Category Archives: Bits and Pieces

Sport on Antikrish

I’ve introduced a dedicated ‘Sport’ category within my blog.  Why?  Cos I love sport innit!!!!

Manchester United is a HUGE part of my life and has been since my Dad took me to see Man Utd play Wimbledon FC in 1986 when I was 9 years old (we lost 1-0).

My Dad was secretly married to Manchester United and we went together to see them play whenever we could get tickets (most weekends!); I’m not a religious man, but the closest I come to god (Dad, not Jehova) is feeling the hair stand on my back at Old Trafford when United slam a goal into the back of a net.

It’s fair to say that I am a bit of a football nut, I will watch almost every game on Sky (Gary Neville is a god!!) and ESPN but I draw the line at BBC’s Match Of The Day because the coverage is toilet and Lee Dixon’s face offends me!

I am also an England ‘FAN’ and often go to Wembley to cheer on the National side!  ENNNNNNNNNNGERLAAAAND!  I am also going up to Old Trafford in July to see Team GB (Great Britain!) play Ghana for the Olympics.

My love for sport is varied and I will watch most things with great interest, especially:

Cricket       (love watching a 5 day international test)
NFL            (Kansas City Chiefs Fan)
Athletics    (love going to Crystal Palace for athletics)
Boxing       (off to see Olympic boxing in July!)
Darts          (yes, it’s a sport!)
Golf            (strangely relaxing?!)

It’s a bit daft that I don’t already blog about Sport really; I’ll leave the psuedo-intellectuals out there to post stories on blogs/Twitter about orphanages in Africa and rate iPhone Applications like ‘Carbon Footprint’ and ‘1001 things you can do with beans’.  That’s not me!

So, Sport on Antikrish!  Not to be confused with the Sunday Sport!

 

Diablo 3 – Nightmare mode beaten

I have just finished the Nightmare mode on Diablo 3.  Wang!

In my naivity, I didn’t stop to consider that the game would evolve beyond the ‘normal’ difficulty that I was already satisfied with and was really impressed on how the developers cranked the game up a notch when going from ‘normal’ to ‘nightmare’.

In ‘Nightmare’, the various enemies within the game have a greater array of attacks which focus upon your reduced resistance to cold, fire, lightning and plague (poison).  Furthermore, ‘boss’ badies have some seriously badass attacks like ‘molten’ (which does constant fire damage) and ‘shielding’ which can be a real bastard if you are attacked suddenly by a hoard of demons with big pointy weapons.  Slags!

Diablo 3 really shows it’s teeth in ‘nightmare’ and I found it a big challenge!  I know the ‘Hell’ mode is going to be a tremendous challenge and my cojones are on display in response!  Behold my Gulab Jamuns!!!

I also like how the ‘crafting’ aspects have evolved along with character development and all that jazz.  You really can really create a unique character within a class by tinkering with skills and runes that you unlock with each level, my Wizard is the Mohammad Ali the Arcane realm let me tell you!

Anyway, here are some more screenies of my time in ‘Nightmare’.

Diablo 3 – The end of big D

I’ve just completed the ‘normal’ difficult of the game; there’s nothing normal about it, Diablo is an absolute bastard to kill!

The final boss fight is incredibly tough, I was in a party with 3 other people and it only served to make big D even stronger (the bigger your party, the tougher the enemies!).

Diablo has a vast array of attacks and the old ‘Flash’ attach is back. that Diablo annoyed us all with in Diablo 1.    You know the one!?!  Where Diablo is constantly hitting you, regardless of where you are on the screen?  I really liked the ‘Realm Of Terror’ stage within the boss fight ; The ‘Shadow Diablo’ looked really cool!

To sum up, act 4 was fucking tough.  I feel a great sense of accomplishment having battled through the large amount of sub-bosses like Izual (The fallen Angel from Diablo 2) the Betrayer and all the other prime evil wannabes!

Ultimately, I got some nice rare items for my troubles and now I’m catapulted back to Act I again to face the same story in ‘Nightmare’ mode.  No doubt it’s going to be even harder due to the increased difficulty that justifies why it’s called ‘Nightmare’ in the first place!

