Inspired by Games Radar’s article The greatest game on every platform I decided to put together my own list choosing a class of hardware at a time. In today’s installment I’ve chosen the consoles from the 4th Generation (according to Wikipedia)…
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
 In comparison to its younger brother the SNES had a wonderful design, where as the NES looked like a cheap lunchbox with the coloured buttons and curvy design the SNES tells you immediately: “this is going to be fun” – and fun it was. I didn’t own a SNES myself but I borrowed one for a time and had plenty of play-time on what most people regard as the classics, and two out of my three games here are all time classics irrespective of platform.
 Probably the most obvious choice and a defining moment for the genre, the console and perhaps the era is 2D fighting legend Street Fighter 2: Turbo Edition. There were a few versions of Street Fighter released on the SNES and whilst I feel justified in combining them into one for the sake of simplicity it’s the Turbo Edition that stood out for me, never before had we seen such a fast-paced twitchy fighting game packed with special moves and combos – it was a joy to behold but a real labour of love to master.
 Another clear stand-out game is Super Mario Kart, oddly I stand out as being one of the small minority of gamers who has never particularly liked the Mario Kart games but I still recognise it for the landmark it is and I am well aware of how popular the game remains up to this day (with DS and Wii versions selling like hot-cakes). The game made good use of the common SNES graphical trick of rotating a 2D plane to give a 3D look and feel (known as Mode 7) and it pretty-much fooled everyone causing the work to fall in love with the game and the console.
 Lastly is another Mode 7 masterpiece – Pilotwings. Whilst it never really provided the ‘thrills and spills’ of more action-packed genres this parachute, gliding qnd flying simulator really opened peoples eyes to what you could do with the simplest of 3D implementations. Even when I re-play the game today I still get that sense of airy lightness that the game gives off in a combination of perfect graphics and sound.
Sega Megadrive / Genesis
 Alongside the SNES, Sega’s Megadrive (or Genesis in the US) was one of the significant era-defining consoles in video gaming history, between the two consoles they’re responsible for turning a generation of kids into gamers and despite the potential fanboy-vs-fanboy flamewar fallout I’d put them both on a par for their impact on and input to the video gaming world. Always much more drab than the SNES, the Megadrive and Megadrive II were compact little black units that didn’t really ooze fun but provided me with some of my most fun gaming experiences.
 It’s inevitable that I’m going to mention the Megadrive’s flagship game: Sonic the Hedgehog, a game I must of completed more than twenty times and I honestly don’t think that there is a more perfect example of a platform game out there. Whilst also available on the Master System it’s the 16-bit graphics and sound that really allowed Sega to pull off one of the platform’s first truly cartoon-like games, bettered in graphical style only by the Disney games: Castle of Illusion, World of Illusion and Fantasia.
 It’s difficult to stop myself from rambling on and on about Megadrive games but I’ll try to limit myself to a few more titles that I believe either defined a genre or brought about a new change in direction for gaming. My stand-out game here is Desert Strike, a top-down isometric combat helicopter sim. that required the user not only to get to grips with a bizarre control method but also added a degree of mission planning and forethought by forcing the player to think about fuel, ammo and hostage rescue whilst trying to complete the missions handed out.
 One genre that really seemed to take off in the 4th generation of consoles and I think particularly on the Megadrive was sports titles, one clearly landmark title was EA’s FIFA International Soccer – the game that started one of gaming’s most successful series. Whilst also available on the Master System again it was really took 16-bit graphics and speed to get the genre going with the followup game FIFA Soccer 95 being a Megadrive exclusive and other franchises throwing their hats into the ring such as NBA Jam, Madden NFL, NHL Hockey, NHLPA Hockey, PGA Tour Golf and so on.
Other honourable mentions go to sideways-scrolling beat-em-ups Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage II, classic 2D fighting game Mortal Kombat, mini-racer Micro Machines and the weirdo sandbox title Toejam and Earl.
Sega Add-ons: Mega-CD & 32X
One of Sega’s biggest problems and I think a major contributor to its eventual downfall is that they were always high on their on supply, they believed in their grand vision just a little too much. This attitude led them to fragment the market by releasing the Sega-CD and later the 32X, add-ons that few people understood and which never really received enough attention from developers to build up a good library of titles.
