Richard Hobbs

First, the trailer… (WARNING: This clip contains violence!)

NOTE: If you can’t see the video above, click here

So… this is arguably the most anticipated game “of the decade” according to some. For me it was perhaps the most anticipated game of the year, with Forza Motorsport 3 following closely in second place.

I plan on reviewing Forza Motorsport 3 at some point as well, by the way, but I want to make a Forza 3 video first. The making of this video is currently unfortunately hindered by a bug in the ffmpeg video encoding utility, which I’m hoping will be fixed at some point soon!

Anyway, back to Modern Warfare 2…

The game plays out a fictional war between Russia and the United States and is a direct follow-on from the “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” game. Take a look at Wikipedia for the full plot.

I should also mention, at this point, that the game contains a somewhat controversial scene (which players can decide to skip at the start of the game) in which Russian terrorists open fire in a Russian airport before shooting the under-cover American operative to make it look like American terrorists had opened fire, thereby causing a war to break out between Russia and the US. This has, not surprisingly, caused the game to be banned in Russia, despite the idea seeming to be making the Russian terrorists look like the bad guys, as opposed to the country of Russia itself. Lots of information can be found about this on the web, of course, if you wish to know more!

Now some actual gameplay (WARNING: This clip also contains violence!)…

NOTE: If you can’t see the video above, click here

As you can see, the storyline is relatively gruesome, as are the graphics, but as a game from the “first person shooter” genre, I think it’s pretty amazing! As a nice bedtime story, it’s obviously awful.

There are many things I like about this game, and a few I dislike. I like the graphics, the suspense, the feeling of panic that often sets in (within the realm of computer gaming, anyway!) and the overall realism. This game still obviously contains computer-generated graphics, but they look more realistic than any game I’ve seen in life so far. Much more movie-like than previous games, especially in 1080p.

I also like the multiplayer side of the game – it’s highly addictive. Each time you shoot one of the enemy, you gain “XP” points. As you gain XP, you level up and gain access to better weapons, skills, titles and ranks. There is obviously a need to keep playing because the more you play, the better you get, the bigger your weapons become and the more you can beat your opponent!

I dislike, however, how short the single-player campaign is – it took me 6-7 hours on my first play through and given that Half Life 2 kept me interested for 40 hours, and Fallout 3 for 75 hours, 6-7 hours is kinda short. I’m not expecting Fallout 3-type time scales with a game like Modern Warfare 2, but I still felt it was a little short for my liking.

One thing I have just begun to attempt is the single-player campaign again, but this time on “Veteran” difficulty instead of “Recruit”. This will almost certainly take a lot longer, but will also be much more difficult. I am about 30 minutes in so far and have already “died” 15 times or so. We’ll see how that goes over the coming weeks.

There is one area I’m undecided about – “Special Ops”. For some reason, I’m finding the Special Ops much harder than the single-player campaign. It’s not that they are not as enjoyable, they certainly are, but they do seem more difficult. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that they seem to be so much more difficult, that I’m struggling to achieve anything in any of them whatsoever! I’m sure I will improve though, as time goes on, especially with all the multiplayer time I’m putting in!

Overall, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is arguably my favourite game of the year, and possibly of the last 2-3 years. Perhaps it’s tied at the top spot with Forza Motorsport 3. I need to let the initial excitement wear off first, wait 6 months and see which of the two I’m still playing. Then I can decide which one is my favourite!

Well, that is just about everything I can think of saying about Modern Warfare 2, so I think I’ll end it there!

Before I get onto the situation with the Matchless, I’ll start with Fallout 3 (mentioned in my previous post) and my Xbox’s new blog!

First of all, Fallout 3… I’ve finished it!

In the end, it took just over 75 hours from start to finish and I’m glad to say I kept “good karma” throughout the game and instead of making my companion enter the highly radiated room in the last moments in order to activate the purifier, I went in myself, thereby paying the ultimate price for the greater good.

This is, of course, still a game, so no price was paid at all. I even borrowed the game from a friend, so literally no price has been paid at all!

I also stick with my previous statement that this is a game I strongly suggest you get hold of if you have the equipment necessary to play it!

So… onto the Xbox’s blog!

There is a site called 360voice.com which acts as a way for your Xbox 360 games console to write it’s own blog posts every day about your gaming habits, achievements gained and other aspects of gameplay.

