All Entries In Video Games Category
By With thanks to Alastair for finding the first one:
Be Strong. Be Fast. Be Invisible. Be The Weapon.
Due to be released in the UK on Friday 25th March 2011.
Coming March 25th on all formats.
This is jaw-dropping...
XBox Live's Major Nelson has announced a Red Xbox 360 Resident Evil Limited Edition Console. He has also posted a photo set of it on Flickr. If I didn't already own a 360 I would be tempted.
My nephew got Guitar Hero: World Tour for Xmas and brought it up with him today so that he could play it on my 360. So, for most of this afternoon I have been playing the drums and having loads of fun. It's not very easy, but it's lots of fun.
Valve's Left 4 Dead is set in the immediate aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, At it's basic level it's an all-action, first-person, zombie survival shoot-em-up. The nice feature is that you have 3 companions that are also trying to survive the horror. I've only played the first level so far but it's pretty damned good. One word of advice; for added atmosphere, play it with the lights off. Oh, and it's available for the PC and XBox 360.
There's a new Prince Of Persia game due out this Christmas. It looks good.
I took the car in for it's 2nd annual service this morning. Since the service was going to take a couple of hours, they were nice enough to give me a courtesy car. It was a new Vauxhall Corsa and although it was handy I wasn't impressed with it. I can't even put my finger on why I didn't like it.
Anyway, the Lacetti needs to get the spark plugs changed and the rear wiper also needs replacing. They need to order those in and will get back in touch with me. I was also advised to take it along to Kwik-Fit to get a puncture in one of the rear tyres repaired and to get one of the front tyres replaced; due to wear. I got the puncture fixed but unfortunately will have to go back tomorrow to get the front tyre replaced. They had no suitable tyres suitable in stock and are having to get one in from another local Kwik-Fit.
I also got hold of a PC copy of Need For Speed Underover today and was pleased to see that they've ditched the Pro Street style gameplay and gone back to the Underground, Most Wanted and Carbon style of game. I've only played it for about 30 minutes or so and can say that I'm fairly pleased with it so far. I will probably also get hold of the 360 version sometime in the future; although that may be as a used game for about £15-£20.
I've spent all day reinstalling games. So far I've reinstalled Audiosurf, Diablo II & Lords Of Destruction Expansion, GameHouse Collection, Crimson Skies, Neverwinter Nights & Expansions, Neverwinter Nights 2 & Expansion, Quake III Arena & Team Arena, Quake 4, Reflexive Arcade Games Collection, Starcraft & Broodwar Expansion, The Orange Box, Unreal Anthology, Warblade and Warcraft III & Frozen Throne Expansion. I've still got a considerable number of other games to reinstall but Steam took ages to download the old Half Life games again.
A few freebie game downloads for you.
First up are two games form the same author. Thrust Xtreme; a remake of a classic game of yesteryear and Grid Assault, a PC remake of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Both are available from here.
Next up is Detritus; a fast-paced shoot-em-up strongly based on the old classic Asteroids. It can be downloaded from here.
The fourth game is called Gunroar; a vertically-scrolling take on Geometry Wars / Robotron. There are also a few other games available from the same author. You can download Gunroar from here.
The final game is Nanozoa. Remember the movies Inner Space and The Fantastic Voyage? In Nanozoa, you pilot a tiny ship through a person's body aiming to kill parasites and microbes. It has a very stylish black and white look and is available to download from here.
It's coming!
David Braben has stated recently that the technology is almost complete that will allow him to finally make Elite 4 a reality.
Frontier Developments; Braben's company, are currently working on The Outsider, which is due in 2009 and will look towards a 2010 release for one of the most anticipated games in the history of video games.
The original Elite was released in September 1984. Frontier: Elite II was released in October 1993. Frontier: First Encounters was released over the Easter period of 1995.
Starcraft II was an exciting announcement. Diablo 3 was a big announcement too. But, this? It's...
One of the worst kept secrets of recent times is that Blizzard were apparently developing a third game in the Diablo franchise. The purchase of the Diablo3.com domain seemed to back that up. And recently they have added a Diablo 3 section to their website.
Coupled with the previous announcement of Starcraft 2 it would appear that things are looking good on the Blizzard front.
Frets on Fire is a freebie PC game very much in the same vein as the Guitar Hero series. The game comes with 3 or 4 songs included and there is a vibrant community out there. It even has a converter with it to allow you to convert Guitar Hero songs to work with it. It's extremely easy to find other songs from a variety of places on the net. Frets on Fire works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Lego Indy is now out for PC, XBox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii & DS.
