Sunday 31 October 2010

The Good, Bad And The Sexy

Back from the trade show, a morning of trail bike riding and sweet chestnut gathering, mmmm, yepp it's that time of year when the clocks go back, the bikes get put in storage, companies try to pimp their wares to us all and we all sit around gaming moaning about how cold/dark/miserable/shite it is outside while hugging our joypads/sig' others close.

The good was all the 3DTV deals at the show and Sony putting on a good display, i got to hang out in their 'home environment' again which was nice, they had a 55" 3D screen up this time around and the quality was top notch. Nice to see even this many months later since launch and having a home built 3D rig running PS2 games that the impressions of depth and loverlyness hasn't faded. Samsung had a great entry level package in which you got a 750C series 3D 40" TV, 3D Bluray player, 2X glasses pack and a film for 795 beer tokens. Prices went from that to quite frankly obscene in the Panasonic zone!

The bad was a showing from Trust, they had a great stand with the frontend of a Merc' touring car rigged with force feedback wheels and screens where the windscreen should be. It looked good what with the external monitors showing the race. My hetro life buddy and myself went head-to-head in a timed race, and i felt like the dogs in the car, shame the wheels themselves were just soo bloody horrible with a dead zone that must have been a good 90 - 120 degrees big! the thing was just undrivable, and the game was GRiD, which i royally kick arse on with a joypad. Their force feedback just felt dead and lifeless.

The sexy was the Booth Babe from Sony that i spent a good 45 minutes chatting to/up, i blame the huge Americano i chugged earlier, after a while talking shop conversation turned to GT5 and the racing pods they run with 3D screens, she told me they had review copies of GT5 there, but no amount of begging, promising my external soul, cheap distraction technnics, would get her to give me one (f'nar!) She did admit though they still haven't got a release date for the game and had no idea when they could expect a full copy for the pods, the finger of blame seemed to be pointing at SCEA though.

Happy Halloween peeps, i'm going to roast my nuts now.


Unofficial ThreeSpeech Bloggers Hit The Hi-Tech Trade Show

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Be Very Afraid

In a news belch from Microsoft today was hidden the worrying statement:

"In the immediate future, the Xbox 360's game line-up will see a dramatic change. The Halos and Gears of Wars that dominate the platform will feel pushed aside for more inclusive games that are less about bullets and bombs, more about family-friendly action."

If that paragraph there doesn't give you the willies about what is going to happen to our dear and much loved hobby i don't know what will.

Tuesday 26 October 2010

mETAL gEAR NDS Hands On Gamplay


Having traveled back in time yesterday i managed to pick up a copy of Metal Gear for the NES, well, the softROM anyway, and seeing as i have now hammered some emulators into my NDS i figured it would be a good game to check out to make sure it was working. I had the original on my MSX, ah, i loved that machine, i used to save up my spare cash and go down to my local independant games/music shop and try to score one game a month, if there were any released that made it into the wild barren lands that i lived in at the time.

The emulators i have put onto my AceKard/Wood/Moon/R4 hybrid are NESDS, jEnesisDS and DSMasterPlus, i think you can figure out what consoles they are :)

Monday 25 October 2010

Killzone 3 Beta gameplay WOW

The first rule about Fight Club is...

Post footage of a closed beta on youtube.

Looking lovely and a lot 'snappier' than Killzone 2. They seem to have toned down the motion blur too making it seem crisper.



[pabloamigo]

New Vegas: NOT A Broken Glitch Fest.


Hippies, best hunted down and shot.

Despite ALL those people posting on the internets that their copy of Fallout New Vegas is freezing all the time, having numerous glitchs and game breaking bugs i have legged it back to my house in GoodSprings to bring you an update from the Mohave Desert.

I am currently at the 20hr mark and loving it. First off i have had one game freeze which occured after i installed the game to the harddrive and ran it straight away, Killzone also did this! But since i loaded the 1.01 patch and played a 6hr long session i have not had it happen since. The only other thing i have had happen in my 20hrs is a couple of geckos glitched into a rock so just their heads poked out, and you know what, that is the sum of all my problems with playing it on the PS3. Hardly what i would call a broken game!

I don't know what all those griefers are playing it on, probably homebuilt PCs, so there's a lot to be said for gaming on a standard console platform. I also didn't have the catalog of problems previously noted with Fallout 3. I do run two game saves at a time, rotating them every 20 minutes or if i'm about to enter a building, eyes the Statesman Hotel, just in case.

Enjoying the changes to the game, most obviously is the food/eating which instead of being an instant hit disolves HP into your system over time, usually 5 to 25 seconds, this is initially confusing as after eating, the game reports so-and-so has worn off, when in fact it has finished adding HP, another report is when fighting the game reports your AP is low, when in fact it is your HP. pedantic i know. Their is also a recipe crafting system so you can cook up a stew at a camp fire, the workbenches are still there and a new ammo reloading bench so you can make custom ammo, 20g hollowpoint shotgun shell? Clothing has a Damage Threshold as well as Armour Points.

This game gets a big, slightly irradiated, fluffy kitten of approval.

