Stone Sour - House of Gold and Bones part 2 QUICKY REVIEW!

 Ha!, didn't expect me to throw this out, did ya!?

Right, straight to it. The album doesn't drift to far from what we normally expect from Corey and his gang. So we won't be hearing any fan boys/girls crying about them changing. Around about average, the album is 51 minutes long and

Corey Taylor's ability to shift between deep growls and harmonies are well executed and isn't over the top. We open with what appears as a calming track but soon kicks in with true Stone Sour fashion!

Musically the album is filled with killer riffs, a mix of old tape or vinyl recordings blended to make them as creepy as damn possible, and then drop into the roar of the guitar. They have kept their metal flavouring which everyone likes and we won't see many people moaning about drastic changes or those 'Hipsters' with the whole "Saw em before they were cool" shite!

Corey has always been strong when it comes to his lyrical capability which is reflected in Slipknot and other projects or collaborations. Nothing lyrically is actually lacking, but songs do appear very similar in their tones, style of vocals or common vocal trends (I can't think of a word for it, gimme a break).

I'm enjoying the album, it's short, so I recommend downloading it. Unless you are an extreme fan of hard copies. The album doesn't have much variation to differentiate it from previous albums and

seems like it may just drift out of people conciousness in a months time. Hard work has gone into this album and the music is alright. Yet why part 2?, it seems like they trapped themselves into following part 1's style and may be the reason that it appears much the same.

I'm thinking that the album deserves a 7/10

Far Cry 3 Quicky Review! -SPOILERS-

I finally managed to play it! I've had this for at least a month with the intention of giving it a go, it was a good thing I got it free!

After the previous Far Cry, I didn't really care for the series and we can still see many of those

annoyances coming through in this follow-up. I played 10 minutes of Far Cry 2 and then dumped it as it was so annoying, so I came into this one with little expectations apart from the raves reviews that came out around the time of its release.

Altogether, I did enjoy playing the game. There were flaws that would appear, simply to piss me off but some I managed to ignore. The sandbox world of Rook Island is amazing, the quality of the landscaping is brilliant and is one hell of a sight when you are using the gliders to travel. The thick jungles hide vicious creatures that want to use you as a new toy, which is bloody scary when you don't know where they are coming from! However the land can be annoying, when you cannot climb a slope over a certain degree or drive your 4x4 up it you wonder why you bother trying. Alongside this one of the missions detailed for you to jump from a bridge and use your wing suit to fly away, I happened to miss the chance to pull the chute, hitting the water and escaped off the map completely so my character drowned as he couldn't get back into the map world.

Story wise, the game is really simple. You go out with all of your rich friends and brothers to then get stuck on Rook Island after you went off course while skydiving. Rook Island is inhabited by mercenaries, pirates and general innocents. You end up causing a lot of shit towards the mercs and pirates while you rescue your friends. The campaign is approximately 12 hours long and can get really far fetched. With the introduction of magic items about half way in, it seemed stupid when the game was positioned in a fashion that's more like a survival game and doesn't reflect the true gritty

Part of the badass tattoo!

style. Alongside the whole magic tattoo stuff which was really odd but is part of some cultures and does look pretty badass. The characters are really frustrating, your older brother who dies at the start was probably the most bearable seeing he was only about for 5 minutes. The rest of them are just douche bags, especially the stoner. Character development is little, if any. Jason (you) is also very boring. You see none of the stress he would go through, but you see him go from innocent teen to a mass murderer with a machete and an SMG with an ability to sponge bullets and damage from everything apart from a 10ft drop! His change was to drastic and never really made you engage with him.

Weapons in the game are fairly varied and the use of the bow is great fun. The bow and a scene at some rice fields really showcase the ability of it but also blow you back to the most recent instalment of Rambo! With the huge size of the map, you will have enemies all around you and you constantly need to maintain a supply of weapons and ammo which is fairly cheap and easy to come across. Once the campaign is done, you have the whole world to play in. Liberating the island is a big task but good fun when you go in like a ninja cutting the alarm and single handedly popping all the enemies off from a mile off with a nice sniper round to the cranium. Then you have the ones just just play up and enemies find you from an impossible angle which would get on my tits.

Finally the bosses. Vass and Hoyt. Using Vass on the front cover was a mistake, he appears a few times until you get to kill him, all being for a few minutes and then disappears. Bigged up as a huge psycho nut job, you would expect to see him more often and truly see this, but you don't. You get little samples and then it's over. Hoyt was much the same as Vass but you could see what he was planning for you from the moment you first met (as long as you actually looked around his place properly). His plans were so evident that they could have cut to the chase instead of making Jason look like an idiot. Finally we have the boss fights which just suck. You suddenly hallucinate, kill everyone in the room and are put through quick time events to kill Vass and Hoyt. It lacked any substance to really grip you and stress you out.

Overall the game was alright, I haven't covered everything as I'm still hungover but I believe this game deserves a 7/10. If only they could sort a few little bits out and I would be happy, such as the AI's and driving.