 The Mega-CD was unit that fit either underneath the original Megadrive or alongside the Megadrive II holding the main console in a sort of cradle, it provided a CD-ROM drive which would naturally allow much higher volumes of data to be stored alongside real CD-quality sounds, Full Motion Video (which was mainly grainy and pointless) and some additional graphics horsepower. The problem was that most games of the era didn’t really need that and consequently most titles released seemed to be much more like technology showcases than decent playable games (Night Trap I’m looking at you). This time I’m not going to pick a ‘best game’ out of the pile I’ve got because I honestly don’t believe that any of them rate higher than the standard Megadrive titles.
 The 32X was a strange beast indeed, meant to up the power of the Megadrive to a 32-bit level it was a mushroom-like lump that was attached directly to the cartridge bay of the main console and in turn took specially designed cartridges itself, there were never really many games available for the 32X and I imagine the whole project lost a lot of money for Sega. Still, some titles really showed off a level of power beyond that of any other equivalent on the standard 4th gen. consoles, found Virtua Racing Deluxe and Doom to be two of the best available.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: 32X, console, Desert Strike, EA, FIFA, games, Genesis, Mario, Mario Kart, Master System, Mega-CD, Megadrive, NES, nintendo, Pilotwings, sega, SF2, SNES, Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter II, Super Nintendo, Video Games
Inspired by Games Radar’s article The greatest game on every platform I decided to put together my own list choosing a class of hardware at a time. In today’s installment I’ve chosen the consoles from the 2nd and 3rd Generation (according to Wikipedia)…
Nintendo Entertainment System
 Despite being a ‘classic’ system when I try to think back I’m not swamped in lists of awesome games to choose from, many of the games were passable but this was clearly an era where consoles were trying to find their place and I’m not convinced that the NES had the best to offer from it’s generation. That said, there are a handful of games that stand out as historic monuments as well as being superb games, the first and most obvious being Super Mario Brothers.
 I loved the original Super Mario Bros and I still think it’s worth a play even now, the general public opinion seems to rate the third installation in the series as being the better but for me the honour will always go with the original. Clearly, SMB3 was superior in terms of graphics and audio quality but I found the controls to be a mite irritating and the game generally obsessed with a little too much ‘cleverness’ and not enough focus on classic platform action.
 Of course I can’t talk about the NES without mentioning Duck Hunt, arguably the first console First Person Shooter and whilst it wasn’t a technical first I think it’s pretty likely to be the first light-gun game many people played. Quite simply you had a gun and your aim was to shoot the ducks flying onto the screen, it sounds very simple but the novelty and fun-factor meant that I spent quite some time playing the game both on my own and with friends.
 One other honourable mention for the NES has to be Arkanoid, a breakout clone and probably the only version of breakout that most people can ever remember by name. Personally I always loved the breakout version that came on the ZX Spectrum intro tape and the excellent Moraff’s Blast but Arkanoid still brings back fond memories of a bygone genre in gaming.
Sega Master System
 For me, there was always something special about the Master System, I didn’t own one myself at the time but played on a friend’s console relatively often and even borrowed it one time when he was on holiday (I barely got off the thing). It’s hard not to be partisan on some level but where I believe Sega managed to gain the edge of Nintendo was in the cartoon-like feeling the games had. The first crop of NES games I played all suffered from the blocky, pixellated look of the early console games but somehow Sega’s hardware managed to capture a bright and vivid cartoon world that you could actually control, it might not have been a ‘first’ but it sure felt like it at the time.
 I can’t possibly name it as the best Master System game and whilst Sega’s original flagship platformer Alex Kidd in Miracle World was no where near as good as the Mario games it had a real charm to it and despite the sometimes intensely frustrating gameplay I must have spent hours and hours playing through the levels trying to beat them faster than before, trying not to die or just for the hell of it.
 As I think through this post I’m not convinced I’ll ever be able to pick a favourite game on the Master System but of all the games I enjoyed, I probably enjoyed Power Strike the most and for the longest period of time. I don’t think this would’ve been the first vertical scrolling shooter I ever played but something grabbed me about it, the difficulty and availability of power-ups are finely tuned to make the game challenging but not frustratingly difficult, a hard line to set in the shoot-’em-up world where you can never please both hardcore players and casual gamers.