Friday 22 October 2010

Left Left Shoot Shoot Shoot


Space Channel Five (pt 2) and it's knicker flashing heroine are coming to the PS3 Store in spanking 16:9 o'vision. If you have been living under a rock for the last 10 years SC5 is a rhythm action game at heart that's more shagadelic in style than Austin Powers on a handful of mothers little helper.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Land Of Confusion: Adios Fallout 3



350hrs of Fallout 3 condensed into 4 minutes 44 seconds. I 'finished' the game yesterday, and i don't mean just the main plot line, all side quests and misc. stuff too (main plot in good, neutral and evil) as well as visiting and exploring all 160 locations on the world map. EPIC. My final tasks were to finish the data hack of 50 terminals and kill the final behomeths, but that's just understating the travels i have taken these past few days.

At one time i was trapped in the Statesman Hotel for 3hrs thanks to a glitch and i had to end up building a pile of mutant legs, fire extinguisers, corpses and my damn minigun just so i could manage to jump up to a ledge and escape, only to be confronted by a 3 storey drop to the street below.

With all that done i met up back with Red, Shorty and Charon in Megaton and kitted them out in various bits of Brotherhood tech and we set out on the long march to the Whitehouse (i couldn't decide between that or the Vault-Tec HQ as a final place). Along the way we got into scrapes and fights, even managed to kill a Scavenger i quite liked, but that's how it goes in the Wasteland, i loved making up back stories and such as i went along for people and places, that was part of the appeal for me in this game. We eventually got to the Whitehouse, and i'd built this place up an epic place to finish the game, but it was not to be so, we entered the site via a maintenance tunnel to be confronted by what looked like the site of a direct nuke strike.

As i stood there, shell shocked, some Glowing Ones attacked the party and Red fell before the others took them out in a hail of gun and plasma fire. My rad count was rising fast as i dragged Red's body into the sun wondering how it could have come to this after soo long, i looked at Charon and Shorty not knowing where to go from here, Red trusted me, now she was dead at my feet, the clicks rose higher, i looked around as sever radiation sickness took hold then my kness buckled and i fell onto Reds motionless body, the music tolled the death notes as the camera panned around.

But that's the Wasteland for you, live your own life because one day it will claim you.

Tommorrow, i head for New Vegas.

Fish Botherer


Now, if you're anything like me fish seem to want to kill themselves than be looked after by yours truely, that's if the cats never got to them first. So i was quite interested when 'My Aquarium' popped up on the Store, i had a spare few quid in the account so i figured, what the hell, and got it.

I've set some test aquariums up to see what happens, no sign of canabalism or floaters yet :) Leaving the thing running is veeeery chilled out with a nice range of background music, though the bubbling noise can get a little bothersome so i turned the volume down on it. can't do that with real fish can you.

If you're feeling cheap and can't be bothered with virtual fish keeping the dynamic theme is pretty nice too.

ps: cats have shown no interest in attacking virtual fish, i think they're more hyped by pawing at the cars in GTs replay mode.

Saturday 16 October 2010

The Most Hardcore Game ever?


Kind of makes my 36hrs and party of Lv20 character in DQIX seem insignificant :)

Thursday 14 October 2010

Now A Word From Our New Sponsors

GT5: The Excuses For The Delay

Driving simulator Gran Turismo 5 was penciled in for a November 2 release. Good thing that was pencil. The game has been delayed, and its creator has taken to Twitter to explain why.

"Apologies for the delay," Yamauchi tweeted. "It's because time and labor were spent ironing the kinks out of [the game's] complex system. I'm really sorry. Everyone, it's inexcusable... Wait a little longer."

With a development price tag of US$60 million plus, Gran Turismo 5 was first shown at the E3 gaming convention in 2006. GT5 was dated for March 2010 for Japan, but the game was delayed. It was then slated for November 2. It will not make that early November release.

According to Sony, "Creator Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital want to make certain they are creating the perfect racing experience, and we are confident that this ambitious game will exceed expectations when it launches."

Sony spokesperson Satoshi Fukuoka told Reuters that "production difficulties" caused the delay.

Gran Turismo 5 is currently slated for this "holiday season". The holiday season in Japan carries over into early January with the New Year holidays. Sony would not clarify whether the game will be out by the end of 2010 or in early 2011.

In another tweet, Yamauchi stated that he thought players would have to wait until the end of the year.

Monday 11 October 2010

X3Jailbreak

Got my free sample of the x3jailbreak today, dispite DHL trying to deliver it since 22-09, useless tossers! if they'd left a card the first time i may have got it a month ago. Anyway it came in a nice case and is pretty well made, a rear cap removes to set it to flash mode or operation mode in the PS3. downloaded the software installer and they didn't include the code.bin file needed to flash it! d'oh. Have requested it off a couple of people, see what happens. Even though i can't use it, it's nice to have as a bit of tech from PS3's history, probably just bung it in a drawer and just forget about it now.

Also been thinking about trying to fix my dead 60Gb model, looks like i'm going to have to go the re-flux/heatgun way, hell, it's not like i've got anything to lose by having a go as my replacement has been working fine since i got it. and running much cooler i may add. Just need to get myself a heat gun, everything else is a trip to my local Maplins.

Thursday 7 October 2010

Four Weeks To Go, FOUR WEEKS!

Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed, Please don't be delayed....


Oh and it's two weeks to go until Fallout: New Vegas too. sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. what are you lot looking forwards to this gaming season?

Zero Punctuation: Halo: Reach