Category: Games

Bestest Games 2014 Edition

Back in 2005 I posted my bestest games (horrible title) from the last 20 years. A couple of months back I felt it was due a refresh so here are my bestest games from the last 30 years.

Games

Flickr have stopped supporting their hover notes so instead the list is below. A few iOS games have crept onto the list as well as some 360 and PS3 updates but some classics have never really been bettered.

  1. F-Zero – 1991 SNES – An almost perfect futuristic racing game. Time trialling was a real challenge. Wasted far too long trying to shave a few hundredths of lap times. Future F-Zero’s never recaptured the magic.
  2. Portal 2 – 2011 – Xbox 360 – Follow up to Portal this was a great first person puzzle game that had a batch of single and co-op puzzles as you battled against GLaDOS.
  3. Super Mario 64 – 1996- N64 – Never been bettered. Still enjoy firing up the emulator and tackling another couple of levels as it’s such a fun game.
  4. Bioshock – 2007 – Xbox 360 – A first person shooter with an original story, stylish graphics and a way of getting in your head like no other. Loved it.
  5. Ferrari F355 Challenge – 2000 – Dreamcast – One of the hardest console racers, not just of it’s time, but across the various consoles I’ve played. Looked great at the time but it’s sobering to think how 1 car and 10 tracks were enough to satisfy everyone. Now we want double the tracks and hundreds of cars.
  6. GTA V – 2013 – Xbox 360 – Latest in the series and by far the best. Play as one of three characters, take part in heists and a truly massive world to roam around complete with multiplayer. It looks better than it should have on a 360 and I’ll probably pick up for the PS4 when it get’s re-released this year.
  7. Head Over Heels – 1987 – Amstrad CPC 464 – A cracking isometric game that I played to death. Graphics were groundbreaking at the time and it was pretty humorous too with a great soundtrack and effects.
  8. The Last Of Us – 2014 – PS4 – Action and survival game with a great story, graphics and music. Best game on PS3 and looks amazing remastered on the PS4.
  9. Ico – 2011 – PlayStation 3 – I ignored this title on the PS2 finally picking it up on the PS3. Puzzle/platformer with each room viewed from a fixed point but a camera that focuses on your character. One of those games that doesn’t appear to offer much but leaves an impression that is hard to forget.
  10. Fez – 2012 – Xbox 360 – A puzzle platformer that looks more at home on a SNES than current consoles and relies less on pixel perfecting jumping than puzzle solving at a more relaxed pace. A classic.
  11. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 – 2003 – PlayStation 2 – The best football game on a console. Local multiplayer only but it was the game of choice at the time for football fans and it was fantastic. Later versions added online but it was awful…and Fifa eventually took Pro Evo’s crown as it beefed up on gameplay and in particularly won online.
  12. Goldeneye 007 – 1997 – N64 – For me still Rare’s best game. Perfect Dark was good but always enjoyed Goldeneye more, maybe because it was first.
  13. The Secret of Monkey Island – 1991 – PC – Still my favourite Lucasarts game. It was funny, captivating and great to look at. The music was also memorable.
  14. Burnout Paradise – 2009 – Xbox 360 – Best of the Burnout series and the best open world racing game so far. Developed by Criterion it featured great challenges, a memorable soundtrack and an online party system that worked really well.
  15. Super Mario World – 1990 – SNES – My first SNES game and probably the one I played the most (behind any multi player). The level design was perfect, so many shortcuts in the game – you really could play it any way you want. When it was complete there were still coin challenges to do. A masterpiece.
  16. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – 2007 – Xbox 360 – The best Call of Duty multiplayer for me. Great maps and some innovation with games modes made it really enjoyable. Later versions just never captured me the same way that Modern Warfare managed.
  17. Forza 2 – 2007 – Xbox 360 – This was such a complete racing game. Lots of tracks and car’s so if you liked to race you were well catered for. Add to that a detailed tuning and setup option for each car which were a tinkerers delight. Finally a skinning engine that allowed for 1000 layers of graphics so artists could spend there time in that part of the game. With a marketplace to buy and sell setups and skins I had a friend who never raced but spent all his time creating amazing skins for cars….and made far more money than I ever did racing.
  18. Elite – 1985 – Amstrad CPC 464 – Space trading epic. Almost 30 years since I played this and I can still remember what a pig it was to dock all while the Blue Danube played in the background. Just bought Elite Dangerous which will hopefully recapture the magic.
  19. Tetris – 1985 – Gameboy – Has any other game sold a platform more then Tetris? The Gameboy was an essential purchase just to play this. Multiplayer at school with this (using cable to connect two machines) was amazing.
  20. SoulCalibur – 1999 – Dreamcast – The reason I bought a Dreamcast. It’s graphics remained untouched for a couple of years, it’s fight mechanics were great and it had a lot of depth for a beat em up.
  21. Halo 3 – 2007 – Xbox 360 – I love all of the Halo games but this stands out the most. First Halo release on the 360 and the graphics were great. Bungie also addressed the de-ranking issues that had plagued Halo 2, the multiplayer was deep and well supported with lots of downloadable content and it also coined the phrase ‘get out’. Probably my most played online game.
  22. Left 4 Dead 2 – 2009 – Xbox 360 – A co-op first person shooter that was one of the first to really emphasise co-op so much so that you needed friends to get you through levels and there was a great feeling if you did manage to complete a level. The amount of enemies thrown at you was mental and every so often you’d hear one of your buddies shout ‘Tank!!!’ or ‘I’ve woken the witch……run!!!!!!’.
