AAA Hollywood talent, used properly

Nice little snippet of Killzone 3 here, showing Ray Winstone and Malcolm McDowell covered in face mapping dots.

A few weeks ago I was feeling a little meh towards Killzone 3, I think that was just the Black Ops FPS overdosing getting to me. The beta was great and the noises on progress since then are good - I think I'm going to pick this up on Day 1...

iPhone fired into space

SCIENTISTS are to put an iPhone into orbit in an attempt to get a full set of bars for a change.

Once the probe is in geostationary position over the Carlisle launch site, they will remotely attempt to check their emails and go on Facebook before the battery runs out.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute For Studies, said: "Outer space has always held a promise of strange new worlds and the idea of being able to use an iPhone for the primary function it was designed for does seem like some crazy science fiction film."

Experts hope that if the experiment succeeds thousands of iPhone owners can be subsequently blasted several hundred miles straight up into the air every week until they have all gone.

Brubaker added: "We'll tell them there's an app of a talking panda that only works in zero gravity.

"Meanwhile I see no reason why we can't also squeeze in a load of iPad arseholes on the promise there's a prototype of the iPad 2 on the moon.

"They paid 400 nicker for that fucking thing so of course they'll believe me."

iPhone user Wayne Hayes said: "I can't wait to see the majestic sapphire sphere of Earth nestling in the sable arms of the eternal cosmos and then type 'coooool' into Twitter."

ThreeSpeech TV: Obtuse Games Review Show by mobiletone

Can't Afford An iPad: JoliCloud!

got this running on my akoya e1312 and it works a treat, will be exploring all the nifty apps later.

20 seconds from log-in screen to connected to intarwebz. JC 1.1 = Win

*Remembers To Pack A Towel*

It's the start of the new year gaming release season, and today i was torn between Mass Effect 2 and Little Big Planet 2.. Tough one, but ME2 came out on top with a note to get LBP2 later on, but i fear there is just soo much hitting the shelves that's worth getting i will have to put many many games on that list.

Piiiiiiiiiiiiigsssss iiiiiiiin Spaaaaaaaaaaaace....

iPhone v Android debate 'not important'

There had been increasingly heated argument about whether the gadget made by one company was superior to geegaws made by the other companies that did similar things in a slightly different way.

But the topic has been declared defunct after both sides put everything in context.

Tech blogger, Stephen Malley, said: "I had always been a rabid advocate of one of the companies because their doo-da was open source and delivered full multitasking. The issues arising from this seemed interesting and important to me.

"But last Tuesday I was posting simultaneously on several online forums to that effect when, overcome with annoyance by the mere thought of technological imperfection, I turned momentarily away from my monitor to stare out of the window.

"The sun was setting over the distant hills, and the late evening sky was a peaceful yet dramatic canvas of crimson and azure.

"The sudden sense of the enigmatic perfection of the universe was such that my soul seemed to leave my body via the top of my head and I imagined myself floating aloft, as much a part of nature as the birds and the trees. When it ended I found I was no longer concerned with non-Google syncing.

"A phone's a phone. In two year's time they'll all be buried in a landfill with a load of dirty nappies and rotting chicken carcases.

"Would you like to see my drawing of a tulip?"

Former telephone fanatic, Roy Hobbs, said: "I was so devoted to this phone, it was like being in a cult except without any of the group sex, UFOs or cool stuff.

"Sure it's terribly fancy, but I work for a company that makes incredibly bad television programmes not the Pentagon, so I really don't need an artificial brain in my pocket, irradiating my scrotum."

Buy Portal 2 once for PS3, play on PC and Mac for free

Valve gave the anti-PS3 brigade a lot of ammo back in Dec 2007 when they delivered the flakiest version of Orange Box on PS3. Portal was the highlight, but anyone with half a decent PC had a hard time justifying time spent on the PS3 version(s).

Well, times change and the PS3 version of Portal 2 looks set to make amends - a commitment from Valve boss Gabe Newell that it'll be the best version, along with keys to allow play on PC and Mac - all included in the price of the PS3 game.

Not only this, but the game is to feature “persistent cloud-based storage of PS3 saved games” as well as cross-platform chat on PS3, PC and Mac.

I see this a a really impressive technical hurdle to jump, fair play. Really looking forward to Portal 2 now, roll on April 22nd.

Source: VG247

For those without looong memories, check what Yahzee says on Portal here:

Damn You Impulse Purchase

Typical isn't it, i mean, you go to The Mall, yes, it is spelt like that here, you go. to. the. mall. for a new set of loverly egyptian bath towels and end up just popping into Gamestation, just for a look, and before you know it you come away with an obscure weird JRPG time sink of a game that you know is going to fire up that OCD part of your personality and never let you play anything again until you drop dead of starvation.

Agarest: Generations of War

Been looking out for this since my brain imploded playing Disgaea.

Norfolk Builds Hot Pursuit Fuzzbox For Real

Criminals across the country will be looking at their getaway cars with new uncertainty today because the police have unveiled a powerful weapon in the fight against crime.

The Lotus Evora police car is the fastest in the UK with a top speed of 168mph and a 0-60mph sprint of less than five seconds. Staying out of reach of the long arm of the law just became a lot more difficult.

Playstation Official App - out now on iPhone and Android

Like the title says, hit up your App store and enjoy!

Just trying now on my HTC Desire:

Sign in is straightforward, friends are listed in a mad order, those online you have to dig for.

Have to touch a name to see what they are playing, only after fetching in this way does it show on the friends list - how daft - other 3rd party apps to a better job.

The build in game browser is good to quickly dial up games info for your pub discussions I guess. Yeah I have Google for that don't I?

There is nothing special about this, but it's slick. Lets hope they give it a bit of welly, adding messaging would render it almost useful.