Other honourable mentions in the Master System world are Double Dragon (my favourite version), the absurdly psychedelic Fantasy Zone and the brilliant (yet simultaneously rubbish) Pro Wrestling.
Atari 2600
 My brother had a 2600, specifically the “Jr.” pictured here as opposed to the wood-grain standard 2600. I didn’t play on it a great deal (he was bigger than me) but it was one of my first experiences of gaming and literally my first experience of gaming at home (this inspired me to ask my parents for a ZX Spectrum). There were so many classic games released on the 2600 that it was unreal and I’m not convinced I can directly attribute them to the 2600 as many were arcade ports, I’m talking about games like Centipede, Space Invaders, Frogger and Q*bert among many others that you MUST have played at some point in your life.
 Despite all that though, the one game I just couldn’t stop playing whenever I got my hands on the 2600 was Jungle Hunt. I have never seen Jungle Hunt since on any other platform and even though I know that there were other ports I will forever associate it with the 2600.
written by thirtyfootscrew
Inspired by Games Radar’s article The greatest game on every platform I decided to put together my own list choosing a class of hardware at a time. In today’s installment I’ve chosen the ‘Micro Computers’ which I take to mean those systems that were definitely not PCs (or Apples) but definitely were not consoles either…
 ZX Spectrum My first ever gaming machine was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K and I loved it, at the age of eight years old being given a system so flexible that you write your own games was amazing and largely responsible for my entire IT career. Despite writing my own (very basic) games from time to time I also had a load of games and among the many tapes I had there were a few that really stand out for me.
 Fantasy World Dizzy was a basic platformer released by the Oliver Twins and published by the (then) much respected and admired Codemasters, it was years ahead of its time and literally wowed me with it’s cartoon-style graphics (sounds ridiculous now I know). Operation Wolf, one of the handful of games that supported the ZX Spectrum light gun and probably the only truly decent one (come on, Bullseye was crap in comparison). It was also possibly the first pseudo-FPS game I ever played and definitely gave me the thrills and excitement that would later come from games like Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty 4. The other game I feel compelled to mention is Alchemist, I’m not aware that it was ever especially popular but it’s blend of platformer and adventure puzzle game had me playing for hours and hours – perhaps the earliest game that I was completely immersed in.
BBC Micro
 The BBC Micro was the first computer I ever used at school (and possibly the first real computer I ever used), at the time my Primary School was relatively advanced for the area in technology terms and although we only had the one computer we did have an hour-long ‘lesson’ with it every couple of weeks in small groups. Brilliantly (and probably because the teacher didn’t know what she was doing) we ended up playing games in these lessons and the main game we played was Granny’s Garden.
 Granny’s Garden was a educational adventure games (think Oregon Trail crossed with Wizard of Oz) which was essentially a text-adventure with the odd graphical screen here and there. This really introduced myself and a generation of kids to the idea of computer games and that you had the freedom to explore a world inside the computer. Other than the handful of (again, basic) games I wrote for the BBC whilst in Secondary School I didn’t really play that many other games but one piece of software that was pioneering at the time and for many years later was the Domesday Project published in 1986.
 The Domesday Project was a very early version of Google’s Streetview and came on a couple of giant laserdiscs (like a CD but SO much bigger), I only saw this in the early nineties and even then it was revolutionary. It allowed you to browse a map of the UK and view photos that had been selected as representative of that area, nothing like the coverage that Google Maps or Streetview has but still it allowed you to explore the country in a way that had never been previously possible.
Commodore 64
At this point I have to admit that sadly I never had much exposure to the Commodore 64, a friend of mine had one and I remember playing International Karate+ and Commando.
Commodore Amiga+ Atari ST
 It doesn’t seem fair to combine these two platforms as they both had unique and distinct selling points but their similarity (and the comparatively poorer sales of the ST) resulted in so many games being released on both platforms and being practically identical. By the time these platforms had gained popularity I had migrated to the PC as a gaming (and general mucking about) platform so I only experienced them via friends but I never really found anything to make me favour one platform over the other.
