LGS Gaming Marathon - Charity, Progress and Too Much Food

On Saturday 22nd March, I attended a 24 hour charity gaming marathon hosted by the University of Lincoln Gaming Society (LGS). It was set up to raise money for "Child's Play"; a great cause I support myself every year through Extra Life as it makes such a difference for seriously ill children worldwide.

I took along my PS3 and a disc copy of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, as well as all of the downloaded PS+ Titles I had on the Hard Drive. My intent was to play through Far Cry 3 and start to play Dragons Dogma, however like the best laid plans, these went completely out of the window in reality.

Initially I played through Far Cry 3 for 9 hours until I realised just how similar each hour felt; a symptom of having such a large, open world environment with not much in the way of structured activities. Sadly I won't be going back to it as part of the backlog - I had my fill and felt content that I didn't want to progress any further.

Post Far Cry, I played through Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons from start to finish, relishing every second of it. An amazing narrative driven experience without a single word of English being said throughout. The way that the various game mechanics are used to convey emotion and impact is near inspirational, as well as the actual gameplay being fun. I'll write a full review for it soon.

There were about 40 people in attendance, if not more which was great to see as there was such a variety in terms of games being played. So many tastes were at work and it showed me just how many games I had missed out on by buying so many and playing them.

The then hilarious part of the amount of people in attendance, was when we ordered pizza from Dominos. One of the organisers put the worker on the phone on loud speaker, ordered around £650 worth of pizza and then informed him of our valid 50% off voucher. To be fair the guy laughed it off and got a huge round of applause, but sleep deprivation is a damned thing and worked wonders for my appetite for humour and Italian food.

                                                                                                                                            Source: pizzanews

Garlic and Herb crust dip - THE best invention ever?

I then started a playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, however I sadly only made it 18 hours into the marathon before my old age kicked in and made me so tired and grouchy that I had to leave, meaning that I only got a few hours into R. A. Salvatore's world before having to give up and go home for much needed sleep.

Overall, it was a great event and I got to meet some amazing people who were all working together to raise money for children who need as much help as they can get, I made some great progress on my quest to destroy my backlog and my only thing to write about and ended up managing to raise £123.45 as a group. Interestingly precise!

Who said video games were all bad?

The Hidden Secrets of Your Video Game Case

What if I told you that when you walk into a video game shop or browse a retailer online, they are trying to sell you something?

"HOGWASH!" I hear you cry; women and children fainting left and right from disbelief.

Well it's a fact, video games are products, and a large part of the sale publishers need to make stems from video game box art.

As a result, features and awards are plastered across the front of the boxes, forcing the characters and scenery to gasp for air, begging you to buy them.

So you take the box to the till, pay for it and walk off. But the box is still an ugly sales tool when you get home and take it out of the carrier bag. Hurray for capitalism.

Or is it?

Let's take two great games and show you what the marketing cover looks like:

These aren't terrible examples of clutter, but I find them pretty ugly as you have the logo's of the game studios that made them, the publisher, age rating at it's statutory size etc... as well as all of the blurb of the game on the back. Necessary before the sale, but afterwards....?

But most of your cases actually hold an awesome and from my experience, well kept secret. Let's take a look:

Firstly, open up the box and remove the manuals/dlc codes to reveal the secret art hidden inside. This is what the box artist actually wanted you to see, but still; it's facing inwards and not doing you any good there.

What you need to do is open the box all the way out flat so the outside is facing you. Then take out the cover from behind the plastic sleeve, turn it round so the inside you just saw is now facing outwards and replace it so it looks like the following images:

This is the beautiful and real case cover. Sadly not every game is like this, such as most EA titles (the mass produced EA games such as Fifa etc...). It shows a great deal of care and attention on the teams part and I think a great touch that can turn your shelf full of noisy and busy shelf of games into a beautiful mural of video game art.

Bonus points if the nice design fits on the front cover:

I hope you enjoy hunting through your PS3 games and some PC games (don't believe that 360 games do this) to find these gorgeous hidden gems.

Let me know of any games you find that has been hiding it's inner beauty from you in the comments section - and as always, if you like the posts, please feel free to like it, share it, tweet it etc... It helps a lot!