will be highlighted instead. Overall its a big improvement over the old look and I can forgive microsoft for the minor control issues it has.

1942 Joint Strike Review (Xbox Live Arcade)

I have been looking forward to this game for a while. Actually it was the first time I downloaded a trailer for a game on Live it interested me so much. The game is inspired by the old arcade 1940’s series and is pretty much the same type of game but with visual, sound and game play tweaks.