  23. The Bards Tale – 1985 – Amstrad CPC 464 – Simple graphics but more of a text adventure, and the first role playing game I ever played – weird – I’ve hardly played one since although I completed this at the time and loved it for weeks.
  24. Unreal Tournament – 1999 – PC – Came out at the same time as Quake III Arena and spanked it’s arse. The first FPS I played online and it’s something I’ll never forget. So fast, so addictive and the follow ups just never clicked for me as much as this.
  25. Red Dead Redemption – 2010 – Xbox 360 – GTA set in the wild west, Red Dead Redemption was so much more. Lots of sub games, a great story and horses. Sunsets. Zombies!
  26. Mercenary – 1985 – Amstrad CPC 464 – I played this on the Amstrad. Graphics are awful when you look at them but the plot and adventure was great and the sense of achievement when escaping the planet was massive. The overview map is fantastic and shows you the scale of the game which was ambitious for it’s day.
  27. Fifa 12 – Xbox 360 – 2011 – Fifa has become the best football game on consoles and I could have picked almost any year, but Fifa 12 saw a big step forward in online play and the mechanics were refined more than any other yearly release too. Importantly, the online actually worked too unlike some other years which have been buggy upon release and sometimes taken 3-4 weeks to resolve.
  28. Transport Tycoon – 1994 – PC – Another Uni favourite and was a massive time sink. Loved it.
  29. Carcassonne – 2010 – iOS – A slick single or multiplayer iOS game based on the German board game. I’ve been playing this for 4 years and it’s still compelling especially with the droop feed of add-on’s released by the games developers, The Coding Monkeys.
  30. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 – 2008 – Xbox 360 – Geometry Wars was a small game available in PGR2. A year later and this full title was released. It’s a shooter which is fast paced and the screen gets very, very busy as enemies and explosions fill the screen.
  31. Super Bomberman 2 – 1994 – SNES – Golden Bomber. I knew when to stop the roulette wheel…allegedly. If theres one game where I would expect to win before I start, this is it (and Pro Evo). Still love it to this day. Wasted sooooo many hours at Uni playing this. David and his speedy boots. Those were the days.
  32. Wip3out – 2000 – PlayStation – The whole Wipeout series was great but the third edition was the best on the PlayStation. Where is Wipeout for the PS4?
  33. Madden NFL 10 – 2009 – Xbox 360 – I’ve played Madden for years from early version on the SNES right through to current consoles. Madden 10 stands out as they made a number of improvements to gameplay which has been incrementally improved since. I’m also convinced that I played this version more than previous/future versions. A great game and very deep if you give it time.
  34. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – 1998 – N64 – Fantastic design, massive play area and it was great to play Zelda in a 3D environment.
  35. Street Fighter II – 1992 – SNES – I loved it. So did Shakeel. Unfortunately for me I hardly ever won on this game – still kept coming back for more and might have thrown the odd pad or two.
  36. Super Hexagon – 2012 – iOS – A twitch game that consumed many hours on the iPhone. Simple graphics and seemingly impossible at first but then you get better, figure out patterns, and it gets faster and faster and faster. A classic.
  37. Uncharted 2 : Among Thieves – 2009 – PS3 – Stunning adventure game that looked and played great. Preferred this to Uncharted 3.
  38. Sega Rally Championship – 1995 – Sega Saturn – A great game that saw some mighty local multiplayer games between me and Shak. Had much better feel than Daytona which was another Saturn classic.
  39. Half Life 2 – 2004 – PC – A game to upgrade your PC for. I loved this more than the original. The set peices were far more involving, the use of physics blew me away. 10 years on and we still await Half Life 3.
  40. Moto GP – 2002 – Xbox – Originally a demo for Xbox Live beta testers, Moto GP was a great showcase for Live. League racing and friendships made that are still there today. This took me back to F-Zero days – time trialling has never been so addictive and frustrating. Mugelllooooooo.
  41. Super Mario Kart – 1992 – SNES – So simple yet deep. So easy yet hard. So much fun. None of the follow up’s captured the feeling from this title nor the fun.
  42. Doom – 1993 – PC – My first FPS and it was such a step forward from what had come before.
  43. Gran Turismo – 1998 – PlayStation – First of the series and arguably the best as the others that followed have added very few new idea’s. In it’s day nothing could touch it and it ate up so much time.
  44. Descent – 1995 – PC – First true 3D game. Never has flying through passageways been such good fun. Played this so much at Uni. DESCENT!!!
  45. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter – 2006 – Xbox 360 – A first person shooter but this was far more slow paced and tactical. No game could offer gameplay like this – 8 mins of crawling around in bushes to then get shot and killed…or tens mins of sitting in a shed waiting for an attack. Online chat was legendary during this game but our group loved it. Blind siege was our online mode of choice.
  46. Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past – 1991 – SNES – One of the few console games that I’ve played through to a finish. Got the puzzle/arcade balance absolutely spot on and kept me captivated from beginning to end. A game I was sorry to finish.
  47. Command & Conquer:Red Alert – 1996 – PC – Classic strategy game. More came with better graphics but none were as much fun.
  48. Battlefield 3 – 2011 – Xbox 360 – It was a close run things but this was my favourite Battlefield and moved the FPS genre forward. It brought massive destruction to environments, there was no where safe on the map really and the vehicles were great. Battlefield 1942 back in the day was great but this was the best version of Battlefield for me.
  49. Project Gotham Racing 2 – 2003 – Xbox – The best online racer on consoles at the time. Despite the 30 fps and the dullish palette this is still my favourite online racer. Myself and David getting top 50 times in a Paris track is still a standout moment.