 Their place in the history of gaming is nothing short of a landmark, this was probably the first time that many people used a mouse and perhaps the first time they’d used a fully-featured GUI and desktop environment. I believe that this extra level of usability, relatively low price point and availability of games brought computing into a lot of households and expanded their use (the ST became a popular tool of choice for early music creators. Because of my limited exposure to the platform it’s hard for me to choose specific games that in my eyes ‘belong’ to these systems but of those I played I did really enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the magnificent Sensible Soccer.
 In my eyes Sensible Soccer was more of a PC game but was vastly popular on both the Amiga and the ST, one of my all time favourite sports games – all three versions benefited enormously from having keyboard controls as well as having the keyboard to make editing teams much easier. The game had an inherent humour about it anyway as you made your ineffective little men scurry around in up to 8 directions missing the ball on every other tackle attempt but the humour really came out in the team editing. My friends and I would spend almost as much time making up themed teams (Monty Python characters, rude words, friends names, etc.) as playing the game but it was absolutely worthwhile when you got to play a full World Cup of custom teams.
written by thirtyfootscrew
After what seems like an age since the original announcement I finally managed to get into Playstation Home today which despite all the waiting is only in the Open Beta phase, basically if everyone loves it they’ll go live soon but if everyone thinks it sucks then they’ll keep in in beta and fix the dodgy bits.
So, what’s the verdict? On balance, it’s a definite ‘meh’ with a handful of annoyances.
My first annoyance started with the character creation screens, they give you endless options for customising the face but an absurdly small number of choices for clothing and hairstyles (most of which make you look like a weirdo or someone you’d love to punch). It definitely doesn’t have the slickness of either the Nintendo or Microsoft equivalents and Sony’s aim for a little more accuracy means that whilst my Mii or 360 avatar look kinda-sorta-almost-ish like me, my PS3 avatar just looks like somebody else. In fact I’d almost rather have a generic RPG character creation engine like the one in Oblivion, my PS3 guy looks no more like me than an Argonian.
On first entry into Home you’re put into you bland but theoretically swanky apartment, forced to endure a clunky tutorial (I’m not sure if it crashed, ended naturally or whether I quit) and left to explore. Here comes my second problem with Home, with the initial install (77mb downloaded at the PS3’s standard bitrate of 300 baud) includes only your apartment so when you come to explore you have to choose which ‘area’ you want to go to and spend five minutes pacing the floor of your tedious apartment whilst it downloads. This is classic Sony, why make life easy when you can make the user do the work for you?
The areas available right away in the beta are a movie theatre, a bowling alley, a shopping mall and a central space through which you can access the other locations. I had a little wander through all of them and I think the one I most enjoyed was the central square, it’s quite a good place to meet-up with people and in the background there are some giant billboards that play trailers, this might seem like ramming ads down your throat (it is) but it works and can be enjoyable – I loved the Loco Roco 2 trailer.
Once I’d watched all of the trailers I thought I’d try and chat to someone, the problem is that I (like most people) don’t bother with voice chat on the PS3 and (like most people) don’t have a keyboard plugged in. The result of this is that you’re stuck with the pre-canned phrases or using the on-screen-keyboard, I tried this but whoever I spoke to got fed-up of waiting for me to type and wandered off. I wasn’t that bothered really as I doubt most people in there are worth talking to, I was in the public areas of Home for no less than three minutes before I heard one avatar asking another “can I touch your nipple?”. Nice.
Despite my criticisms the basic premise, structure and execution of Home are actually quite good, it feels like an MMO or at least it feels like Phantasy Star Universe without the gameplay elements. There are some teething troubles (choppy framerate in busy areas) and there’s nowhere near enough open space to hang out in than I’d expected. I also like the fact that you can customise your space but it’s absurd to make people pay for that priviledge, as soon as I realised that a yellow rubber duck costs £0.59 ($1 or thereabouts) I walked right back out of the store and thought “Not. Going. To. Happen. ”.
