Battle of Britain (The Wolf Brewery)

Name: Battle of Britain
Label: "Royal Air Force Battle of Britain 70th Anniversary 1940 - 2010, 10p donated to the RAF Association's Wings Appeal"
Brewery: The Wolf Brewery
ABV: 3.9%

Rating: This copper coloured, full bodied ale has been brewed specially to commemorate 'The Few'. 2353 young men from Great Britain and 574 from overseas, who are officially recognised as having taken part in the Battle of Britain, of whom 544 lost their lives during the period of the Battle.

Game: Happy new year! Christmas has come and gone in the blink of an eye and it's nearly time to go back to work. Luckily for him, Santa did as promised and delivered Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Kane & Lynch 2 and Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. Castlevania is similar to Dante's Inferno so that immediately makes it great.  It looks amazing and  also has Robert Carlyle and Patrick Stewart on voiceover duties. And its on two discs! 9 out of 10.

India Pale Ale (Finchley's)

Name: India Pale Ale
Label: "A style of beer enjoyed by generations - Brewed using only the finest ingredients - Specially selected"
Brewery: Finchley's
ABV: 4.5%

Rating: Pale & crystal malts combine with spicy and fruity hops to give a luscious flavour. This style of beer evolved from the strong, hoppy, beers that had the character to retain their refreshing flavour on the long sea voyage to India in the days of the East India Company.  Is that when the British Empire used to go to other countries and say "This is nice, we'll take it"?

Game: This week I've been playing a "Facebook game". It's shameful I know but it's worth a mention because it's quite good. It's Assassin's Creed Project Legacy and you do missions and stuff. It's kind of turned based strategy where you need to earn money, equipment and action points to progress through the missions. Sounds rather yawnsome but it's actually quite addictive. You can give it a go yourself here: Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy. 7/10

Golden Pale Ale (Finchley's)

Name: Golden Pale Ale
Label: "A style of beer enjoyed by generations - Savour the taste of this superbly refreshing Golden Pale Ale, Brewed using only the finest ingredients - Specially selected"
Brewery: Finchley's
ABV: 4.2%

Rating: A beer from Aldi. Yes, Aldi. The only place that makes shopping for food feel like you're at a jumble sale. Nice one.

Game: DLC time again and it's the Battle for Endor on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2.  Similar to the first games DLC, the level is short and sweet with a few achievements chucked in.  Except this time at a measly 80 microsoft points, it's ten (10) times cheaper than the previous add-ons. Splendid: 8/10

Phoenix (Greene King)

Name: Phoenix
Label: "Celebrate the Resurrection - A Rich & Smooth Full Bodied Ale"
Brewery: Tolly Cobbold (it says on the label but it's actually Greene King - it's mischief I tells ya!)
ABV: 4.2%

Rating: Including both oats and wheat, its distinctive biscuit malt and fruit flavours, combined with just a hint of sweetness, result in a rich and smooth, full bodied ale.

Game: Woo hoo, Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat! I don't really care about the goose though, I'm more bothered about the turkey because that's what I eat at Christmas. I hope it's not getting fat either, rather I hope its getting muscular, but not stringy muscle, I hope it's lean muscle.  I think we got off on the wrong foot there, let's start again. Woo hoo, Christmas is coming and the turkey is becoming more muscular. Not played much else except Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for a whole month nearly! A host of games coming this Christmas though including Kane & Lynch 2, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Bring it, Santa.

Blonde (Lancaster)

Name: Blonde
Label: "National Award Winning Brewery - Vividly golden beer. Fine hand-crafted pale ale."
Brewery: Lancaster Brewery
ABV: 4.1%

Rating: A vivid golden bitter, Blonde (it says here) is designed to offer pale beer with real taste and aromatic impact. Like a big beer shaped asteroid.

Game: So back in September I pre-ordered Dead Rising 2 from play.com and as part of the deal, there was a feature where you could upload your photo to some website and be on the cover as a zombified dude. Well my cover arrived today and I look all zombie-like on the cover. I'm a lot thinner in real life - they do say that the camera adds a few pounds. Check the photo over there on the right, you can even click on it and see the cover in big.   Fame at last! Kind of...