Destiny Alpha

It’s been hyped for years, it’s costing $500m and it’s the future for Bungie and for the last 4 days the Destiny Alpha has been available on the PS4.

Some quick thoughts after a few hours play:

  • The presentation is very slick throughout the Alpha
  • There are many nods to Halo throughout the game which I guess is no surprise
  • Graphically it’s impressive but some of the environments feel quite sparse, although again it’s an alpha and no doubt much more to come later in the year
  • The music and audio are great – really atmospheric
  • The more I played through the missions, the more it felt like Halo which while great as Halo is a game I really enjoyed, I was expecting a bit more. Working as a team, playing through a set piece and then moving on through to another set piece – all been done before.
  • Character customisation looks to be really deep with most locked off in the alpha. Three different classes to play through too.
  • Multiplayer was accessed via the Crucible. Two maps, basically hardpoint from Titanfall and while they played OK on moving back to Titanfall it showed that Destiny felt a bit lacking.
  • The firing mechanics are fine, just felt a but unsatisfying. Only really played with a couple of weapons so too early to tell if this is an issue
  • Ammo is limited in multiplayer – you have a heavy weapon for example but no ammo for it, with random and infrequent drops during the game.
  • It is a very pretty at times

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There is one big downside to the Destiny Alpha – it’s limited in scale and finished yesterday. The beta launches in July but the real game isn’t out until September. It’s going to be a long three months as despite some shortcomings I’m looking forward to the final release.

A final shout out to the PS4 which allows you to copy screens and video to a USB disk. Makes for easy transfer of great quality screen grabs and also allows you to show off some video from Destiny.

