Whilst searching Twitter, I discovered an article on Kill Screen named, 3DHead is the gloriously inevitable clusterf*ck of our dreams. This was what I greeted to…
Another, really again? Virtual Reality headset…
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Tag Archives: Microsoft
Post E3 2014 Analysis.
OK, I’ve had my bit of fun watching all the E3 conferences and shows. It’s not time to get to work and talk about the good and bad things about this year’s show.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s show was better this year compared to last year, it was fortunate that it wasn’t all to do with Sports and TV! Typically Microsoft and the XBox being the “First Person Shooter” console, they had to show off the next Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare, pretty much like Modern Warfare, but now more sci-fi with more drones and flashy lights on body armour. As you might tell I don’t give a damn about the COD series, and personally I wish that Activision would concentrate on something else for a change!
After seeing Forza Horizon 2 and Witcher 3, I saw a game that I kinda knew about through from fake marketing of an energy drink called Overdrive. The game is called “Sunset Overdrive”, and the video starts off being a joke to other FPS games having to take cover behind things and having a character, who’s a bit doucheir than your typical douche-bag, destroy the enemy that trying to attack said “Call of Duty”-like soldier before doucey-Mc-DouceMeister explains his game, and looking at the gameplay it looks really cool. Imagine a third person contra game, but being able to do Sonic the Hedgehog like tricks such as grind rails and run up walls, then mix it up with Left 4 Dead style Co-op where you take out mutants who are simply people who have been drinking the Overdrive energy drink. It’s nice to see some colour in an XBox game! It’s just a shame that this is an XBox One exclusive title. Continue reading
E3 Live Blog
In a few hours time, Microsoft will begin the set of press conferences today; followed by EA, Ubisoft, and Sony. Nintendo’s Digital conference will be tomorrow. What will they show off today? Here’s a list of thing I want to hear from each conference, though personal I doubt it’ll happen! lol 😛
Microsoft
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EA
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Ubisoft
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Sony
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Anyway, that’s my wishful for E3, the live blog will begin below at 9am Pacific standard time.
Why I Hate Achievements
I dislike Achievements, Trophies, Awards, Stamps, and/or any other form of in-game pop-up that encourages my self esteem and ego. I have good reasons why, that’s why I’m writing a blog about it.
When Microsoft announced achievements for the Xbox 360, it sounded like a great idea, to me and to a whole lot of other people too. We were all hooked, and people are still hooked, except for me. Eventually, I discovered that achievements are just things to improve your “E-Penis” on Xbox Live and your friends. Sure, that element might sound good to people, but what I see in achievements is a list of things to do in a game so that you look good at playing them; in other words, it’s a long list of in game chores to do to “extend your experience in the game”. Or as I like to call it “Create content without actually making any content.”
Continue reading
Live stream talk about XBoxOne
For those who missed my Twitch.tv live stream about the XBoxOne, here’s some recordings of them!
If you have any opinions on the XBoxOne, make a WordPress account and comment below!
“XBox One” Really?
So the “first” out of two Xbox announces were given out today at the Xbox Campus in Silicon valley. I didn’t actually get the chance to watch the video feed live as real life came into play, after all, going to the gym and maintaining my body is a little bit more important than watching a live feed of a console that I might not care about…
News Report: Intellivision Gen2 For PSVita and PSHome
So… Sony today made an announcement of something called PlayStation Home Arcade. This is where you can play Arcade games such as Frogger and Asteroids on you PSVita. But here’s the cool bit, Intellivision are going to release “Intellivision Gen2” on this service. These are going to be remakes of Intellivision games, there’s going to be a remake of Shark Shark, and my favourite Intellivision Game, AstroSmash. What’s cool is that when you purchase these games, in similar ways to Playstation Minis, you have two licenses, one for Vita, and the another for… PlayStation Home!?
…Yeah… So much for getting me excited about a possible Astro Smash remake. As I don’t own a PlayStation Vita, I would have to play it on PlayStation Home of all things… For those who might not remember, PlayStation Home was Sony’s chance to plagiarise Second Life and put it on to the PS3, and failed doing so… But clearly someone is supporting this, as they’re releasing these games on PSHome.