I’m coming for you again Diablo!  You fuckface!

Prometheus

I was fortunate enough to see Prometheus last night in glorious IMAX 3D.  I say fortunate because Angelo and I arrived to find out that I had booked the tickets for the previous night!  Doh!

The booking website has a list of days, I took this for granted and booked ‘Friday’ at 00:20am.  So when we arrived last night, our tickets had already expired by 24 hours.  Thankfully the cinema wasn’t even a fifth full and we managed to get the same seats on the row behind.  Nice!

Lets get one thing straight, Prometheus is totally about Alien, anyone who says otherwise is a spastic.  The best compliment that I can pay Prometheus is that it fits perfectly as a prequel; having waited for this film for a couple of years, I can honestly say it has met all my expectations.

The film is beautiful, epic, astounding, stark, shocking and all the other superlatives that I’d associate with Alien, Aliens and Alien 3.  The casting was great, the chemistry of the characters was there for all to see and reminded me of said films in abundance.  Captain Janek was a standout character for me, the ‘Steven Stills’ accordion and Christmas tree scenes were particularly funny.

The special effects in this film are second to none, I loved the scene as Prometheus descended majestically through the clouds of LV223, the silicon storm scene was also fantastic and has to been seen to be believed and nothing can quite prepare you for some of the truly shocking scenes in this film.  No spoilers on that.

The creature designs for this film reminded me of some old Giger artwork books that a friend of mine had when I was at school.  Simply brilliant and scary.  Shame it wasn’t an 18!!!  GIANT FACEHUGGER!!  There, I said it!

We have seen how badly prequels can hash up a franchise by trying to answer all the questions that made the original films such a classic in the first place, Star Wars The Phantom Menace was a fantastic example of that?

Prometheus answers questions in a very clever way, answering questions about the space jockey race opened up a whole new can of worms and brought forward new questions that I hadn’t considered before.  That’s the real appeal of this film for me, it changed how I look at the entire franchise.  In a good way too.

Where could another film go from here?  The ending is ambiguous and certainly allows for further development in the franchise; from a purely selfish point of view, I hope they make another film to follow this one!

Prometheus gets a 9 out of 10 for me; fuck you IGN filmforce and your shitty ‘7 out of 10’ review!

Diablo 3 – Act IV – The Light Of Hope

I have loved how the story has unfolded, the cut scenes are immense and seeing Diablo reborn was done to perfection.

I am now on Act IV, based in the heavens and right in the middle of the conflict between the celestial protectors and the forces of hell.

I’ve enjoyed taking my time with the game, playing through an act each night rather than trudging through and not absorbing everything.  I will hopefully try and complete Act IV over the weekend with any luck, watch this space!

 

Diablo 3 – Act III – Turning the tide

This game just gets better and better doesn’t it??

Act three was immense, I absolutely loved how you are under seige throughout this part of the story.  Having to light the beacons reminded me of ‘Return Of The King’.

Azmodan was even more difficult to best in combat than Belial, again, the boss fight totally blew me away in terms of the sheer scale of the foe and variety of attacks.  Spot on Blizzard.

Diablo 3 – Act II – The end of Belial!

Act 2 was fanatstic!

Blizzard have really hit met my expectations with the boss characters; Belial was an absolute beast.

The boss fights really remind me of how difficult it was to kill Diablo in the first game, and Lazarus.  Bastards both!

I died a couple of times attempting to cut Belials throat; in the end I triumphed!  Fucker!

Diablo 3 – Act II – A Royal Audience

Hooray!  Finished act 1.  Fantastic!

Absolutely loving the story so far, clearly drawing more upon ‘Paradise Lost’ for inspiration methinks?!

I’m now in Act II, just thought I’d be extremely geeky and post a screenshot of the log in page.  The background changes according to the act you’re in which I thought was a nice touch (Act 1 is very dark and gothic, Act 2 is bright and vibrant in contrast!).