How In-app Purchases Has Destroyed The Industry

Great post from Thomas Baekdal that has gained a lot of attention on Twitter and other blogs on In-App Purchasing and how it has destroyed, not just destroying, gaming. Many have focussed on the fact it has ruined iOS as a gaming platform. Looking at the top grossing app’s today it’s galling to see just how large some of the IAP options cost.

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The screens above are from just a few of the top grossing games on the iPad. The amounts are horrific when you consider a PS4 or Xbox One full price game is around £49.99. Hard to see how this will change though. I don’t buy into the freemium games model and refuse to start a game that relies on IAP as a way to play. I’m sure many gamers are the same but it looks like the majority of casual gamers see it as a legitimate way to play.

What’s worse is the creep of IAP into full price gaming. Forza 5 for example has some shocking IAP’s for a full price game. I don’t think gaming on iOS or Android is finished, rather there’s a need for Apple and Google to make a stand against some of the ridiculous IAP offerings that developers are allowed to make. I also think the industry as a whole should be marking down these titles – use the app store reviews to mark these titles as 1 star, game review sites should be warning people accordingly too. Ultimately though it’s only by not handing over cash so readily that we will see a reverse in this trend. Wake up people.

The Unbelievable Xbox One

tl;dr – The Xbox One is a good console marred by frustrating usability issues and a lacklustre set of launch games. Wait 6 months, let some of the issues get addressed and choose between a PS4 and Xbox One after E3 in June 2014.

It’s been over three weeks since the Xbox One launch, the start of next gen console gaming (sorry Nintendo) in the UK. This time I’ll be smarter I said. This time I’m only buying one console (I had the 360 and PS3) as my gaming time has reduced and the first party titles will dictate the platform, not the hardware.

On paper, and from initial reviews of hardware and games, the PS4 is superior from a hardware perspective. Third party games on the PS4 look better and also perform better however looking at launch titles, the only first party game I wanted to play was Forza 5 and looking ahead, Titanfall and Halo 5 are also must haves. Coupled with the 360 being my console of choice for the last few years, Live being a far superior online experience and most of my gaming buddies plumping for the Xbox One, the choice was obvious and the Xbox One was ordered. While I’m not regretting the choice, the Xbox One is unbelievable in so many area’s.

Hardware
The Xbox One gets off on the wrong foot straight out of the box. The hardware is big, boxy and can be best described as industrial. Even ugly. The console is big and the power pack is external…and surprisingly it’s bigger than the 360’s power pack too. Bitten by the red ring of death, I think Microsoft have greatly increased their engineering tolerances with the One.

Unfeasibly large Kinect 2
Unfeasibly large Kinect 2

Also huge is the Kinect 2. Not just the camera and sensor itself, but the cable connecting the Kinect to the Xbox One. It’s so thick! It’s as if Microsoft found a job lot of RGB scart cables and decided to repurpose them. Worse, Microsoft are using a proprietary connector for the Kinect, which is really just USB 3, to stop you plugging it into a PC. That’s the only reason I can see and smacks of the same attitude when the original Kinect was launched.

Thankfully the Xbox One pad feels great in the hand. It’s seen small improvements over the 360 pad and is really comfortable. Rumble in the triggers is a really nice addition and thankfully they haven’t tweaked the layout too much. The dpad is much improved and even the addition of ridges on the sticks really helps.

Switching on the Xbox One and it’s pleasingly silent, well my second box was, more on that later. With it tucked away under the TV the offensive design is hidden from my eyes and instead I’m left with a powerful console that promises much. Microsoft are focussing the One not just on games, but as your entertainment hub. While this sounds good in principal and the demo’s of the voice controlled TV channel switching are compelling, in practise the UK isn’t supported at launch and even without the voice and channel integration, the Xbox One doesn’t play well with 50Hz UK broadcast signals. Oh dear.

Hardware Issues
Before going on to the operating systems and games a word on the hardware. After a couple of hours a noisier than expected fan was becoming annoying. I thought this was the Xbox that was silent? Over the launch weekend it didn’t get any better so after seeing an MS rep asking people with noisy fans to get in touch I raised a support call. 10 minutes of chat and troubleshooting (which involved rebooting the Xbox – that was it) and I was to raise a ticket and a new Xbox would be dispatched. The new one is certainly a lot quieter but with a few reported cases of really noisy drives it’s disappointing that hardware issues continue to affect Microsoft consoles. My pad also disconnects but not consistently. Sigh.