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| Kotaku reminding us how weird Second…. Ahem, PlayStation Home is… |
My experience with PlayStation Home is a boring one, I simply fiddled with it, tried to see what I could do with it’s limited pieces of generic looking furniture, and going into the town to see what I get for free, which is hardly anything…
Then again, this whole PlayStation Home Arcade reminds me a lot of another arcade game service that another certain games manufacturer released a while back…
Another blinding success… Oh wait… no it wasn’t… Despite me still thinking that I own the most achievements for Game Room in all of Xbox Live, Seriously, I played Game Room a little too much than it deserved. But Game Room is, wait, was a way not to present a way to play classic arcade games on your new-fangled HD console.
The idea of Game Room was to build your own arcade, decorate it, put machines in it, etc, etc… Then your friends would come to play in your Arcade, and you would earn tokens that allow you to try out new arcade machines without having to purchase them. Sounds like a good idea right? Not really…
Rather than enter your “Amazing Arcade”, yeah right, most of the time I ended up just selecting games from the main menu. It’s quicker, and just looks better than entering a faux arcade. Making the whole “Build your own arcade” thing a little pointless. It would’ve been better if these arcade games themselves were just actual Xbox Live Arcade games, rather than having them inside another interface to load up before playing them.
Thinking about this, it makes me think, why is Sony doing this? What’s the point if their competitor has failed doing a similar thing. And why are the Intellivision Gen2 games playable straight on the Vita, but you have to run Home to play them on the PS3? Personally I think this is a little odd, and Sony should just release these as PSN games.
Why do I still own an Xbox360?
OK, it got me thinking, after my last post about my little rant about screwed over you get if you’re a non-live user. So… Why do I still own a 360 then?
Pinball Simulation…
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| Arabian Nights without the financial limitations and finding physical space? Count me in! |
One thing I do like about the current generation is how Pinball Simulation has improved little by little. Now granted, you can play these games on the PS3, Wii, and even tablet computers. But it so happens that I got these pinball games on the Xbox 360 before I even owned a PS3 and a tablet computer. But even then, that’s not entirely true as there’s a very good set of pinball games made for PSP that are very good too, infact I would even say that the PSP games got me into getting Pinball games for the 360.
Pinball FX1/2
Pinball FX was the first Pinball game I got the Xbox 360. And for a pinball game that’s not based on actual real tables, it’s a very good effort. It certainly feels like pinball, and Pinball FX 2 even goes far as including franchises such as Marvel, ‘Splosion Man and Plants Vs. Zombies. Plus it includes a great tables called Epic Quest where by it mixes pinball with role playing games very well whilst mixing a good dose of humour!
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| A pinball quest of finding loot! |
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| The Arabic themed table, Pasha, is a very entertaining table in Pinball FX 2 |
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| The Street Fighter 2 table from Pinball FX 1 might not be based on the real Gottlieb SF2 table, but it’s still great fun! |
Williams Pinball Classics
This game is actually hard to come by on disc over here in PAL territories, but fortunately, Microsoft made this available as a download for about £15. Feels a little steep, but when people are selling copies on eBay for a whopping £25 second-hand, a £15 download sounds damn cheap to me!
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| Medievil Madness, one of my favourite pinball machines, now to own in digital form! |
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| Who wouldn’t play FunHouse!? |
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| The masochistic yet awesome Black Knight! |
Pinball Arcade
Unlike the Williams Pinball Classics on the 360, and the Gottlieb Collection on the PSP and Wii. The Pinball Arcade is a collection of great pinball machines from Bally, Williams, Gottlieb and Stern to give you the best Pinball simulation experience possible. To do this, FarSight Studios, the developers of the game, took each pinball machine, took it to pieces, examined each piece and made a 3D model of it. Then they put the 3D model pieces together in the game to build the most realistic pinball tables in digital form.
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| Bride of Pinbot in all of her metal cladded glory on your Xbox 360. |
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| The very luminescent Black Hole. |
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| The Famous KickStarter funded Twilight Zone Table. |
So with all these awesome pinball tables, with descent pinball physics, and great gameplay, plus not being anywhere close to a descent pinball arcade, my Xbox 360 is my number one place to play some good pinball!
Why I dislike Xbox Live…
Why do I dislike Xbox Live?
Simple, it’s a massive rip-off…
Not only that, but there are issues that I have to address about the service, the total lock down and removal of services made to you when you stop your Xbox Live subscription. If you’re like most people with a games console, chances are you’re treating it like a media centre and a way to view online services such as Netflix, Crackle, and maybe some TV on demand like BBC iPlayer, and 4OD. But let’s say you hardly play games online any more and you can’t afford to keep your Xbox Live subscription. You can end your subscription, but when it expires, you can’t use ANY of the Apps Xbox Live provides, despite the fact you can go over to your PC and use the same services without the need of an Xbox Live Gold account!