I’ll be very suprised if the micro-transaction route takes off, I could see bundles working (e.g. ‘Contemporary’ furniture pack or a whole wardrobe of clothes from GAP. But I don’t think the Second Life model will work so well. Personally I think that this whole consumer-gouging practice is counter productive, it would make more sense to me if companies like Diesel, DKNY, FCUK, Ralph Lauren, YSL, etc. actually paid Sony to give some of their virtual clothing to the gaming community for free – that’s how advertising’s supposed to work, it’s meant to be free to the victim viewer!
The big question is – what is it for? I can see friends coming in here to chat before playing games, although it could do with some kind of social networking component for that to become really useful. If I think about my own behaviour though the picture isn’t so rosy, I don’t play online (that what the Xbox 360 is for), will I buy furniture and clothes in here? No. Will I watch trailers in here? No, Gametrailers or YouTube are easier. Will I try and make new friends in here? Hell No. Will I go back in there before the next major content release? Probably not.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: , 360, Avatar, Home, Mii, mmo, nintendo, playstation, Playstation Home, ps3, sony, xbox, xbox 360
All you have to do is dial these on your mobile phone (press up on the D-Pad twice to get ‘manual dial’ mode)…
Advanced Weapons – GUN-555-0100
Climate Change – HOT-555-0100
Health – DOC-555-0100
Health And Weapons – GTA-555-0100
Spawn Cognoscenti (Mafia Car) – CAR-555-0142
Spawn Sanchez (Dirt Bike) – MBK-555-0150
Spawn FBI Buffalo – CAR-555-0100
Spawn Turismo – CAR-555-0147
Spawn NRG900 – MBK-555-0100
Spawn Comet – CAR-555-0175
Spawn SuperGT – CAR-555-0168
Spawn Police Chopper – FLY-555-0100
Spawn Jetmax (Boat) – WET-555-0100
Weapons – GUN-555-0150
Wanted Level Down – COP-555-0100
Wanted Level Up – COP-555-0150
Note that on the 360 if you use these codes you’ll no longer be able to gain acheivements on that save game.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Cheats, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, GTA4
In November 2006 Microsoft added the ability to have your Xbox 360 automatically download new Xbox Live Arcade trial games, it’s a great feature but for too long I’ve just let it stack up with millions of trial games and it’s about time I sorted the wheat from the chaff and decided if there’s anything worth buying. I’m going to chip away at my list of 81 games (although some I’ve played and own) until I get rid of all the trials and today’s my first 10…
 Asteroids & Deluxe – Some old rehashes work (Pacman CE) and others don’t. This seems like an utterly pointless remake and doesn’t seem to provide any of the old-school fun it ought to.
 Battlestar Gallactica – Not my cup of tea but seems well put together, kind-of odd that it’s a space flight sim yet you seem to be retricted to a 2D plane.
Bliss Island – no idea what the bloody hell is going on here, don’t seem to be able to actually do much.
Every Extend Extra Extreme – WTF? Seriously, I can’t see the game here – you just wait until you’re surrounded, press A then watch the pretty colours. It seems bizarre to play a game, not have a clue about what you’re doing and still score 7,056,824,249 points.
Ikaruga – Back in the day I used to like scrolling shooters, I always wanted to try Ikaruga but I never got to. The gameplay doesn’t really disappoint, it’s more the narrow vertical nature of it leaves me feeling empty – like I’m wasting two thirds of my TV screen whilst squinting at what’s left trying to work out what’s going on.
Metal Slug 3 – Fun game, a bit silly but definitely not worth 800 points. Oddly this game seemed to screw up my Xbox Live connection I was in a voice chat at the time so I was rather pissed off.
Omega Five – I lasted for about 15 seconds in total and I would rather be punched in the face than play this for another second.
Street Trace NYC – I think the publishers would like it to be “Tony Hawks on Steroids” but it’s actually “Tony Hawks on Life Support”. Do yourself a favour, keep your cash, go on eBay and buy yourself an Original Xbox copy of a Tony Hawks Pro Skater game and you’ll get way more value for money.
 Track & Field – Oddly this is as fun and compelling as it ever was, I’m not 100% sure if I’ll buy it yet but it’s definitely a candidate.
Tron – Terrible, it upsets me that this game exists. It disgusts me that it’s been remade.