In actual fact, the games console itself has nothing to do with writing the blog posts (as you may have worked out already!). 360voice.com simply looks at your stats each night and generates a blog post based on that information, which looks suspiciously like it was written by the Xbox itself. It’s kinda funny, and a novelty to have, so here’s a link if you want to have a read: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/tag/fishsponge

Right… now it’s time to talk about the Matchless…

After yesterday’s post, you will know that the piston rings were worn out on the motorbike and needed to be replaced, so this morning I took all the parts to Bill’s house where, after cleaning the valves, re-grinding the valve seats, putting the cylinder head back together, finding and manufacturing an alternative solution to the broken sleeve nut, removing the old piston rings and cleaning out the grooves we went to put in the new piston rings!

Upon putting in both parts of the oil control ring, we discovered it wasn’t rotating as freely as we’d like, so Bill took the ring off and we went to examine the groove a little closer.

It was at this point Bill informed me that the piston appeared to be cracked.

Upon hearing this news, I realised that this was something of a disaster. It’s good that we found it because a cracked piston could disintegrate in the cylinder, destroying large chunks of the engine in the process, but it’s bad that it was cracked because original pistons for a 1966 Matchless G3 350cc short stroke are phenominally hard to find.

I coincidentally inquired at the Spares Scheme while I was there the other day to see if they had any, and the answer was, not surprisingly, “no”!

So anyway, Bill phoned a friend of his to see if he could give any leads as to where to obtain one, and believe it or not, he had a brand new one, in a box, never used, with all the rings, the gudgeon pin a the various other bits you need to install a new piston!

This was unbelievable!

So… this kind chap is going to post the piston to me, I’ll post a cheque to him and hopefully, with a bit of luck, I’ll be up and running soon!

The one thing to note, however, is that with a brand new piston etc… it has to be run in, which involves riding 500 miles no faster than 35mph. Given that the first motorbike run of the season is at the end of March, that gives me around 4 weeks to achieve 500 miles at 35mph or slower if i’m going to make that first run!

Providing the weather holds out, the evenings aren’t too dark, and the bike goes back together as well as I hope it does, that is just achievable in my opinion. A relatively tall order, but just about achievable.

I’ll keep you updated!

I have been playing games on my Xbox 360 a lot since Christmas, mainly because it’s winter and there’s not a lot else to do indoors that’s quite as much fun!

Other than Forza Motorsport 2, Pure and A Kingdom for Keflings I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3. I’m over 60 hours into the game now and estimate that I have somewhere between 5 and 10 hours remaining before I reach the end.

For those who don’t know, Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game which takes place in the year 2277, 200 years after the nuclear war that devastated the game’s world in an alternate post-WW2 timeline. It’s not a particularly cheerful theme, but it works really well as an action RPG.

The trailer for Fallout 3 is below.

I can’t get rid of the advert that appears after 12 seconds, I’m afraid, but if you click the small grey “x” on the right hand side of the advert when it appears, it should disappear

NOTE: If you can’t see the video above, click here

So anyway, this is a truly excellent game in my opinion and I strongly suggest that if you have the equipment to be able to play such games (a half-decent PC, Xbox 360 or Playstation 3) you get hold of this one!

So anyway, onto the Matchless…

Although I have been riding the motorbike throughout winter (on dry days, after the salt has been washed off the road) ever since last summer the piston rings have been worn out.

More specifically, the bike was burning oil, and both valves were perfectly OK (as per the post “It does appear to be working, but now there’s rain!“), so that leaves only the piston rings!

On Monday this week, I started to take the top of the engine off again, on Tuesday the local expert and friend of mine, Bill, came over to lend a hand and to examine the piston rings, the piston itself and the cylinder and we determined that the piston rings certainly needed replacing. In fact, the scraper ring (which is supposed to keep the oil below the piston) looked like it wasn’t doing anything at all, so there was certainly a problem.

So, off to Kettering I went, on Tuesday afternoon, to speak to John about a sleeve nut (which I’ll come to in a minute), Rick about a new set of piston rings and Jim about a gasket set, which I’ll need to put the bike back together, of course!

Well… I got the gasket set, there’s no such sleeve nut as the one I need, and Rick was at home!

Not to worry though… John phoned Rick, who happened to have the piston rings I needed at home (thanks, Rick!) and was willing to have me pop over on my way home to pick them up!

Rick Edwards, by the way, aka “Piston Ring King” has his own blog here if you are interested, and his knowledge and piston ring collection are like none other, so get in touch if you need anything!

Anyway, regarding the sleeve nut, there is a bracket on top of the engine that secures the top of the engine to the frame, and this bracket is held on with 2 nuts that go on the tops of the double-ended bolts that go into the top of the rocker box, and another nut and bolt that goes through the frame itself.

