I like them there games which you play on that there picture box!

Hello again to all the Internetland! So as I promised here is a post all about my love of Video Games.

So the first Video Game I remember playing was..... Tetris on my Sister's Gameboy. Which reminds me it's her B-Day today, Happy Birthday Sophie if your reading this! Tetris as we all know is a fantastic game which always gives you great satisfaction in slotting in perfect shapes into perfect gaps but then when you complete rows all your left with is imperfect gaps which for the life of you can't plug back up. Then there's that background music which will always be with you like a musical Ben Kenobi!

Fast Forward to the release of the First Playstation and a fateful Christmas where I hear a knock at the door and what is at the door but a PSone dropped off by Father Christmas and his new buddy Tinkerbell (as during the year we went to Disneyland Paris where we stayed in the Tinkerbell Suite in the Disneyland Hotel) . And it came with a couple of Games which were Tomb Raider 2 (Lara Croft became a poster in my room from the age of 9-12) and Crash Bandicoot 2. Now at the age of 7, I think it was, I couldn't really figure out a complicated thing like Lara Croft plus Girls as we all knew at the age were Yucky! So Crash Bandicoot it was and my oh my what a Game for me at that age colourful 3D graphics, great platforming abilities and Wumpa Fruits! It really started for not only Playstation but also the company Naughty Dog which would go on to make the Uncharted Series and also coming this year The Last of Us.

Fast Forward again to a trip to Spain where my Step Dad, Dave made sure me and my sister weren't bored by getting us some tech for us to shut up on plane ride over. He got my sister a CD-Man I believe and as for me my very own Gameboy Colour and he asked me what game I would like with it well I decided to take a risk and see what all the fuss about these so called Pocket-Monsters were about. I liked the colour Red so Pokemon Red with my Fave and rarest of all Pokemon Cards Charizard on the front cover. Wow still my favourite portable game of all time! I'm also looking forward to this year and checking out the new Pokemon X and Y. Might have to go splitsees on a 3DS with Ashleigh so she can play Prof Layton and I can play Pokemon!

Fast Forward over PS2 era (by the way Shadow of the Colossus is worth playing so expansive is a practically an early PS3 game rather than a PS2 game) to the PS3 and this has been something that has really defined me as a gamer as it was a console I bought Day One and is still with me *struggles to get over to wooden windowsill whilst nearly dropping laptop*.  The two Games I got with it were Motorstorm and Resistance Fall of Man. Resistance Fall of Man was a great alternative history game about World War Two never happening and instead Aliens invaded the Earth and it is your job as Nathan Hale to push back the alien scum. Motorstorm was brill to as it was up to you to choose the kind of vehicle you wanted to race as in an off-road race, so you could choose a speedy little bike but you would get crushed by the bigger racing trucks on the course which take a long time to accelerate.

Writing this blog I start to wonder what has happened to all my trustee little gaming devices as I have traded them in to get the newer versions. The PS2, the Gameboy colour, the PSP, the Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, the PSP go and of course the one that has started to bring a tear to my eye, the hand delivered by Santa and Tink PSOne!  I think with the Next Gen I may have to get the money for the Playstation Orbis (or PS4 to you and me) by selling off the PS3 to my family, I mean they haven't got a Blu-Ray player so why not eh?

Review Section

So what I have decided to go with this time is something that I have got for a very long time and is a series I didn't mention in the actual blog post which is the WWE series. Starting back with WWF Smackdown! on the PSOne which was the first game made by THQ it was my favourite series of games even during the times where I didn't watch WWE as much (right now I watch a 1 hour highlight show called WWE Experience and any PPV's/ special events that come up).  This latest one WWE 13 is a great look back at the Attitude era and is something that I don't feel ashamed to like as a lot of my friends who don't watch wrestling now watched it as kids when the Attitude era was in full swing. So the Attitude ear replaces the regular career mode though if you want to play a career like experience with today's superstars you do have the WWE universe. Only a couple of niggling things about this kind of bug me. The first being is that they cut out the F part of WWF as they talk in the Attiude era mode , but is something I can forgive as they obviously had to change there name in the early 2000's as the then World Wrestling Federation had to change there name to World Wrestling Entertainment due to the accronym of WWF clashing with the World Wildlife Fund. But why they could just record new audio instead of just recycling the audio recorded off TV and cutting the F off I don't know. Another thing is the ring announcer back in the attitude era would have been Howard Finkel not Tony Chimel which they have decided to use but however Good old JR back for the commentating booth on the attitude era so swings and roundabouts I suppose. Other than those little bug bears it is a fantastic game well worth the price and I will be gettting the DLC for it as well. The Creation modes are spot on as usual and the custom entrance video is soo easy to use just get a couple of highlights of your superstar wrestling and then it detects them and puts them into a theme of video that you have chosen. My create a superstar is just like the rest of regular roster which is something that I feel had been missing from the other games. 

Well I'll wrap it up there as I'm thinking of playing in the snow right now. So for geekdom, stars and stripes this is me Oliver Bulcraig! Good day everyone! 

The difficult second (no I'm not going to give in to that obvious second blog title)

Hello again to all in interwebland!  So lets get into a bit of my origin story which I promised last blog post. I have always had a vague interest in superheroes. From the Spiderman Animated series from the 90's I realised how it cool it was to have someone to stand up for what was right no matter what the consequences to themselves. I also remember my first superhero movie was Batman & Robin  and at the time I absolutely loved it. Even though now I don't, I appreciate that there were some great bits like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze.
I also remember the Batman animated series and also Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Also I remember as a kid I had a video rental store just up the road and I made my mum always rent the Adam West Batman movie.