So it’s as I thought – they’re mostly rubbish. On a side note, all hail to the glorious Microsoft Points Converter – what an awesome little tool.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: 360, Asteroids, Battlestar Gallactica, Bliss Island, Every Extend Extra Extreme, Ikaruga, Metal Slug 3, Omega 5, Street Trace NYC, Track & Field, Tron, XBLA, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade
The original Gran Turismo game was a triumph in my eyes, the first time a game had ever made driving feel even remotely realistic and it was the main reason I bought a Playstation. I spent hours and hours tuning up cars and racing the same tracks repeatedly to gain minor improvements or to win special prize cars, but on the release of Gran Turismo 2 I had moved on to other gaming pastures and didn’t really find the time for all of the tweaking and racing that the series demands of it’s players. Between then and now I did get to play both GT3 and GT4 and there wasn’t really a whole lot to draw me back to the series because by then I’d gotten back into the FPS genre and was loving Unreal Tournament, Half Life & Red Faction more than anything else. In more recent years though my interest in driving games has been piqued once more, starting with Project Gotham 1 and 2 which though ‘arcadey’ in style were pretty involved racing games. On the current generation of consoles I found myself disappointed in PGR3 but enjoyed Forza 2 considerably, though I never really found the time to plumb the depths it had to offer. So if there’s been any time in the last decade that I’ve had the potential to get back into racing sims then now is the time, and I’m actually quite excited.
I got hold of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue a couple of days after launch, on a nice lazy Sunday afternoon following a lie-in and a McDonalds breakfast so naturally I was in a good mood. Unfortunately the mood was soured slowly and gradually as I spent 15 minutes installing the game only to find I had to spend an additional 45 minutes updating it before I could start racing, clearly – this is not what I bought a console for. Once the hour of admin was out of the way (in which I spent £30 on eBay, checked my credit rating and helped bake scones) I launched the game and watched the intro which is graphically stunning but doesn’t quite manage the spine-tingling brilliance of the original GT1 intro. The menus are straight-forward and offer a couple of cool little features including a live rolling display of world track temperatures and when you leave the controller unattended the display shows panning shots of your current car in various pretty locations then flips to a replay if you leave it a little longer.
As with the other GT games the main menu presents you with access to an empty garage, a small sum of money and freedom to peruse a variety of dealership, I started off by buying a purple Mini Cooper S for 28,500 credits of the 35,000 you start with. The first thing I noticed about the game is that once you buy a car, that’s it – you just have to get in and race it, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to buy parts or tune the car at all – from what I’ve heard you unlock the ability to tune certain elements of the car once you’ve completed the A, B and C car classes. Getting into playing the game is pretty easy and once in there it’s relatively compelling and if you’re a noob like me you really can feel that there’s a lot to learn before you’ll have mastered the complex physics of the game. To help those of us who aren’t GT monsters (you know who you are) there’s an optional racing line indicator which not only gives you the best position to be in, it also shows where to break and calls out the required speed for certain tough corners. Regardless of your experience though I think everyone should at least turn off the traction control, by design it limits your ability to drift in the corners and makes the cars feel much too rigid and unfriendly.
The arcade section of the game adds a slightly different twist, offering the choice of all six tracks (High Speed Ring, Daytona Superspeedway, Fuji Speedway, Eiger Nordwand, Suzuka and London) on which you can enter a Time Trial, Drift Trial or a regular race. Before launching into the race you are offered a “Course Guide” which shows real video relating to the selected track accompanied by some annoyingly cheesy musak (along with much of the game), these are amusing but would be better accompanied by voice-over rather than scrolling text. The multiplayer facilities include a 2 player split screen mode (which appears to be as bearable as any split-screen racing) and the ability to race online, which consists of events similar to the single player game and seemed a little picky about which cars you were allowed to enter into which race. Once into the online game there’s a brief period of matchmaking before you’re thrown into a race, after which it plays just like a regular game. The play was a little laggy and a few cars seemed to ‘shimmer’ in and out of existence (though none dropped out) but I’ve seen worse in the past and I did have bittorrent running in the background. The most noticeable problem however was that the race was largely a jostle-fest with little semblance of fair play, I do wonder whether online racing games can really work with such a high number of players (my race had 11).
