Facebook is far too addictive!

Firstly, I'm going to list my top 10 Facebook applications, then I will take two of them and explain why they are so good :)

1) My Heroes Abilities - I thought this was a little weird when I first got a request for it, but now I can't log into Facebook and not use this at some point, it's pretty pointless but addictive, and by removing memories I have one of the most annoying starting abilities which much to my amusement annoys everyone else immensely, it wins just for that!

2) Jedi vs. Sith - This is much like My Heroes, just as pointless but similarly addictive, though just not quite as much. It wins extra points because you can choose your lightsaber colours, and strange each other, plus I am a Star Wars fan so it was a given that I would like this. I use it more for the trivia side of it though, which is pretty good but insanely nerdy, how the hell does anyone know about Luke Skywalker's children? When the hell did he even have children?

3) Rockstar Cars - I only added this yesterday but it's some good silly fun, I now drive a classic Ford Escort MKI, which is probably a lie because I know from Escort owning parents that this car never worked, which is probably why I never win at this but you know, at least I can only play this once a day, Heroes keeps dragging me back every half hour.

4) FunWall - Not something I have ever actually posted on myself, but I have recieved many crazy, and several downright disturbing posts, thanks guys, thanks a lot. But I still rate it highly for the occasional good thing somebody sends me.

5) Wrestler - I have my very own wrestler, which I named Sgt. Spandex! I am terrible at this game, my win-lose ratio is something like 4-11 but it's a pretty silly game and is always good for a laugh.

6) Pirates vs. Ninjas - Very much like the Jedi vs. Sith, except without geek trivia and lightsabers. However I get to be a ninja and beat up pirates, which is always a good thing :)

7) Mesmo TV - I am a little afraid of this one, it's far too much movie and TV trivia, which sucked days of my life when I added it, I'm now avoiding it as I know it'll do it again but I still keep it, I just know I'll have to give in to it again one day.

8) Last.fm - It's essentially a Facebook add-on for the Last.fm widgit, and lets everybody know I've been listening to Avril Lavigne, so hang on why am I using it... Well it also compares music tastes and apart from Avril I stick mostly to decent ones, and it's always fun seeing what people listen to!

9) DeviantART - Works much like the Last.fm application, except it displays my most recent art submissions from DeviantAT onto my Facebook page, which is excellent in my opinion as everything I do goes on there, and now everyone on Facebook can keep up with it!

10) Superpoke - I don't use this much, but to everyone who throws Hilary Clinton at me be warned I do retaliate with the worst I can find on Superpoke :D

I am going to carry out more detailed comments on My Heroes Abilities and Wrestler, starting with Heroes.
Well it's main strength is the RPG style stat-building progression system it uses, you keep coming back and using abilities in order to progress and unlock bigger and better abilities to attack people with, even though I've NEVER watched Heroes on TV I still find this application weirdly addictive, but I am a sucker for anything remotely RPG. The abilities themselves have so many different effects and progressing to the more advanced ability sets is quite a long-term goal, but you keep going just so you can get the better abilities and use them to mess with your friends. It's also very professional looking, with the tidy interface and sleek look, it's easy to use and features helpful pages such as the abilitypedia which explains pretty much everything you need to know to use it. It is my favourite application purely because A) I keep coming back to it and B) It achieved A without ever making me annoyed or stealing hours of my life on end, by limiting the EP points it ensures you can't spend forever on there grinding your level as high as possible, you have to keep coming back gradually.

Wrestler is another just-for-laughs application that allows you to create a wrestler than you can challenge your friends to a fight, upon which you choose a move to use and keep going until you fail to use a move or your opponent successfully blocks you, on your opponents move you choose a move you want to block then wait your next turn. This is a downside to the application in that you can often be waiting quite a while for your next turn, but Facebook does notify you when your turn has come, and by playing in several rounds at once it reduces how long you have to wait. Another thing I have to nitpick at is that you can't create your own wrestler in anything but name, you have to choose from pre-set pictures, but the more fights you win, the points you get to spend on new wrestler pictures and moves to use in fights, so it has the same progression idea as seen in Heroes, but everything here is done better in Heroes in a more efficient and importantly, more fun way. This is still not a bad application by any means, it's still good, stupid fun but shows some design flaws.