Amber (Lancaster)

Name: Amber
Label: "National Award Winning Brewery - Proper Lancastrian bitter. Aromatic and bursting with flavour"
Brewery: Lancaster Brewery
ABV: 3.7%

Rating: A deep gold session bitter, punching above its weight in flavour. Abundantly hoppy with subtle floral and citrus aromas.

Game: The mulitplayer of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is pretty darn addictive.  I seem to range from being really rubbish to suddenly really pwning the other players. And they ain't no n00bs either because its ranked matches where levelled up players are matched pretty evenly.  Do people still say "pwn" and "n00b" by the way?

They Think It's Ale Over! (Barnsley Beer Company)

Name: They Think It's Ale Over!
Label: "Strikingly traditional English Ale! - Truly Bobby Moore'ish - A beer of two halves!"
Brewery: Barnsley Beer Company
ABV: 4.2%

Rating: It's ok to drink. The labels are dripping in poor football related puns and it mentions WAGs a lot. Maybe trying to market this to the typical English yob/football fan? I take slight offence to using Bobby Moore's name in that way too, and why is it "a beer of two halves"? Both halves of the drink tasted the same.  Barnsley Beer Co are possibly trying too hard, which is to be expected as the people I've meant from Barnsley have generally been complete wankers.

Game: Good value = Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. So much to do and so little time in the evenings. Been playing it for nearly a week now, only a few hours a night but still... usually I'd have finished a game in that sort of time frame, here it feels like I'm just scratching the surface. Ubisoft are great.

XXXB (Batemans)

Name: XXXB (Triple XB)
Label: "Gold medal winner international beer awards - Classic premium pale ale"
Brewery: Batemans
ABV: 5.0%

Rating: This beer tastes great. It smells ace too. B & M bargains are selling it for 99p and it's in a pint bottle too!

Game: Now playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.  When this was previewed a while back and the "multiplayer" was mentioned I thought Ubisoft had ruined my favourite game. I also thought this was going to just be Assassin's Creed 2.5 as it's set in Italy again with Ezio Auditore as the main protagonist. How wrong was I? Very wrong actually. The multiplayer is great (when the servers are up) and the amount of content in the single player story is immense. Stabby stabby time!

Sun Dance (Greene King)

Name: Sun Dance
Label: "A refreshing summer ale brewed in the heart of East Anglia"
Brewery: Greene King
ABV: 4.3%

Rating: Ok, it's not summer any more but that's no reason not to drink this lovely summer ale. Take that, winter!

Game: Another year and another Call of Duty game (this time it's Black Ops). I've not been caught up in the hype this year, I've been strong and said I'm not getting it, I'm not getting it, it'll be just like the last one, I'm not getting it. Anyway I got it on release day for £4.97 after trading Fable 3 in Assda (thanks for the assist www.frugalgaming.co.uk!) It is as awesome as expected and the multiplayer free-for-all is a lot of fun. I'm not trying out the team based multiplayer modes as that would involve speaking to people and stuff. The game looks great, although the single player campaign is a little bit short, 8 out of 10.

Seafarers Ale (George Gale & Co. Ltd)

Name: Seafarers Ale
Label: "Quality English Ale - For every barrel sold we'll make a £5 donation to Seafarers UK, the leading maritime charity"
Brewery: George Gale & Co. Ltd
ABV: 4.2%

Rating: It would be immense to live by the sea. In a house overlooking the beach, with a veranda and several crates of this beer within reach. It would be great even in the winter.

Game: Posts have been a bit sporadic of late. I'm either drinking less or I'm finally running out of different types of ales stocked by the local price fixing multi-billion pound profit making horrors that are the "big four" supermarkets. Anyway the games have still been flowing and in the time since the last post I've bought and finished Fable 3 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. Both are great games in my opinion although I did think "Aren't you a little short to be a game?" after finishing Star Wars. Both get 7.5 out of 10.