Tag: gaming

This weekend was mostly spent…

  • Watching sport. Great win for Scotland on Saturday, and on Sunday in the rugby although they looked a bit nervous at times. Grand prix was pretty good – another close season. Tennis has also been top notch.
  • Playing with Facebook. I can see why it’s pretty addictive.
  • Recovering from golf on Friday. A great day was had by all and after a great round from me (to be honest a far to generous handicap helped) I took the trophy (now virtual) for another year.
  • Tidying up the laptop. It’s always a bit neglected compared to the desktop so every so often it’s needs a bit of work. All looking tip top now though.
  • Garden tidy. Need to take advantage of these good days and give the garden a good tidy. Started but by no means finished. Another trip to Dobbies required!
  • Enjoying Warhawk. First essential PS3 game for me…only took 6 months.
  • Starting sorting out photo library…finally. Using iPhoto and it’s been great so far. Only got a few years left to sort.

I’ve still got loads of jobs to do that I wanted to do a few weeks ago. Roll on two weeks time and another week of work. I’ll be busy….playing Halo 3!

Play TV

Sony’s announcement last week of a TV Tuner for the PS3 was pretty uneventful for me. However this video of the interface has changed my opinion.

The menu’s look excellent and far slicker than normal Freeview boxes. The ability to view recorded content and also live TV on your PSP being streamed from your PS3 was also very impressive. Twin tuners, hard disk recording and HD to 1080p (let’s hope Freeview gets a couple of HD channels) makes for an impressive package when teamed with the PS3.

With the digital switch off almost upon us this could be a big seller for Sony.

Bioshock Demo

It came out yesterday but I only managed to finish the download today. Fantastic graphics and sound but most important is an environment dripping with atmosphere. The demo scratches the surface and actually promises so much more with some cutscenes at the end of the demo that really wet the appetite. A must have purchase for the 360…again. I wonder when the PS3 will finally get a killer title? It’s out next week, single player only and here’s hoping it really matches up to the hype of system shock successor.

The graphics while not only great are also very stylish and totally different to anything out there at the moment. Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, but they are very good. The developers have now released a PDF celebrating the visuals within the game. The post warns of spoilers so I’ve not read the text within the PDF yet, but the images are superb. A great freebie and well worth a look even if your not buying the game.

Forza Designs Update

Couple of belters have been gifted to me in the last few days.

Foe Real Designs

Another Foe Real car and in my opinion the best yet. Photo’s don’t do it justice – it looks amazing in game. The second car looks superb too…

Hunderbolt

The text is great and coupled with a Rangers badge on the bonnet, what more could you wish for. Cheers David (aka Wee Piglet on Xbox Live). Ricky – this car could be yours!!

Gaming Costs

It’s been covered loads of times before, but releasing one car for Forza2 at the cost of 50 gamerpoints sounds expensive. Taking today’s Amazon prices that’s 43p for one car. If Sony applied that pricing model, and the rumours of 1000 cars in GT5 but only 300 included in first purchase are true, that’s an extra £300 to own the full game. Madness. Of course no one is forcing you to buy the content, and the likelihood is that you’ll buy only a few select cars, but the micro transaction gaming market is only heading in one direction and it’s not a cheap one.

Game Quickies

In no particular order…

  • Heavenly Sword demo was released today. It’s quite possibly the largest (almost a gig) shortest (lasts less than 10 minutes) demo I’ve played but afterwards I pre-ordered the game so I guess the demo worked for Sony. The graphics were stunning and this looks like something the 360 could struggle matching. Game on. I know there was some bad press about the gameplay being short (12 hours from memory) but I’d rather have a corking 12 hours than a spun out 30 hour game that I don’t complete.
  • Bomberman is superb on the 360 and well worth 800 points.
  • Played the Moto GP demo on the 360. What was once THE game on Xbox Live is now a shadow of it’s former self. Talk about milking an original format and regurgitating each year, this is little more than a bug fix from last years release.
  • GTA IV – only complete experience on the 360 according to Rockstar themselves. Made me grin thinking back to the exclusives that the PS2 had for so long. Not any more.
  • Had a large room on GRAW2 last night – blind siege with > 6 players is sooooo much more fun
  • Another firmware update on the PS3 – Sony are developing aggresively for the PS3 now and ar catching up fas on the 360. Music playback and X bar available in game for firmware v2.0?
  • Forza Leagues is going well and we have over 30 members with little or no advertising. Biggest issue has been lag within Forza. We struggle to get anyone to host a stable room with more that 6 players which is very limiting. It frustrates that the console model for online gaming is still mostly peer to peer which limits the amount of players you can realistically play with at any one time. I would quite gladly pay extra for server based gaming if it allowed 16, 24, 32 player gaming while limiting lag. I would love Sony to do more with server support in the hope it would encourage Microsoft to move in that direction as well.
  • Resident Evil 5 – another game that looks amazing!
  • The Metal gear Solid gameplay video was very impressive. Some nice touches, great humour and a graphics engine that looked up there with the best around. There was also a nice array of weapons. If Sony have lost exclusivity on this one they will be kicking themselves.

B Day

No, not the Beyonce album.

Not even a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the external genitalia and the anus.

It’s Bomberman day on Xbox Live. David & Ricky D – I expect to see you online at least once this week for a session! To other 360 owners – get this! 8 player online. It can’t possibly fail*

*Obviously it can go wrong and online could suck salty balls and be one of the worst lag fests known to man. The recent Bomberman games have been awful as well, but I’ve kept the faith and hopefully this will be the reward. However, for old time’s sake ….you can’t go wrong, can you?

Forza Leagues

Over the last three weeks I’ve been beavering away on a new website which is finally ready to roll – www.forzaleagues.com. For the last few years I’ve gamed with a great but dwindling bunch of guys known as The Lickers. We’ve ended up with a core group enjoying mostly racing and first person shooters but we have a problem – no site to run leagues and a habit of starting a league but never finishing it.

So myself and Cheesy (fellow Lick) decided to try and do something about it, hence Forza Leagues. The website allows us to easily run multiple leagues and seasons for Forza 2. It should make the admin part as easy as possible and give us some nice stats along the way. It also allows us to attract 360 users from other forums and websites to join our leagues or form their own using the software we’ve developed.

forzaleagues.com

Now when I say we’ve developed the software it’s really all down to one guy – Graeme (he asked me not to link to his homepage). So it’s a big thank you for the coding you’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks. Everyone’s feedback so far has been really positive. I also need to thank Robert (Foe Real) who’s logo work in Forza is superb and can be seen above. Soon we’ll all be riding using his designs.

forzaleagues.com

Longer term we hope to add more games, leagues, ladders and team tournaments but for the moment, to get us started, we’re focussing on Forza 2 only. We’re looking for clean racers to join up and take part. Don’t worry about fast times as there will be leagues to cater for all abilities. The important thing is that you race fairly and don’t abuse your fellow gamers. If that sounds like you and you enjoy Forza 2 then feel free to register with Forza Leagues and at least give it a go. Hope to see you there.

Finally

Microsoft have come clean and admitted they have reliability issues with the Xbox 360. They are setting aside over $1 billion to extend warranties to three years (flashing red lights) for 360 owners and also compensate those that have had their consoles repaired since launch. This is good news and well overdue. With failure rates of only 1% rumoured on the PS3 and more and more bad press surrounding 360 reliability there wasn’t really any other course of action.

Shame it wasn’t done sooner though.