So mostly as a kid I was exposed to a lot of DC properties. Well there were other Marvel cartoons available but Iron Man was a bit boring for my age and the Incredible Hulk was just damn depressing!

When I was 12 I had been in Kent for Five years (previously I lived in Brighton) and I thought time to give those superheroes another go especially considering that was the year the highly successful Marvel Movies started coming out with the original Spiderman movie. So at the time I did not no much about the existence of what I now know as the holy ground of comic book shops, so my only access into the world of comics came from W H Smiths via the Marvel Panini comics. I got a few different ones which were Essential X-Men, The Amazing Spiderman, The Avengers and I believe that Incredible Hulk shared a comic with Iron Man so I got that to! Looking back these were all rather good comics but at the time my pre-teen mentality couldn't be held by reading comics so I gave up reading them and just watched the Marvel Movies and played video games. That leads me onto the subject of my next blog post rather nicely which will be the origin of my video games obsession!

Review Section

Iron Man Marvel Now! Believe (Issues 1-5)

So I have to say Iron Man is one of my favourite superheroes. Like I said earlier when I first was introduced to him through the animated series of the 90's I wasn't a big fan but ever since Robert Downey Jr's portrayal I really love me some Iron Man. So onto this series. Unlike the other comics in the Marvel Now series this may require more reading to fully understand what's happening in this story arc as it's talking about the Extremis technology as talked about in the Iron Man Extremis story arc. Like other Iron Man comics it has Tony Stark in pretty much different armour in every issue which is cool to see the different designed Iron Man armour. The writing is fantastic and has the typical Tony Stark/ Pepper Potts relationship humour throughout. Another funny part is Tony is experimental A.I  and in one of the issues it's teenager like so is like 'Do I have to?' or 'I can't be bothered!' A great storyline with fantastic art and is written really well a must have for most Iron Man fans but a bit wordy in some areas.

Well lets call that a night on that one. So For Geekdom, Games and Comics! This is me Oliver Bulcraig. Good Night Everyone!   

I have given in to the pressure!

Hello to all out there in the interwebs! My name is Oliver Bulcraig, known to most as simply Bulcraig as there have been other Olivers out there (which is weird as I didn't know any other Olivers till I was 12!).


So before I go into the subject matter of my blog (which many of you have probably got already) I feel I need to go into how many other people I know have blogs lets see, there is my lovely Girlfriend Ashleigh (Ashleigh's Treats http://ashleighstreats.blogspot.co.uk/), her bro and my Friend Ant (Loud Skateboards http://loudskateboards.blogspot.co.uk/), two of my workmates and great friends of mine Aaron (The World Through my Eyes http://theworldiswatchingus.blogspot.co.uk/) and Amy (Amy Decay, The Place I Call Home http://amydecay.blogspot.co.uk/) and lets not forget Ash's Dad Alan who has two blogs one based on a subject I may hit on Wargaming (A Little From Leofwine http://leofwinewargamerson.blogspot.co.uk/) and one on his ultra sweet Basset Hound Hector (All About Hector... http://hectorthebassethound.blogspot.co.uk/).

So that is not only a lot of plugs but that is also a lot of Blogs to compete against. It is also a lot of pressure to start pumping out my own Blog. But what subject; cheese, highland cows, Quantum Theory probably not good subject matters as I have no idea on any of these subjects (well maybe cheese, mmmm cheese). So how about I do a blog on the subjects of Geekdom which I bore my poor Girlfriend to death with and talk her ear off about. Anything from Video Games to Comics to particular movie releases. As there is a bit of back tracking that I'd like to do I'll probably do quite a few to begin with and then slow down a bit and I'll try to round off a lot of the blog posts with a review.

So there's a good bit of general chat and stuff done I'll go into myself a bit more in future blog posts and my origin story (SPOILER ALERT: as much as I'd like it to include some Government super soldier serum or taking some Martial Arts lessons with Criminology lessons to become a Night Animal based vigilante there is no kind of mention of it in my origin story :( ). So maybe a shall do a Review.

Review Section

Deadpool Marvel Now! (1-3)

So as I have mentioned I do have some back tracking to do I am going to group the issues together I may in the future decide to wait for a full story arc to be released before reviewing but for right now I am going to review this as is. Deadpool is one of my favourite comic book characters, he is absolutely hilarious and he has got a great amount of action packed in every comic. For me where a lot of comics go grey and dark and realistic (which isn't a bad thing but you know you don't want to see it all the time) Deadpool's comics are very colourful and keep the reader's eyes glues to the pages. As for this series it goes into our unnatural love for zombies in that the all of America's dead presidents are brought back to life as zombies and Deadpool is tasked with 're-killing' them. I believe there has been another issue released but my local comic shop has run out already! Captain America is first given this mission but it was a 'press nightmare as you can't have Cap killing off George Washington it's like Steven Fry killing Zombie Winston Churchill.  So Marvel's big Merc with Mouth is off to killing the zombie presidents. Fantasticly good series thus far some great gory scenes including (SPOILER ALERT) Teddy Roosevelt getting impaled on an elephant trunk whilst Teddy is doing his 'fave' hobby of game hunting. Even Dr. Strange gets in on the action which everyone who likes hero team ups will appreciate. Definately worth a read I recommend this to anyone who loves comics Deadpool fan or no! 

Well I think I will wrap it up here hope you all have enjoyed it. If there is a particular comic or anything else Geeky reviewed I shall try my best to do so. Or if you have any other things to say please comment!

So For Geekdom, Games and Comics! This is me Oliver Bulcraig. Good Night Everyone!