I’m going to try something new here on my blog, and post every one or two weeks with what I’ve been playing lately with updates. To start it off here is this weeks:

Grand Theft Auto IV

I first got Grand Theft Auto IV upon it’s release on PlayStation 3, I got around 10hrs into the game and was then distracted by other things (getting married for one) and never went back to it. Kindly, my brother, @kingylad7 has given me the Xbox 360 version of the game on loan as he currently has plenty on the go. I have to say I’m enjoying it so much more, and I’m yet to get passed where I was up to on the PlayStation 3 version. I don’t know what it is but something has clicked this time around and I can’t wait to see where  the story ends up. I’ll be posting much more on GTA4 in the upcoming weeks.

Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer

Admittedly I wasn’t too fond of the multiplayer of this game when I first got it, and it took me until the Christmas break to really fall in love with it. I have since prestiged and am now working my way back to 70, although I will not be prestiging again, I would much rather work on the challenges and unlocking weapon attachments & cammo’s.  It took me longer than it really should have to do my first prestige, and am now using a different method to level up and am racing through the levels, currently I’m 43 and using the following kill-streaks: Predator Missile, Harrier Strike & Emergency Airdrop… Why? You might ask. Well, you get a decent amount of XP everytime a member of your team picks up one of your air drop packages, that combined with doing the challenge for each of the weapons to get 150 kills is an easy way to race to 70, and seems to be working well so far for me.

I never really played much Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, although I thought it was fantastic, I just couldn’t dedicate the time to playing it online back when it was released, so since playing Modern Warfare 2, I’ve tried to pick up as much as I can and this is how I currently play:

• Button layout – Tactical
• Controller sensitivity – Medium
• Perks – Scavenger Pro, Stopping Power Pro, Ninja Pro
• Favourite guns – FAMAS, Vector & although I suck with snipers, I do enjoy using the Intervention.

Lets see if anything changes over the upcoming weeks…

As a fan of both The Beatles and The Wu Tang Clan this release by Tom Caruana really had me interested, whilst I’m usually against people ‘messing’ with other artists material simply to make a bit of cash for themselves, this is completely free and non-profit and I’ve been enjoying it. Give it a listen…

Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers is a remix album incorporating Wu Tang acapellas & Beatles songs.
The album is produced by Tom Caruana.
Artwork is provided by Logan Walters, who has reworked several Wu Tang covers.

You can download the full album from Tea Sea Records website.

As we step into 2010, I’ve decided to look back over last years amazing line up of video games and choose the ten that impressed me the most. Admittedly I’ve not had the opportunity to play every game that was released in 2009, although I did play many of them. I know for sure I’m missing some of the big hitters such as Assassin’s Creed II and Uncharted 2, I fully intend to get around to those in the upcoming months.

So here we have my top ten games of 2009!

#10 Killzone 2

Whilst Killzone 2’s single player campaign wasn’t much more than a fantastic looking, set piece showcase, it’s the multiplayer of Killzone 2 which kept me coming back for more. The way Killzone 2 merged it’s game modes was a welcomed, refreshing change to the way other games handle things.

#9 Quake Live

Although it’s been around for a couple of years now, Quake Live didn’t enter it’s open beta stage until earlier in 2009 and thought it was a good time to include it in one of these lists. At it’s core Quake Live is Quake III Arena with stat tracking, friends lists, skill matching and more, but boy is it still as fun as it ever was!

#8 Flower

Flower is a simple but beautiful game with some very interesting twists towards the end. It’s the simplicity of the controls and the way it looks and feels when playing it that makes Flower such a relaxing and engaging experience.

#7 Battlefield 1943

One thing that can be said for 2009 is the quality of the downloadable games on Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store. Battlefield 1943 in my eyes is the closest yet that you will get to a retail game delivered digitally, a great sequel to the daddy of all Battlefield games.

#6 Street Fighter IV

As a kid I had a Sega Megadrive and was forever jealous of my SNES owning friends who had Street Fighter II, It wasn’t until much later with the Street Fighter Alpha series that I became a huge Street Fighter fan, and whilst I’ve never been very good at the series, Street Fighter IV did such a great job of mixing the old with the new it was appealing enough for me to get right back into it.

#5 Forza Motorsport 3

Stunning graphics, tight controls, clean interface and a multitude of things to do both on and off the track, Forza 3 is the pinnacle of driving simulators. The various assists make the game accessible for new drivers and the veterans can always opt to disable them for more realism.