Setup and OS
Switch on the Xbox One for the first time and you’ll be asked to download the day one patch. At 500mb it’s not too bad but once downloaded it takes a few minutes to install. With that done the home screen is finally launched. Well this is different but familiar at the same time. Random tiles placed around the screen with no order to it. Move right to the store or left to your pins. Microsoft hasn’t learned from Windows 8 and instead has extended tiles to the Xbox platform and rather than touch is hoping that voice commands will be used to drive the console.

Are they insane?

The Xbox One's home screen
The Xbox One’s home screen

To be fair, navigating around via the pad is fine. The pins make sense although I’m sure they will get quite messy over time as more games and app’s come out. However it is a quick way of getting to a new demo for example which in the latest 360 dashboard is a navigation nightmare. By reducing the UI to 3 top level screens it’s also made it quicker to jump to various app’s and features, with the home button on the pad always taking you home.

Kinect voice commands
Kinect voice commands

Navigating via Kinect isn’t as successful. You can use voice commands or gestures to swipe and select. This doesn’t feel comfortable at all and is still pretty inaccurate. When voice works it works really well. The One is always listening so saying Xbox followed by a command will, as long as your voice is recognised, launch that action. So ‘Xbox record that’ will record a 15 second game clip, ‘Xbox Go Home’ will take you back to the home screen and ‘Xbox Snap [app]’ will snap an app to the right of the screen. Some of the phrases don’t make sense to me though. ‘Xbox show my stuff’ takes you back to the Home screen. Show my stuff is the best they could come up with? ‘Xbox On’ will wake up the Xbox, ‘Xbox off’ will switch off the Xbox. Actually, no – it’s ‘Xbox turn off’ to switch it off – why not turn on and turn off – why the difference? Why is there no ‘Xbox Eject’ to eject a disk? ‘Xbox Mute Chat’? ‘Xbox Screenshot’? It all feels a bit rushed and for me I have real difficulty in getting voice to work reliably. I’m Scottish. Cue Burnistoun.

Trying to get voice commands to work while friends are listening and shouting 11 clearly doesn’t help. Funny, but irritating. Navigating a UI via voice which only works every third or fourth attempt leads me to never trying voice and relying solely on the pad for navigating around the UI. A UI that has been developed to encourage voice and gesture not control via the pad. This doesn’t feel like a step forward, more like a design that forces you to use voice even when it isn’t reliable. Frustrating.

The dash performs quickly enough although it can stutter from time to time and some app’s can take a while to launch. A real step forward is that the One can multitask and while this is a benefit I’m sure some of the stutter and slower launches are down to the app’s or games that are currently running in the background. The multitasking is best seen with Snap. You can snap an app, web browser, party to the right hand side of the screen while your game or video is displayed on the rest of the area. This is handy but on first use it can be tricky to get rid of the snapped app – say Xbox Unsnap or press B and the snap will be removed.

I was surprised at how apps work on the Xbox One. Want to play a Bluray movie? Download the Bluray app. Same for music cd’s – there’s an app for that. You’ve recorded a game clip and now want to share it with the world – download Upload Studio. Third party app’s, games, demo’s etc are expected in the store but not some of these app’s which I see as core functionality. A strange decision from Microsoft.

One final point to touch on is the boot time for the Xbox One – it’s long. You have two options regarding power management. You can select a standby mode where updates are downloaded while the One is switched off but the reality is that the console isn’t really off – it’s in some sort of low power mode. The advantage is that boot times are far reduced, around 15-20 seconds but I don’t want my Xbox to be on all the time especially as updates aren’t that frequent so I opt for the full off option and that means boot times are around a minute. Ouch.

Live
The Xbox has always offered the best online console experience. Matchmaking was better, party chat saved many of us from the inane drivel from countless Americans and with everyone having a headset it made for a more collaborative experience in comparison to the PS3. How would Microsoft improve Live for the Xbox One?

They haven’t.