I've installed the game just this morning and have played the first level. It's as good as expected.
I have experienced something of a strange phenomenom this past couple of days. I seem to have lost most of Saturday evening, pretty much all of yesterday and most of today. But, I think I know the culprit.
GTA IV.
I've gotten very little done as a result of playing GTA IV for most of the weekend. And, the excessive playing wasn't intentional. I was giving myself a couple of hours here and there to get a feel for the game; but, it didn't work. The storyline has dragged me in and I just keep going back to it.
I was looking forward to Euro 2008 this month but I've only watched 1 of the first 6 matches so far.
As I have previously mentioned; on 15th May, I ordered GTA IV for the XBox 360 off eBay after getting some cash refunded by KJC Games. Unfortunately, the game never turned up and I couldn't contact the seller. I raised a non-delivery dispute with eBay which was passed to Paypal. When they couldn't get in touch with the seller they escalated it up to a claim and said that if they didn't receive an answer by 5th June they would find in my favour.
It's now 6th June and I've just received an email from Paypal saying that they had found in my favour, managed to recover the full amount from the seller's account and would credit it to me. I should wait between 2 to 5 days for it to credit. I checked my Paypal account and it had already credited. I've just now ordered another copy of GTA IV from a shop on eBay rather than an individual and it's cost me a total of 51p more than I had previously paid. I've taken out the recorded delivery option this time; although it wasn't offered by the previous seller.
I've had Overlord for quite a while for my PC and finally got around to installing and playing it this morning. Suddenly, without realising it, 4 hours had passed. The premise of the game is simple. You are a new evil Overlord and must reclaim the lands and peoples around you. As you progress, you gain minions that do your bidding and your tower gradually gets rebuilt. It's a fun, evil game which has the same sort of feel as the Dungeon Keeper series.
Lots of fun.
I originally wasn't going to bother buying myself a copy of GTA IV for a while. This was mainly due to the fact that I can't really afford to at the moment with not working.
Anyway, yesterday I finally got a refund of my account balance from KJC Games. I'd previously played a PBM with them; Quest. I hadn't had any turns processed in a long time and decided to close my account. Although I had just over £43 in the account they reimbursed me just over £32 after taking off the 10% bonus I had received when I put the money in the account and a £5 administration fee. Anyway, PayPal then went and took another £1.30 in fees.
So, since the money was already in my PayPal account I thought "What the heck!" and ordered a copy of GTA IV for the XBox 360 off eBay. Cost me £30.98. Anyway, logged into eBay this morning and discovered I had a new message. Clicking on it, thinking it was a dispatch notification, I discovered it was actually a £5 voucher that eBay had sent me on May 2nd. I though "Great, can use that for a future purchase." Only to discover that it expired on 14th May 2008; yesterday. I could've saved myself £5 by using the voucher and didn't even know I had it. Damn!
To conicide with the launch of Trackmania United Forvever, Nadeo have just released Trackmania Nations Forever and it's free.
Trackmania Nations Forever features :
- 65 brand new tracks.
- Solo and team based multiplayer modes.
- One complete TrackMania environment: Stadium ''Forever''.
- An in-game track editor to create your own tracks.
- A video studio to realize your own movie.
- A paint shop to customize your vehicles.
- Official ladders for solo and multiplayer.
- Compatible with TrackMania United Forever (profile and multiplayer servers).
Trackmania United Forever, which will retail for £29.99, features :
- 4 single player modes (Race, Platform, Stunt and Puzzle).
- 265 spectacular progressively challenging tracks.
- 7 types of vehicles offering different gameplay and driving experiences.
- 7 TrackMania environments.
- Solo and team based multiplayer modes.
- A spectacular graphics update for the three historic environments.
- Integrated peer-to-peer sharing system to showcase all of your customizations.
- A resource-sharing system to acquire and exchange new tracks, vehicles and skins.
- Manialinks, an in-game Internet browser.
- Earn "Coppers", the virtual currency of TrackMania.
- Official rankings in solo and multiplayer.
- Create your own tracks with the TrackMania editor.
- Create your own vehicles with the TrackMania paint shop.
- Create your own videos with the TrackMania movie studio.
You can pre-order Trackmania United Forever for £24.99 from Amazon, via my associate store, or you can buy it as a digital download for only £19.99 from GamesPlanet. Be warned though; it's 1.5GB.