My Camera Has Issues With You

For the ethics of digital photo manipulation I’m first going to explain my views on some of the example images we were given.
In the photo with Stalin in, a person has been removed after falling out of favour with him, I don’t think this should be done as it is faking the truth by removing someone who was there, it could be a neat trick for a fun photograph maybe but for most purposes, especially if the image is being published as part of a news story or for factual reasons it’s distorting the actual truth and shouldn’t be done.
The Time photograph of OJ Simpson has been manipulated purely for extra effect, the darkening of the image definitely gives it a more sinister feel that I believe could be useful for a movie poster or TV advertising but again I think that it shouldn’t be used in news publications as it’s attempting to influence opinion through altering images.
The Reuters image of Lebanon is one of the most ridiculous I’ve ever seen, it has been blatantly edited, there was also no need for the original image to be edited in any way for the news story, again another example that news and factual based publications shouldn’t use edited images. On the whole I know some amazing images can be produced through digital editing, but I think it should stay in the artistic and entertainment areas. I strongly believe that news publications should never use edited images as they attempt to alter the truth and our view of what is really happening, we trust news companies to deliver news to us in full truth but you can’t get that from edited photos. I also don’t agree with digitally editing photos of models, we must be the most self-conscious generation yet and you only need to take one look at any magazine on or offline to see why. So many people now feel they have to compete with these models yet in the end they only end up competing with Photoshop.

I hear Tom Cuise hates mudkips

Indeed he does! Anyway this is my catch-up blog seeing as how I missed one, but yes I'm supposed to blog about games! Ha this beats report writing anyday, Nicky and Will you guys rock!
Anyway, several people have already called me insane for my views of Burnout Paradise but I honestly much prefer the older Burnout games, I don't mind the new open-world approach but I hate the lack of any menu option whatsoever, and the strange emission of pretty much all the features of the older Burnout games doesn't sit well with me, as they say don't fix what's not broken, Criterion tried and failed. I still rate it pretty highly as a game, don't get me wrong but the earlier Burnout games were epic, Paradise is pretty standard in comparision.
However Capcom have proved to me that sequals can still work with the awesome Devil May Cry 4! Sure the new character Nero isn't as good as old Dante, but Dante is still there and the game itself is as awesome as ever, heck it's not as if Nero is bad either. The core game has been criticised for being short but DMC is all about replayability and on that it scores big points, there aren't many games I can complete and yet keep coming back to endlessly, but the DMC games are the best of the bunch. If you have any gamer sense in you then you need this game! And buy it on xbox 360 just to annoy some Sony fanboys, plus it's cheaper :D

Emo's take pictures too!

Last week we roamed around town armed with digital cameras, and much chaos ensued, we decided to go for the typical student themes, including of course the local pubs. :)
After some hijinks there we started to try something more games related, a few guitar hero shots then we got distracted by anime cosplay, real guitars and generally stupid things, we did however get plenty of PSP shots, enough to probably make a PSP commercial or something.

Anyway the digital photobook is under construction and will be posted somewhere soon, likely including facebook, actually expect a lot of it on there, we got some great pictures!
Also I forgot to blog last week so I will update with some games related stuff this weekend, probably random junk about Burnout and Devil May Cry.

At any rate expect the digital photobook to be online soon, or at the very least a selection of our best :)

In other things, HMV officially suck for overpricing anime, and I’m not sure I trust having anything sent to Whitendale if I order online, these halls are just insane and I’m sure my flatmates eat my post or something, I never seem to get any, apart from the TV Licensing one, yeah thanks.