Parties are now difficult to setup and manage compared to the 360. It is bizarre that on joining a party you then have to go into party options and enable chat. WTF? I joined a friend on Fifa last night after receiving a party invite and it involved so much faffing about while I was playing another match that I was almost dropped from the game. He even felt the need to send a message in case I’d missed the party invite as thats been the norm over the last couple of weeks but getting that message wasn’t easy either. For me the biggest step back is around Friends.

The Friends application shows your Friends and your Followers. Followers are new, so like following someone on Facebook rather than friending you can keep up to date with what they are playing and doing on their Xbox. For me though the main point of the Friends app isn’t to see what my friends have been playing over the last few hours but to quickly see who is online and then making it easy to start a party with a few of them. However Friends starts by displaying notifications, not who is online. So it’s a list of crap like Cheesy was on his dash. Cheesy played Forza 5. Cheesy won a race. Cheesy is playing Battlefield 4 and so on. But is he online? Thats all I want to see. So I have to select Friends, wait for that to load and then I can see who is about. Microsoft is promoting notifications so again this has moved front and centre of the application but for me it’s step back.

There is also no notification that a Friend has come online. I’m assuming they have switched of these notifications as you can now have 1000 Friends, so if you do have that many there will be constant notifications as you are playing a game or watching a movie. But it now means that we could be playing a game and have no idea that a couple of friends have come online and we should invite them in to the game. Compare to the 360 – a friend comes on and we can quickly and easily send them a party and game invite as we know straight away that they are on Xbox Live. At least give the user an option to disable notifications if they are annoying.

It says a lot that the easiest way to invite friends and create parties is via SmartGlass which is an app for your iOS, Android or Windows tablet or smartphone for controlling your Xbox One. Well done Microsoft. Well done.

The one fear I did have, using Skype for voice over Live, has proven to be unfounded. The quality is a step up from the 360 and it hasn’t failed once. Well done Microsoft. Well done.

Games
So far, so average. Surely the launch games will lift the mood? The launch games were fairly disappointing to be honest. The one true next gen game looked to be The Division which was put back until 2014. With Titanfall also not due until March it was left to Forza 5 to be the main launch title on the Xbox One.

Forza 5
Forza 5

Forza 5 looks and sounds great. 1080p, 60fps and the tracks and cars (interiors too) look gorgeous. The handling is great and the new force feedback triggers really add to the game. However so much feels missing compared to Forza 4. It feels like tracks have been halved as the list of missing tracks from Forza 4 is extensive – Nurburgring, Nurburgring F1, Road America, Suzuka, Maple Valley, Mugello, Sunset, Camino and Fujimi. Worse is the grind and payment model that has been added. Car rewards that permeated the previous game have been removed, or so it seems so far. Cars have to be bought using in game credits or tokens and while credits are earned at a steady rate, you need to own a car to play it online and earn more credits and you start with one or two cars only. If the game was free and being funded by in game purchases I would be more comfortable with the model but Forza 5 is a full price game with a ridiculously expensive method of purchasing content built in.

The first online challenge was only available if you bought the first downloadable content at £7.99. For 6 cars. Fuck off Turn 10 and Microsoft. I won’t be buying tracks either as I’m sure thats why so many have been dropped. While they have retained the great tuning and livery editors they have removed the auction house. Again, I’m not sure if this was all to meet the Xbox One release date and we’ll see those features added but it’s a strange omission. Forza 5 – a good enjoyable game marred by grind and in app purchase issues. Thankfully some of those issues may start to diminish as the first patch due soon will increase credits you can win at each race, reduce the price of cars and add a couple of game modes. Add in a track or two for the next patch and all will be well. One special mention to the day one patch you get when running Forza 5 for the first time. It’s 6GB in size. That is ridiculous and hopefully it’s a sign that the console release date was brought forward and it’s not a sign of things to come going forward.

The two other games I picked up were Battlefield 4 and Fifa 14. Battlefield looks great (not as great as PS4) but has been marred with bugs, admittedly across all platforms, so it’s still early days. I’ve been impressed with the maps though and it looks significantly better than the 360 version.

Fifa 14 feels like a 360 game with better animation. Stadiums have improved as has the overall presentation of the game but on the pitch it feels quite different, more realistic, a more fluent game than the previous versions. Corners and free kicks are noticeably different too – more than one defender challenging for a header for example. Small differences but they all add up to a more enjoyable experience. The crowds in the stadium are excellent and audibly react to the game. Nothing beats silencing a home crowd by scoring in a game. So not a huge step up but it has made a great game even better.