The other noteworthy features are the News feed, GT-TV and Rankings, all accessible from the main menu. News offers a mix of useful tips (currently talking about router setup, UPnP and port forwarding) and information about game issues, one mentions a workaround for a bug with the Rankings feature which allows you to see how you compare to other players online though there doesn’t seem to be any notion of ‘friends’ against which you could compare yourself.
All said and done, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue does exactly what it says on the tin – it offers a taster of what is to come and whilst really doesn’t feel quite like a full game I think there’s enough content in there to make it worth the £25 retail price (though if you’re savvy you can pick it up for £18 online). Will GT5P get me back into sim racing? Probably not. With GTA IV on the horizon I doubt I’ll spend too much time playing Prologue but the landscape may be different when the final game is release so who can possibly say?
Score: 8 / 10
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Gran Turismo, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, GT5, playstation, Polyphony Digital, ps3, sony
So everyone’s buzzing about Microsoft buying Yahoo and I’ve been trying to work out what my opinion is. My first thoughts were that (in Search at least) it’s just one ‘also ran’ buying another ‘also ran’, nothing too inspiring. I still think that’s true but it’s worth underscoring the fact that Microsoft are betting their business on Search and in turn on advertising. Over the last few years Microsoft have started transitioning to a ‘Software as a Service’ model and services in general (think Xbox Live), this is clearly an important extension of that. A lot of people see this as a bid to rival Google in Search but if you start applying the advertising model to IM, Flickr and perhaps even gaming.
As an industry gaming has grown to be larger than both the movie and music industries and the power to be able to sell-through ads into the Xbox dashboard and even into billboards and scenery inside games could be a huge market. I’m not sure that we (the public) will find out but look for signs of an API allowing developers to integrate Yahcrosoft ads into games, the buzz about in-game ads has been building for a while but it’s been crying out for a standard for developers to work to, well – here it is. On top of all that remember that there’s plenty of other cool stuff in the deal including Flickr (note that things like this are exactly the reason I stayed away from Flickr). It’ll be a while before this actually make a difference but keep your eyes open…
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: gaming, Merger, Microsoft, Search, xbox, xbox live, Yahcrosoft, yahoo
Anyone that’s used to seeing me around on forums, Xbox Live and occasionally the PSN may have noticed that I’ve been around less, in fact I’ve hardly been around at all and do you know the reason? I’m bored: bored of being treated like dirt by the games companies, bored with the lack of decent compelling games that have been coming out, bored with the useless online gaming services that are available, bored of the unsporting behaviour exhibited by the general FPS community and finally I’m bored of the childish fanboyistic attitude that pervades the gaming space (even among ‘adults’).
Now I’m not saying that I’ve left gaming for good, it’s my number one hobby and probably the one single activity I’ve done most in my life other than sleep, eat and work. I’m waiting for my problems to be solved, one way or another or perhaps like the majority of people in the gaming community I’ll just have to lower my standards and put up with the crap we’re being dealt. Here are but a few of the lowlights…
We’ll start with some history, the RROD saga was a brilliant example of gaming companies treating us like dirt. Microsoft denied the existence of a problem for ages, then finally came out with a half-arsed 3 year RROD warranty program which didn’t help much and still resulted in punters being sans-Console for anywhere between 4 and 10 weeks. On a different tangent there’s the lack of compelling games, last year’s much hyped “Perfect Storm” of games was little more than marketing and over-zealous reviewing. Bioshock was a good game and did the ‘FPS Story’ thing better than any game to date but I just found it underwhelming and almost nobody replays it more than twice (that being just for the achievements anyway). Halo 3 was the probably the biggest disappointment in gaming ever, many a fanboy will wax lyrical about how good it is but the truth is that (direct competitors) Orange Box and Call of Duty 4 outstripped it in almost every way – not just my opinion, check the wider gaming community and sites like Metacritic and you’ll see what I mean. Mass Effect had a lot of promise but I found it to be almost unplayable. Lately I’ve probably enjoyed the few games I’ve played on the Wii more than I have the Xbox games (read on for reasons) and the PS3 is still dead to me. I sold all of my PS3 games, had a fit of optimism and bought more only to find that they’re still only average and not worth the money so I sold them again – it still makes a brilliant upscaling DVD player though.
