Thursday 26 February 2009

[Update]



Thought I'd update you with what I have been trying out recently, first off I have been downloading a few demo's on Xbox live.

The first demo I downloaded was Resident Evil 5, which has two playable levels. I quite like the look of it and was quite impressed when I saw that its the first ever game to use a virtual camera. The only bad points of it was that when shooting you can't walk back slowly, you have to remain stationary while shooting.

Second demo I downloaded was Halo Wars, which looks really good but I didn't play it much, the demo looked pretty limited, so I'm now waiting for my rental copy to come through the post and hopefully I will have time to write a review for it.

The last demo on Xbox live was Tom Clancy's H.A.W.K which is a Jet Fighter simulation game based in the future, the control's I found really easy to use, I had a few games on it and will look forward to picking up a copy of it soon. Here's a trailer for it.


Other than that I have allowed into a closed beta of the Battlefield Hero's game, a free cartoon shooter, similar to Team Fortress 2. The game is basically Battlefield 1942 but with a cartoon and comical twist. I'm quite enjoying playing that, here's a trailer for it.



I hope to update soon.

Wednesday 25 February 2009

[News] Quake Live is Open!


"Born from the Legendary QUAKE ARENA Multiplayer Shooter Games, a New QUAKE Rocks the Internet with a Totally Free Browser-based Experience"
Quake Live was first announced during the keynote at QuakeCon 2007 under the code name of Quake Zero as a free to play version of Quake 3.

I've been in the closed beta for sometime now and if your a fan of Quake games or competitive online games in general, be sure to check this game out.

The game is now in open beta so get on fragging over at Quake Live.

Thursday 5 February 2009

[News] More New Stuff!

What an interesting few days in the world of gaming...

Following on from Rory's previous post EA have gone and released a trailer of the now confirmed Battlefield 1943:



Valve have annouced the new expansion for its zombie survival horror game Left 4 Dead. L4D Survival Pack will include a new 'Survival' multiplayer mode, aswell as adding two brand new campaigns to the Versus mode. Both 360 and PC gamers will have access (for a small fee no doubt) to the new content come the spring time, with PC gamers also getting the SDK pack for Left 4 Dead around the same time.

Other news includes SEGA keeping hold of the International Olympic Comitee licence, meaning that its very likely we'll be seeing a Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games.

Switching your 360 on this evening? You really should...as the Halo Wars demo has gone live today. Mines currently downloading at a painfully slow rate.

Don't despair PS3 owners! You too have a new demo! Killzone 2. I've heard whispers of it possibly being in the running for this years game of the year already, so download it and get your first impressions in.

With thanks:
MCV: SEGA Keeps Olympic Licence
Kotaku L4D Expansion

[Update] Annoncements



There's been ALOT of announcements been made recently such as....

The games developer Crytek, famous for Crysis and Farcry games, have acquired Free Radical Design off Administrators ReSolve Partners. No details of how much was paid for the company, and no news what has happened to there IP's and ongoing projects such as Timesplitters 4, Star Wars Battlefront 3. I doubt whether they will release a sequel to the poor selling PS3 exclusive Haze.

Also some new game announcements have been made, imparticular EA which have announced that Mass Effect 2 which will be Multi platform, and also Battlefield Bad Company 2, will be released in late 2009/early 2010. Though also EA announced delays for The Sims 3 and The Godfather 2. Thee Godfather 2 should be released in the next fiscal year and The Sims 3 in June.

Sega announces Iron Man 2 which will tie in with the film, both to be released in May 2010

Warner announces Lego Battles set for a summer release on Nintendo DS. The game is a strategy based game with multiplayer capabilities using the Nintendo DS's built in WiFi.

Tom Clancy's Hawk game which was due to be released last year will now be released on March 6th for PS3 and Xbox 360 but PC Gamers will have to wait till March 13th.

Rockstar announce a sequel to there 2004 PS2 and Xbox title Red Dead Revolver. Due to be released on the PS3 and Xbox 360. The game will be using Rockstars Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) which was used for GTA4.

Also RUMOURS of EA announcing Battlefield 1943: Pacific at the New York Comic Convention. Which would bring the series back to World War 2 timescale. The game is thought to be released for both PS3 and Xbox 360.

Rory

Links:
Kotaku
MCVUK

Tuesday 3 February 2009

[Films] Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen



A new Transformers movie hits us on the 26th of June this year, and with a new trailer been posted during the SuperBowl adverts, I thought I'd update the blog with a snippet.