However, the rear nut was stuck fast when I came to remove it, and was already rounded off due to many years of attempted removal in the past, and to cut a long story short(ish), I had to take a drill to it in order to remove it.

This, unfortunately, left the sleeve nut ruined:

You can’t really tell from this angle, but the washer is stuck fast to the underside of the head, and the head is completely trashed, so basically, I need a new one.

The trouble is, the combination of parts that this sleeve nut is part of seem to be non-standard and therefore impossible to replace, so an alternative solution is required (which Bill and I will hopefully figure out tomorrow)!

So there we go… that’s about all I have to write about at the moment, so I’ll leave you to go and read and bookmark Rick’s blog!

I shall post another update once the bike is back together again.

There are two things I’d like to talk about in this post… my Xbox 360 games console (which broke on Friday!) and the new(ish) game “Dead Space“.

As I’m sure you know by now, I’m rather addicted to my Xbox 360 games console (see NXE and my addiction to gaming!). On Friday night, however, it broke!!!!!!! What a disaster!

I was happily playing some Halo 3 videos, when the TV suddenly had red noise all over it, so I turned off the console, turned it back on again, and was greeted with this:

On the plus side, it was the clearest error message I’ve ever seen, mainly due to it being displayed in 1080p high-def of course!

I also had one red section of the “ring” on the console itself:

This was frustrating… although I tried to keep telling myself “it’s only a computer games console”, I kept thinking how frustrating it was that I now had to get it’s original box out of the loft, disconnect all the wires, box it up, post it back to Microsoft and wait 2-3 weeks before receiving it back, hopefully in time for Christmas when I’m sure I’ll be getting various Xbox games/accessories as gifts!

So I could share my disappointment and frustration, I sent an SMS message to a couple of friends, one of which responded stating that I could return the console to the shop I bought it from because it was under 1 year old, and this was a known fault. This, apparently, means they have to replace it, so Sarah and I spent 20 minutes digging up the receipt, I then clawed the box out through the loft hatch using a long piece of wood with a nail in the end (I don’t have a ladder at the moment!), boxed up the console and took it to our local game store. They spent a couple of minutes testing it, and promptly replaced it there and then!

Minutes later, much to my overall surprise, I was walking back to the car with a brand new Xbox! So, despite my initial disappointment and frustration, I ended up being without an Xbox 360 for less than 24 hours… which leads me onto my next topic – “Dead Space“!

I’ve wanted the game, which goes by the name of “Dead Space“, ever since I saw the first trailer video (see below) for it, so despite adding it to my wishlist, I went out and bought it today! I then, of course, removed it from my wishlist to save any Christmas awkwardness!

Anyway, here’s the trailer I saw…

As I’m sure you will agree (if you watched the video), it looks kinda scary, but in my opinion, quite a lot of fun as far as computer gaming goes!

Well, I’ve played the game for 4 hours this afternoon, and I have to say, it’s arguably one of the best computer games I’ve ever played! The entire 4 hours was spent in utter suspense, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, quite genuinely not knowing when the next “necromorph” was going to leap out from nowhere to try and dismember me! That is until, of course, I manage to predict or react and get the better of them, as shown below:

The suspense is, of course, helped by having the curtains shut, the 37″ high-def TV 2.5 metres away, and 5.1 surround sound coming through four 4ft high speakers, a 2ft wide centre speaker, and 14″ subwoofer!

So anyway… all in all, a pretty good weekend, despite the initial “panic” about the broken Xbox!

Oh, and everyone should go out and buy Dead Space immediately!

For those who don’t know, the “Xbox 360” is a computer games console designed and manufactured by Microsoft. It has many features, including the ability to play computer games in high definition (1080p, which equals a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels with progressive scan) with full 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. I, fortunately, have all of the hardware required for the “ultimate” visual and aural experience, so this games console has become something of an addiction. I even have the official wireless racing wheel with force feedback and foot pedals. This console, in fact, occupies around 10 hours of my life per week!

While I’m on the topic of Xbox 360 addiction, I’d like to mention another blog – The O/C Gamer. This is the blog of a fellow Xbox 360 gamer, who is even more addicted than I am. It makes for great reading, anyway, so I feel as though I should post a link.

