[Event] GAME For Good

GAME Stores and Activision Blizzard have teamed up to give 360 Modern Warfare 2 players the chance to help the War Child charity (a charity who support children who are affected by war across the globe) .

All you have to do is play MW2 online on the 5th and/or 6th December. The more players who are on Xbox Live playing = the more money ActiBlizzard will give to an awesome cause.

Also GAME will be donating a £1 from every sale of Modern Warfare 2 to the same charity, as well as selling War Child wrist bands in store towards the end of this week.

You can fine more information on GAME For Good here, and to join the Facebook group supporting this event here's the link.

[Event] Eurogamer Expo

A couple of weeks ago I was invited along by my good friend Ben to the Eurogamer Expo in Leeds. The Expo forms part of the London Games Festival.

Apart from a conference that I had the chance to attend a couple of years ago while working for Gamestation the event in Leeds was my first proper taste of a gaming expo. And I forgot to take my camera! (The Googlephones camera is nothing to shout home about...).

[Blog] PS3 appears on BBC's Watchdog

I've had quite a few members of the public approaching me at work in regards to a recent episode of Watchdog that was aired on BBC a couple of weeks ago.

For those un-aware BBC's Watchdog aired an investigation about the 'Yellow Light of Death' (the standby light flickers a yellow colour, telling the user their is a fault) that can sometimes occur on Playstation 3s. According to the BBCs research, 12,500 PS3s have had the yellow light of death. This figure is believed to be drawn from Sony's own figures that state 0.5% of the 2.5 million PS3s sold in the UK have developed a fault. As part of the programme, they offered members of the public a free repair service (2 guys, in a van, outside Sony's UK Head Office). The main point of all this is that outside of the consoles normal one year warranty, if you want your console fixed, you'll need to shell out some cash to Sony to get it fixed.

[Game News] Sparkster is Returning!

Awesome, Amazing, Brilliant, Superb!

What's made me so happy? Konami are bringing one of my favourite (not to mention under-rated) retro gaming characters to the 360, PS3 and PC. That everyone, is the Rocket Knight called Sparkster

It's a new game, devolped by Climax Studios (responsible for Silent Hil Origins), a 2.5d platform game, which is being released on Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network and on PC via Steam.

Axel returns as Sparkster's nemesis and is set 15 years after the last Rocket Knight Adventures game. Konami producer Tomm Hulett, who is a fan of the previous games is producing it, which is a very good sign!

All and all, I'm truly excited..and I've got a very good feeling that this will be awesome.

1UP have a 5-day exclusive on the new game, which I highly recomend you check out. They've got a few early images and are set to post the first trailer of the game on the 9th October.

Rocket Knight Adventures is penned for a release in early 2010.

[Blog] The Great Divide?

After just logging into Xbox.com I had to pause, step back, and then consider what kind of gamer I'm becoming. What could I mean? What caused me to stop and ponder? Ladies and gentlemen, read on...

For those un-aware, when you log into Xbox.com it lists the last 6 games that you've played on your 360/PC. These are mine at the time of posting:


Can you see a certain genre of gaming shining through? In my defence both The Beatles Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 were new releases, but still, its becoming quite clear to all that I'm currently enjoying living the pretend life of a rock star.

Between myself and my housemates we have enough plastic instruments for 2 full band line-ups. For our house, it seems Guitar Hero/Rock Band is the ultimate in social gaming, a genre of games that brings us all into the front room.

This leads me onto the main reason for this post, and that is the divide between social/casual gaming and the more 'hardcore' gaming community.

Casual gaming has been around for years. Quick, short, pick up and play style games. I'd quite happily sit music games into this category. You can also probably add 80%+ of the Nintendo Wii's catalogue of games into this category, not forgetting the ever-growing popularity of games on Facebook such as FarmVille.
Your hardcore games however, are the kind of games that immerse you into a large complex storyline, and generally a large amount of hours. Take for example gamers who spend a good portion of their days/evenings online playing online shooters such as Call of Duty 4 online, or (like my housemate of late) plunging 50 odd hours into an RPG.

After reading countless articles, its clear alot of people see themselves as one or the other. Even those (and their are many of them) who sit on the fence of the two gaming styles will probably lean more to one than the other.

After seeing my recently played games list I began to wonder if I was becoming more of a casual gamer. A look at my shelves of games dismisses this thought however, as I'm a keen fan of RPGs, which is enforced by Tales of Vesperia sitting between the Rock Bands and Guitar Heroes in my games played list. Not to mention the time I take in catching up on general gaming news. I just feel at the moment I haven't had the time to really sit down and get fully involved with a game.

So what about you guys, what would say you were? A more casual/social gaming kind of person? Or would you say you're more of a hardcore gamer?

Feel free to comment your thoughts, I hope to delve deeper into gaming trends in a future blog post, aswell as discussing any points raised by you guys!