We went to see the Olympic torch in Whitby…

So, I’ve finally got some free time to update this dear blog of mine, so I’m just going through my photographs to see what I’ve actually been doing, this is the top of the list…

So, we set off at 8:50 from Botton to go to Sandsend to see the torch as it went through at 9:30… Sadly it takes more than that to get there, and dispite my bestefforts to fly faster than the speed of sound in a people carrier, we got stuck behind huge amounts of traffic:

The torch is somewhere in front of us!

Anyways, thanks to some sneaky driving, and a bit of knowlege of the roads in Whitby I managed to get around in front of the torch as it went down one side of Pannet park, and I went down the other. I got stuck in traffic at the bottom of the hill by Bagdale, but all my passengers jumped out and ran off to see the torch. After they’d seen it my mum came back and relieved me of driving, my clutch foot was getting tired, so I grabbed my 300mm lens and ran off to see if I could find a decent vantage point.

The torch was supposed to be getting on the train, so I got behind the station into the Coop carpark, and stood on a bin, and was able to get some shots of the torch with the big zoom lens:

The guy in the suit must’ve got a better picture, but he was with the press, so that’s cheating….

A lot of crowds turned out to see the torch too:

And I got one final shot of the torch bearing train:

There was another guy from the press I’m guessing, not sure, he had a very expensive camera… He decided he was going to get a shot from the rails, but a policeman saw him and he got a good bollocking.

The only downside was that I jumped over a bin and then a railing straight after, landed badly and bust my knee…

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition Review

So, when Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition came out (Woa, that really is a mouthful… Lets just call it the Halo 1 Remake) I preordered and got it a day or so after the release date (It’s cos I live in the middle of nowhere…)
I played the first level on Pillar Of Autumn straight off, and thought it was class just to have a Halo 1 that looked like Halo Reach (Almost…). Time limits due to my work on the farm meant that I couldn’t finish playing any more than the first level and it sat dormant on my desk for a few months. I was hoping to play some at Christmas, but Skyrim was big on my play list, and somehow Halo got pushed to the back. Anyways, I’ve recently found myself with a bit more spare time in the mornings before breakfast and started to play again. This was helped by the fact that I’ve been ill in bed for 2 days and have managed to get some more time into Halo due to that.
So, I’ve finally completed it, i wussed out and did it on Normal, not Legendary… One day maybe…. If I end up in prison serving life mayby…. Unlikely.
So, the game… Well, I played the original Halo quite a few times, first on the PC waaay back.. (2004 maybe?) and again on the Xbox 360 with some friends and I’ve loved it, classic Halo, great game. Storyline is epic, coop play is good fun;  All round good game. The remake is pretty much the same, same storyline, coop is still good, but added to that are epic graphics from the Halo Reach engine. Very much nice and lovely.
There are some downsides though, First is that they reduced the number of players for Coop from 4 down to 2… Which means I can’t play it with 2 of my friends… It’s a shame, but not a massive problem. The graphics aren’t quite up to Halo Reach standards, but they’re close, the guns don’t look quite as nice and polished as in Reach, and it would’ve been nice if they’d added the DMR…But that’s not really in keeping with the Halo 1 remake. The one big problem I had was with the sound, many many times I had one audio track over the top of another one, was really annoying in the final cutscene when there was supposed to be sad, epic end music, it was overlayed with the action music from the previous scene…
If you’re a real Halo fan, then I would recommend getting this game, if you’ve played Halo 1 and the rest but aren’t really a great fan, not really worth getting, it’s just a better looking Halo 1 with better graphics…And achievements… And skulls….
All in all though, class game. It’s Halo 1… Can’t really go wrong there… Just want a redux Halo 2 now….
I’d give it a 7/10, it was as good as I was expecting, a remake of Halo 1, there is nothing new or groundbreaking that warrent a higher score though. Maybe if you completed it you could get all the nice stuff from Halo Reach in.. Customizable gear and awesome weapons, then it would get a 9/10 maybe..
Halo ODST is still my favourite...