Ikaruga, one of the greatest, and hardest shoot-em-up games ever to grace the Nintendo Gamecube is coming to XBox Live Arcade. It's launched worldwide tomorrow, April 9th, and I'm seriously tempted, even though I've already got the Gamecube version and can ill afford it, to go out and buy myself some Microsoft Points so that I can pony up the 800 points to get the full version rather than the demo. I actually loaned the Gamecube version to Evil Mozza a while back and I don't even know if he's played it yet. He was heavily into UT3 at the time. Might have to pop down this evening to grab it back.
The Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack which was released on December 11th 2007 at a cost of 800 Points on XBox Live Marketplace is now available for free. The 3 maps available in the pack are Standoff, Rat's Nest and Foundry. They come in at a combined size of 487mb; which is rather hefty to say the least.
To download the map pack, sign into Xbox LIVE on your Xbox 360 and then go to the Marketplace blade. Select "Game Store," then select "All Games." Scroll down to "Halo 3" and select it. Your final step is to select the "Heroic Map Pack," and then "Confirm Download."
My nephew loaned me Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock for the XBox 360 yesterday. I played it all yesterday evening and completed it on Easy. Unfortunately I couldn't get the Wireless Guitar to connect to the 360 and had to use a normal pad. I've tried one song on Medium and it was definitely harder than playing on Easy. I have a new found respect/envy for people that can play it on Expert.
Recently purchased Crackdown for the XBox 360; paid a total of £7.98 for it on eBay. I've been playing it most of the time for the last couple of days and have just taken out the second of the three gangs in the game. It's a heck of a lot of fun and is the most I've used the XBox in ages.
Oh, and I completed The Simpsons last week; played it for a total of less than 6 hours over 3 nights. Glad my nephew loaned it off a friend rather than going out and buying it. Very repetitive in lots of places and also extremely fiddly in some.
With the exceptional capabilities of today's home consoles it seems that the last bastions of arcade gaming; the Japanese market, is now feeling the pinch.
Earlier this month arcade firm Namco Bandai announced plans to close at least 50 of its arcade locations across Japan and Sega Sammy likewise announced plans to close over 100 arcades. Namco Bandai cited the expanding home console market, and the Nintendo Wii in particular, as a big part of the problem. Sega Sammy also announced that it plans to offer early retirement to approximately 400 employees.
"A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home," said Namco Bandai spokesman Yuji Machida. Machida went on to state that strong holiday sales for the console meant a lot of kids have spent their time at home playing, and spent their money on more Wii software and hardware, such as the popular Wii Fit package. Machida also cited rising gas prices as a concern, as families become less willing to travel back and forth from shopping malls, where arcades are normally located. The closures amount to approximately 20% of Namco Bandai's arcades in Japan.
Just a couple of years after increased profits, Sega Sammy has announced expectations of an estimated loss of 26 billion yen (approx. $230 million) for this fiscal year; compared to the previous projection of a billion yen profit for the year. The main culprit behind the downturn seems to be the pachinko side of the business, which saw a predicted 85 percent fall in profits, and arcade sales, which switched from a slight profit last year to a 11.4 billion yen loss this year.
Free on Xbox LIVE Arcade!
With all the connection problems that XBox Live users suffered over the Christmas and New Year period Microsoft announced earlier this month that they would be giving an XBox Live Arcade game away free to all subscribers.
They have now announced that Undertow is the game they are giving away. Undertow is a fast-paced action-shooter that sends you underwater as you battle up to 16 players for control of the oceans! I downloaded my copy yesterday afternoon and it's quite a fun little game.
Undertow would normally usually cost you 800 Microsoft Points but, for a limited time only; from 10am GMT Wednesday, 23 January until 8am GMT on Monday, 28 January it's absolutely free to all XBox Live subscribers. So, I recommend XBox 360 users, log into XBox Live and get downloading before the offer expires. This offer is valid for both Silver and Gold members.
The Escapist is a weekly online magazine that covers gaming and gamer culture with a progressive editorial style, with articles and columns by the top writers in and outside of the industry. Its magazine-style updates offer content for a mature audience of gamers, entertainment enthusiasts, industry insiders, and other “NetSet” readers.
One of the main highlights is Zero Punctuation, a series of weekly web video game reviews by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw; a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn't talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and does the occasional feature for Australia's Hyper Magazine.
Blizzard's Starcraft II website has just gone live. Already, I can't wait...
Been thinking about buying an online game for a while now and finally plumped for Guild Wars.
Was discussing the possibilty of purchasing d20 Modern with Pixie the other night and he asked why?
Well, the temptation finally proved too much, and I now own an XBox.
Gaz has a lot to answer for.
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