A final concern with these first releases is pricing. The next gen platforms has seen games move to a £50 – £60 RRP price which has meant Fifa 14 costing £47 on Amazon for example. That feels steep, but not as steep as the digital pricing for games. Both new platforms allow you to purchase and download games digitally. However with Fifa being priced at £55 on the Xbox One and £60 on the PS4 why would anyone bother? Some of the games come in at around 40GB too so its not a trivial download. One bizarre price is Angry Birds Star Wars – £35 on the Xbox One. £34 – £33 more than the iOS and Android prices…for the exact same game! Unbelievable and hopefully sales have reflected the ripoff pricing. Microsoft tweaked the pricing for launch titles in the last week…upwards. The reason – digital content pricing is subject to change. No shit.

Wrap-up
The Xbox One is a good console marred by frustrating usability issues and a lacklustre set of launch games. Over time I’m sure the UI will improve as will Kinect voice commands and much of the frustration in using the One day to day will disappear. The PS4 seems to be more powerful/easier to program for than the Xbox One and that is something Microsoft will have to address going forward. Stating that ‘the power of the cloud’ gives the Xbox platform an advantage reeks of bullshit.

Due to the lack of true next generation games I’d recommend holding off from buying either the Xbox One or PS4 right now as there is nothing that jumps out as being a must have title. That hasn’t stopped both consoles selling out and there is no doubt there is an appetite for next gen machines….there’s just not much to do with them right now. Let 2014’s E3 take place and decide on a platform based on the games that are out and are announced. If you are desperate for one right now and don’t have any allegiance to a platform then try and get the PS4. Good luck and happy gaming – there’s lots to look forward to.

PlayStation 4 – The Review

Next gen (sorry Nintendo) is finally here with the first reviews of the PS4 which is out in America this Friday. The Polygon review is gorgeous to look at as well which is a bonus but others are rolling out today including Joystiq and Eurogamer.

Looks like the PS4 hardware is great but what isn’t is the initial game selection. Roll on next week when the Xbox One hits the UK.

The birth of xbox live

Great article from Russ Pitts at Polygon that details Xbox Live and the bets that Microsoft made all those years ago.

I still remember getting on the beta service for Xbox Live. Moto GP was the game and that first time on Xbox Live felt so alien. With the headset on I could hear others but talking felt wrong. I quickly realised it’s potential as the first couple of sessions saw me racing the Moto GP developers. Xbox Live was awesome!

A couple of hours later and Live’s true future was realised when I heard the words ‘get out the way ya fannie’. Two young Glaswegians were also on the beta and thought it was hilarious to curse and swear to everyone in the room.

The highs and lows of Xbox Live.

Next Gen

Four weeks from now will see the new consoles available in the UK from Microsoft and Sony. I’m looking forward to seeing what both offer and to wet the appetite both companies have started their advertising blitz.

Sony

Perfect Day and focuses purely on games and people playing them. It’s a core theme that Sony has been consistent on throughout the year and pushed again with a UK ad to celebrating 20 odd years of the PlayStation.

Microsoft

Microsoft focus on the different capabilities of the console. Games first but then watching TV and movies and Skype chats with friends. Much better than their showing at E3.

Who Wins?
The adverts highlight the clear difference between the two. Sony is all about games and Microsoft is games first but so much more…but more that a lot of people will not be interested in. Despite the missteps from Microsoft over the last few months there really isn’t that much between the two new consoles.

If I had to decide based on the adverts above I’d be picking the PS4 as it focuses on the games and for me thats still what a console is all about. Ironically though the first party games on the PlayStation look to be weaker than those on the Xbox and online which is important for me still looks to be better on Xbox.

Both adverts also show that Titanfall and Driveclub were both expected to be launch title exclusives that have missed their date. Shame, although for Driveclub it may be a blessing as Forza 5 looks so much better.

So four weeks from now I should have an Xbox One and at the moment I’m picking up Fifa and Forza only. I’ll decide on Battlefield or COD nearer the time. At the start of the year I said I wouldn’t be buying a PS4 but I can see that changing over the next 12 months as there are loads of indie games that look to be Playstation only. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything new in consoles so it’s great to say there’s less than a month to go. Can’t wait.