The other major feature of the Xbox 360 is “Xbox Live“. This allows you to play games over the Internet with friends and to also talk via text, or speech (if you have a headset). It also allows you to download game demos, add-ons videos, films and trailers and is also a way to compare achievements and the ever-addictive “gamerscore” with your friends. Below, for example, is a representation of my “gamercard” as of Friday 21 November 2008:

NOTE: My current gamercard can be found here.

This particular gamercard representation shows the last 5 games I’ve played, with the most recent at the front, my “gamertag” at the bottom left, my current “gamerscore” at the bottom-right, and my avatar on the far right (which I’ll come to in a sec).

So anyway, onto the main reason for this post… the New Xbox Experience (NXE) is here, and I kinda like it!

For the entire life of the Xbox 360, it has had the same operating system (or “OS”). This may not seem like a big deal considering you don’t have any observable interaction with the operating system for the entire time you are playing games, but there are two reasons why the OS is important in my opinion.

1. When you are using the non-gameplay features of the console (such as audio or video playing, photo viewing, reading the latest Xbox news etc…) it is important to have an interface that makes you want to turn on the console to start using it.
2. When you are on Xbox Live playing games with friends, it must be easy to find them and to interact with them.

The original Xbox 360 OS did this job fine to be honest, but for several months now we have been given more and more information on the “New Xbox Experience” (or “NXE”) and us gamers have been getting rather excited about the new OS update!

The reason for this excitement? New features! We didn’t know we needed these features initially, but when we saw them, we couldn’t wait! Below, for example, is the dashboard we have been “coping” with for a year or two now:

Xbox 360 Classic Dashboard Screenshot

And here is the dashboard we have now:

Xbox 360 NXE Dashboard Screenshot

The first thing to notice is how different they look… you now scroll up and down instead of left to right to get to each section, and you now go right-to-left to browse the content within a section, whereas before it was just all over the screen.

The major changes though, are these:

• Avatars
• Install to HDD
• Xbox Live Party
• Netflix movie streaming (for US customers only)

Avatars

Let’s begin with avatars. As you can see, my avatar as of Friday 21 November 2008 is on the right. On the old system, we didn’t have avatars, we had “gamerpics” which were small square “logos”. These could theoretically be anything you like, but as far as I know, you could only choose from either a default selection on the Xbox 360 already, or by downloading extra gamerpics, some for free and others not. These were static pictures which didn’t really serve a purpose at all.

The new avatars, however, are highly customizable (some people make them look like themselves as accurately as possible, while others seem to fulfil their wildest fantasies and make their avatars look very unique indeed), they’re animated, and they can even take part in some games!

My avatar, as you can see, looks as much like me as possible… although highly customizable, there are limitations… there are perhaps 20-30 haircut styles to choose from, and maybe 15 t-shirts, for example. I hope this expands in the future anyway, otherwise my avatar is going to look like this forever! There are a couple of things that aren’t right at the moment (none of them important though) – the hair is too long and jeans are the wrong color (I don’t own any blue jeans) and the trousers of the right color are too tight! As I said though, these things don’t really matter in life, so they may or may not be changed as time goes on!

The O/C Gamer’s avatar (as mentioned above), to show another example, can be found here.

Install to HDD

With NXE, you now have the option to install your games to the hard disk. You still need the disc in the drive to play the game, but it has the advantage of loading faster and not spinning the disc continually throughout gameplay. The disc spinning contributes roughly two thirds of the noise from the Xbox 360 when you are playing games, so to have the disc stationary while playing games is a major advantage in my opinion.

The obvious disadvantage is that you need to own an Xbox hard drive that’s large enough to contain all of the data you wish to put on it. Each game seems to take up roughly 4GB, so those people who have the 20GB hard drive might suddenly need a new one if they are going to use that feature! Fortunately, I have a 120GB hard drive, so I should be OK for a while, at least!

Xbox Live Party

Xbox 360 Party Screenshot

As you can see from the screenshot above, there is another new concept in NXE – the Xbox Live Party.

The whole concept of the party is that a group of friends can use voice chat while they are each playing different, or the same, games, they can share photos in real time and stay together from game to game without having to leave a game, join a new game then spend ages trying to get everyone back together again in the new game!

Netflix

This is only for US customers, apparently, but nevertheless, it’s worth a quick mention! Microsoft has teamed up with Netflix (the online movie rental company) to provide a service where Netflix subscribers can instantly stream high definition movies directly to their TV! Being a UK-based, however, this is something that I sadly cannot take part in.

Anyway, to finish off, I’d like to say something I never believed I’d say – “Well done Microsoft!”. NXE has made the Xbox experience much, much better!