This Went Under The Radar

Got a call yesterday from BB to say they had finally located the game disc for Blood Drive, so i picked it up afterwork, they knocked a fiver off for messing me around so it only stood me at 15 beer tokens in all. I have to say i am v.pleased with the game, it's not original by any means, arena based car combat! Carmageddon, Twisted Metal, Vigilante8, you should know the score. But it does have teh Zombeez!!1! The gameplay and controls are solid, the graphics pretty nice, someone said it used GTAs engine, not sure how true that is mind. And you know what, it's FUN (and cheap) and has that you gotta keep moving or you're deadness to it that Unreal Tourny has, there is no room/time to camp and when i hit my first 25Kill Streak i couldn't help but grin like a mad bastard, cars + weapons + cliches + zombies = a good laugh.
It has the sort of game modes you'd expect, capture the flag (skull), elimination, kill everything, head to head, checkpoint races. you pick you vehicle/driver at the start of the round and the roulette wheel spins to name your rival, you get bonus points for beating them, or killing them, it's up to you. There are no perks, XP, killstreaks or any of that bollocks, everyone starts on a level field each game. can't get much fair than that.
All in all, a big bowl of Frosted Flakes sprinkled with zombie bits of approval.

Paedobear Gets his Own Game?

found while searching NDS ROM downloads :)

It only does Helghast

Update on my slim YLOD

I'm sure you'll recall my November post about my 10 month old 12oGB slim going the way of the YLOD, time for an update and hoping some of you have advice...

The PS3 has been fine once started, the YLOD is definitely from cold - at first I had to start in a few times, after 40-45 seconds it would YLOD and I'd have to try again. This degraded to the point where it takes half an hour of restarts to get it going. Once up, it stays up, and once warm it can be switched off for a few mins and still starts first time. So I've put up with that, I've taken to leaving it on 24-7. Need to get it sorted though.

Now last night I was watching ITV player when I got a BLUE SCREEN. I'd never heard of this, a Google does report a few people who have seen this, but I can't find an image of it which matches what I thought I saw. It was gone in an instant (I may have pressed something - probably why noone has captured it) and on reboot I had to set up HDMI, date etc. then hit an option to restore all user profiles.

After this, all is well except the primary account MrJimmy is now called User1 and the PSN accounts are gone for all users. I logged in again on my MrJimmy one, but games from other accounts require those accounts to be re-entered too.

Big Question: does all this use up one of the five activations, or is it smart enough to know it's the same PS3?

No idea if this Blue Screen of Death / BSOD is a HW or SW fail, but it's a prime ball-ache - you don't want one. If I go all user-accounty with it, then if my HW fix requires another re-entry, I could be eating up account uses like crazy. Have to make sure I deactivate if I can get it started before HW fix attempts.

Pissed off - I can't find the receipt and don't want to go without my main DVD/Blueray/Game machine for months with Sony anyway (if it's true they take a long time). Really gutted.

UPDATE: OK I've some massive backtracking to do here:

I dug out my bank statement which had the Toys R Us transaction on it for Feb last year, then I tracked down the well hidden support number for Playstation (it's 01923 476426, thanks saynoto0870.com) and made the call...

Call answered quickly, I explained the YLOD and the chap said this is no problem and a like for like (i.e. same age and model) refurbished unit will be couriered out on Monday for an 8am-6pm swap. I have to watch the courier open seals and give him my unit

I confirmed the serial number and place/date of purchase, this was all good enough, no fuss no bother - just a cheerful 'thanks thats fine'.

This is EXCELLENT SERVICE - really really impressed. He talked me though what I need to do, I kind of knew this anyway, so being Friday I've the following to do for Monday:

1 - get the sod started as is!

2 - run a backup of everything on there

3 - de-authorise my accounts so my limit of 5 is kept down.

4 - swap my hard-disk out and put back the original

5 - entertain my family on Sunday, they're all over for lasagne.!

Also regarding the 5 user limit, he mentioned that they can only address the limit if it is exceeded, so if I do have a problem getting this started I can call back, should my limit be reached. He mentioned gamesharing as a problem, fair do's.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: I paid way too much attention to hearsay on forums about Sony needing the receipts, sitting on repairs for months etc. whereas they now have a very efficient swap out service - well done Sony.

It's 2010 In Review Awards Time

Here are the top and bottom 5 games of 2010 by your favorite ex-pat hat wearing cynical gaming bastard. I'm with him totally for the top 3 in each catagory, what are your best/worst games of the last 52 weeks?

admittedly i was still playing the hell out of Borderlands for most of 2010, which should technically be my favorite game of the year. but i've gone cold turkey on that now. NOTHING before or since has even touched the replay value that game had. i may have spent similar hours on other games, but.. but... oh god i miss Borderlands.. sob sob sob pout sob...

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[Off Topic] - Rap News Wikileaks

But Is It Art?

And is hooning A CRIME? Had a fun set of head-to-head races last night against my fellow petrolhead Serial_K113R, shame there is no LAN option in this game, which is a bit odd, but there's much that doesn't make sense in GT5... Online wasn't as smooth as i'd liked last night even on standard setting, with my mates car frequently jinking around in front of me on the track, bizzare seeing as he's practically sitting in the same room as me. i've had smoother games from people on the other side of the planet.

Well, back to work tomorrow.. joy.. kind of got used to dossing around like the great unwashed masses, can kind of see why they do it. If daytime tv wasn't so bad i'd have more time off ;P

Looking forward to Mass Effect 2 in a few weeks, shame it clashes with Little Big Planet 2, that can wait. 2011 is looking a bit bleak for me on games i'm really hyped for. Way too many sequels and not enough innovation for my tastes. says teh guy who has GT5.