Really can't wait till the release of this film.

Rory

Links: Official Website

[FEATURE] Let's see how it all began...

So, you've just bought a new game and you rip off the packaging, have a quick flick through the instruction manual and then put it in the disc drive and fire it up, ready to spend a few hours working your way through it.
It's then that it starts to occur to you that you are missing something from the story.
It feels like there should be a lot before this, some important plot point that you have missed, but upon checking the manual again, the game starts exactly where it should have...

'Prequels' in the film industry are old news now, what with The Godfather Part 2 (well, half of it), Star Wars Episodes I-III and more recently, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and the upcoming Wolverine: Origins, but this trend has seemingly started to influence game writers more too.

The highest profile 'prequel' is undoubtedly Halo Wars. In case you've been asleep for the last 8 years, you'll know what Halo is and will more than likely have seen it running if not played it, but when you get into the first game, you are told you are the last of your kind.
So, hang on. If I'm the last of my kind, what happened to the rest of them?
Like the much lauded Clone Wars was mentioned throughout the Star Wars  trilogy and we had to wait many years to witness that, it has taken 8 years for Bungie to allow us access to the horrific events leading to the downfall of the Spartans that we have only heard about before.
At last we can see how the Covenant wiped out this supposedly unbeatable creation.

Another case of returning to roots is House of the Dead: Overkill on Wii.
This new instalment shows us G as a younger agent, but for this privilege we have had to wait a massive 13 years from the release of the original game, although the narrative within the games has always made good ground in explaining just what was going on, asking the question of why we even need to see previous action at all.

While the idea of 'prequels' has surfaced before within gaming, Yoshi's Island after all gave us a glimpse of a certain plumber as a baby, and that series has gone on further since then, this new wave has also branched out into other media, the most notable being Dead Space.

You begin the game in a derelict spacecraft where something has happened, but what?
Well, to find that out, you could always watch the animation that precedes the action in the game and leads right up to the moment you arrive there.
But again, something seems to have happened before the animation, but what was that?
You could always download the animated comics available on XBOX LIVE or read the actual paper copy to see what happens right up to the moment the animation starts.
But then you feel like something is missing again, and you're right, there is.
If you took the legal way off acquiring the animation and got the paper copy of the comics, what's missing is upwards of £20 from your wallet on top of £40-50 on the game!
Why not include these as basic extras on a bonus disc? They already gave the comics away for free on the LIVE server so the cost there can't have been an issue and it would have helped those who wanted to know to understand the whole story.




So while I like to know what's going on I obviously understand that to keep space to a maximum they can't provide the whole story on one disc, but if you're going to do that can't you release them in the right order?
Or at least get them out to us sooner than 13 years please! We really would appreciate it.

Monday 2 February 2009

[Update]




Well the Blog is officially opened now, I posted earlier about some of the Games Conventions that I am going to.

Like Dave, as soon as I posted, more news came. Unfortunately we both had bad news.

The Leipzig Games Convention has been changed to the Games Convention Online which also moves the convention nearly a month early, to the 31st of July to the 2nd of August. Which means I won't be able to attend.

Good news is that I'll be able to have a nice well earned break during those weeks, as I have booked holidays off work.

Rory

[News] Hello!

And so the countdown ends...

For many of you this shall be the first time you've seen this site, as I've started to advertise it a bit more. So if you are one of those people...Hello!

For those unaware, I've created this blog to talk about all things gaming (while sometimes touching upon other topics/subjects). Myself, as well as a team of friends will be working towards keeping this site as updated as possible. Whether it be a new game trailer, rumours, new releases or general news about the industry, we shall try to keep you all informed.

From time to time we shall also be posting reports and articles, such as this article I typed up back in December regarding EA, and this article in regards to upcoming releases this year (of which part two shall be appearing in the coming few days).

Although this site is something thats being working on in spare time I'll be looking to improve and expand over time. Everyones comments and feedback are welcome as we want to keep people returning to this site.

A new poll has been created down the right hand side of this site...yes its a question thats asked time and time again, but its a good one to get us started! The poll shall close at 8pm next monday.

As already mentioned, please feel free to post your comments or even drop me an email. Ideas are always welcome.

And finally, a big thanks to all those who have helped get this site going, and to those who shall help it progress.

Thanks for reading!

Dave, and everyone from GamePad

P.S. Don't forget, you can add this blog as a RSS feed to your browser!