#4 Dragon Age: Origins

I have to be honest here, I almost left this one off the list, not because it doesn’t deserve it, but because it’s so huge I’ve barely scratched the surface and felt I should have played it more first. A real old-school RPG that is very story focused, and one I’m going to get stuck back into and finish up soon.

#3 Modern Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2 could never have lived up to the insane hype surrounding it pre-release, and honestly I didn’t buy MW2 for the single player, although I thought that was an excellent sequel to the original Modern Warfare, just as popcorn-tastic and blockbustering! No, I bought MW2 for the multiplayer, and I’ll be honest it did take me over a month to really get into it, but I now suffer from the same addiction I did a couple of years ago with the original, playing it for hours each day. My multiplayer game of the year, combined with the campaign and not to mention the Spec-Ops missions makes Modern Warfare 2 a great all around package.

#2 Batman: Arkham Asylum

I almost passed this one by, thinking it was another typical Batman game that would be worthless. I’m glad I stopped to take a look inside, Batman: Arkham Asylum has to be the sleeper hit of the year. The game consistently throws new stuff at you and keeps you interested for the entirety of the story, and was so close to being my number one game of 2009. You can read my full review of Batman: Arkham Asylum here.

#1 Borderlands

Here we are, my number one game of 2009, the one I enjoyed the most, Borderlands! It was extremely hard picking this over Batman, but for me it brought everything I want from a game to the table and then some. Sure it wasn’t without it’s problems, faults aside though, Borderlands is a fantastic game and I’m about to spend the weekend playing the recently released DLC. Fingers crossed we hear something of a Borderlands 2 soon. You can read my full review of Borderlands here.

Soodalin’s Macaroni Cheese

This recipe was devised tonight by myself as something to make for our Christmas Eve dinner. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, so here it is to try for yourselves, it will serve 4-6 people, depending how greedy you are.

Ingredients:

• 1 500g packet of macaroni
• 125g of salted butter
• 4 tablespoons of plain flour
• 475ml of blue top milk
• 150g of grated mature Cheddar cheese
• 50g of grated red Leicester cheese
• 50g of grated Parmesan cheese
• 4 slices of day old crusty white bread broken up into small bits
• 1 tablespoon of ground black pepper
• sprinkling of paprika

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil, add macaroni and cook for 10mins, drain and put back into the empty saucepan.

In another saucepan melt half of the butter over a medium heat, add the flour and half of the ground black pepper, stirring until it becomes a paste. Continually stir the mixture whilst slowly adding the milk, as the sauce starts to thicken add the cheeses a handful at a time and continue to stir until all the cheese has melted.

Preheat the oven to 180*C (gas mark 4)

Pour the cheese sauce over the drained macaroni, mix well and pour into a lightly greased baking dish. Place the bread bits on top of the macaroni and season with the rest of the ground black pepper.

Melt the remaining butter and pour over the bread. Sprinkle with paprika and bake in the oven for 25-30mins until the cheese is bubbly.

If you read my Borderlands Review, you would know that I enjoyed it a whole lot, and was eager to try out Gearbox’s first DLC addon for the game, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Once you have the DLC downloaded and start up the game, you can fast travel straight to Jakob’s Cove. You can do this with any character level 10 or higher, and the islands difficulty will scale to your level.

As you arrive at Jakob’s Cove the first thing you will notice is the eerie new setting, it looks quite different from anything you will have seen in the main game. The second thing you will notice are the random zombies walking around the place, as the title of the DLC would suggest, the island is home to an array of zombified creatures from bats to werewolves and some fun bosses thrown in for good measure, which I won’t spoil here. As you start firing away at the zombies you will notice a couple of things, firstly they take a lot of damage from weapons that do incendiary damage, and hardly any from weapons that deal out corrosive or shock damage. Secondly they drop ‘zombie brains’ when you finish them with a headshot, which are collected as part of an annoying quest chain for the ‘Braaaaaaaaaaaaains!’ achievement.

If you enjoyed Borderlands and are looking for more content Zombie Island may be just what you are looking for, whilst it doesn’t offer a raise on the level cap or any kind of undead loot, it does add a whole bunch of laughs and gameplay in a new setting. To just run through the main quest line of the DLC it’s going to take you 2-2.5 hours, however if you want to do and see everything you are looking at more like 5hrs, for 800 MS points I felt it was worth it. If on the other hand you are looking for something that will raise the level cap and add more loot, this may not be the DLC you’ve been waiting for.