More recently we’ve had the Xbox Live service issues, whilst also being another example of games companies treating us like crap this meant that after finally finding a game I loved playing I could barely get into a stable game for at least three weeks – made all the more irritating by the fact that it coincided with me having some time off of work. On the occasions that I could get in a stable game I ended up playing with and/or against a bunch of useless camping arseholes who managed to suck almost all of the fun out a fantastic game. Microsoft’s response? To give us an already released game for free, probably meaning that it wasn’t selling well in the first place and anyone who had it already gets bugger-all, nice one Microsoft – you really learned from the RROD saga didn’t you. The next issue on my list (we’ll call it the ‘Camping F***tard’ or ‘CF’ problem) has been building for a while, I really don’t understand what compels people to boot up a fast-paced FPS game only to go and lie at the back of the arena with a sniper rifle, hide in a corner for the whole match with a Saw, sit next to flag points without taking/defending them, or just constantly throw frag grenades at spawn points and gain kills for doing bugger all. These people don’t even win most of the time, Private Custard and I go into these matches and cream everyone most of the time but come out the other end having not enjoyed a single minute of it, it’s just not fun if everyone else on your team is being a wanker.
Finally to address the fanboys out there: it’s OK for people to have a different opinion to you. No, really. If I have one opinion and you have another we can discuss it without having to result to insults and if you like a game and I think it’s rubbish that doesn’t mean I hate you, it doesn’t mean that I think you’re a bad person, it just means that we’re different. At the end of the day neither of us are dissing eachother’s friends, family, race, religion or political affiliation (things I find people tend to get touchy about), next time you feel deeply hurt and wounded that someone doesn’t think that [INSERT GAME HERE] is the OMG-est thing in the world just remember that it’s a game and games are meant to be fun – if you like it and somebody else doesn’t then it’s their loss. The one thing I tend to do when I’m bored of my games collection is chat on forums and frankly, you guys are making bored of doing that too.
Well, that’s my little rant over with. I’ll keep up with the gaming news and eagerly look forward to GTA4, I still trust Rockstar to pull something awesome out of the bag but until then I might see you online or I might not. I’m starting to enjoy my photography a bit more now and work’s getting busier so with my limited time I’ll probably not be gaming so much – unless everything else pisses me off!
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: fanboy, gaming, Rant
I’ve given up, that’s it – I finally admitted that the PS3 is worthless as a games console and I’ve traded-in all of my PS3 games. Admittedly I only had three, but those three are often the subject of much adoration from Sony fanboys desperate to justify their expenditure, for me they break down as follows:
Resistance Fall of Man
A passable FPS, would’ve stood out about 5 years ago but now feels dated. Clearly a first-cut by a developer used to creating kiddie platformers, I mean no disrespect as the Insomniac guys because they seem quite amiable but on any other console this would’ve gotten lost amongst all the other titles.
Motorstorm
I can’t say too much about this since I only played it a few times and each time I did a few laps and almost died of boredom, the feel of the game was pretty good but the arbitrarily difficult physics (’smack into something solid and survive’ vs. ‘barely clip something and get trashed’) got on my nerves and at no point did anything make me want to persevere, hell – Need For Speed Most Wanted had me hooked for longer.
Warhawk
What can I say? After so much raving from the community I thought “this is a game I have to buy” so I did. I really should stop being so optimistic. For starters the whole SixAxis control method is way to spongy, I just seemed to flop around and not really get very far so I turned it off only to find that it’s the game that’s a bit weird and I find the third-person perspective made me feel so disconnected from the experience. On the plus side I will say that the maps are nice and big (though that seemed to make for long games with low kill counts) and the connection seemed to be very smooth even for very large matches (when managed to get into a game).
So now I’m left with my PSN titles – Super Rub-a-Dub (I love it), Tekken Dark Resurrection (I love it), Flow (it’s OK) and Calling All Cars (thoroughly disappointing). I don’t really plan to buy any more PS3 games until I’m certain that they’re any good, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune seems to be getting love from the community but the rest of the top games on the PS3 are multi-platform anyway so I’ll just stick with the 360.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: 360, Motorstorm, ps3, PSN, Resistance Fall of Man, Video Games, Warhawk, xbox
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