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| So many apps to download on the 360, but if you don’t have a paying subscription with Live, it’s a no go! |
This annoys me, you invest money in services like Netflix, about £5 a month, and you discover that you then have to pay an extra £40 or so a year to use it on the Xbox360. Personally I find this slightly offensive. but then I notices that Destructiod mentions that Netflix will be avalible to any Xbox user over the weekend…
#Netflix on #XBox360 for non-gold subscribers for just the weekend? Unlock it for good Microsoft! destructoid.com/microsoft-grac… #notcool #noexcuse
— Great Bit Blog (@GreatBitBlog) January 31, 2013
Seriously… for Netflix that’s free to use (after a paying subscription) on the PC, why pay ANOTHER subscription to use it on a another piece of hardware. Now granted, there are A LOT of people who use Xbox Live, but it isn’t evevyone, and that’s what bothers me. Microsoft is denying access to something you can use on the Xbox when you can just walk over to your PC and use Netflix without the need of another subscription. It’s a huge “F-You” to the customers.
And then there’s the people on Live… Guru Larry knows this far too well!
And this is how I feel about Live, mentioned on Live… lol, Ashen got it in one shot!
So yeah, it’s not worth it people… As I’ve said before, the Xbox 360 is pretty much a machine for people who don’t know how to put a computer together, and even then it’s not hard! So Yeah, head to Aria or NewEgg and build a PC you fools!
SO MUCH NEWS!
OK, I can’t understand how in one day SO MUCH HAPPENS IN THE GAMING WORLD! …I better report on it!
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| *Insert Inception “BOW” sound here* |
First off, details about the PlayStation4/Orbis came out today revealing some specifications and details about accounts and the next PlayStation controller.
Here were a few specs that were announced today…
- System Memory: 8GB
- Video Memory: 2.2 GB
- CPU: 4x Dual-Core AMD64 “Bulldozer” (so, 8x cores)
- GPU: AMD R10xx
- Ports: 4x USB 3.0, 2x Ethernet
- Drive: Blu-Ray
- HDD: 160GB
- Audio Output: HDMI & Optical, 2.0, 5.1 & 7.1 channels
OK… 8 Gigs of RAM, check, my PC has that, 2.2 gigs of Video memory, impressive, that’s twice as much memory than what’s on my PC’s graphics card. 8 core processor, wasn’t the “Cell processor” an 8 core anyway…?
…But here’s the interesting bit, the GPU is an AMD R10xx, there isn’t a lot said about this GPU, but from what I’ve read it appears that it can share GPU time from the main processor, and if requested, the CPU can get more time from the GPU. Meaning that load balancing between graphics and maths can be met even if More maths, or more graphics are required.
What’s this in layman terms? Well, it simply means that the machine could potentially do a lot more than what it says on paper. AMD created a CPU, called the APU, where cores could switch between a CPU, for maths, or a GPU, for graphics. But what the R10xx is either boost the CPU speed, for times when you need more processing power, but in turn, the CPU can assist the graphics card for when really intense graphics come in and the GPU alone might not be able to handle. This means that the hardware in the PS4/Orbis might have some potential to a great deal of stuff, even when it doesn’t look so great on paper.
Plus there’s news and rumours about what the next PlayStation controller might be like. What’s been speculated at the moment (yes it’s not quite official yet) is that it’ll have an Ouya style track pad in the middle of the controller, and that it will have a built in memory for user accounts, meaning that purchased games are not going to be tied down to a console, rather they’ll be tied to a controller. Meaning you can take your controller to your friend’s house and play your PSN purchases on his/her PS4/Orbis without account complications.
The Gadget Show announced details about the next XBox, and it’s just called “XBox”… Yeah, what’s what it says in the article. Let’s just hope we don’t confuse this new XBox with the original 2002 XBox… It’s been confirmed that the “New XBox” will run a system that’s based on Windows 8 (really now?) and uses an AMD 8 core processor (Oh really now! funny that, so is PS4!).
According to The Gadget Show, Microsoft’s Illumi Room technology, which was shown off at CES a week a go, will be used in the “New XBox”. Illumi Room is a technology where by using projectors, you can increase the size of the game screen to the whole room, or use more subtle effects such as red flashes when you get shot in a first person shooter.
The “New Xbox” (I’m getting sick of calling it that by the way), isn’t going to be the only piece of gaming hardware from the next generation Microsoft hardware. It’s been rumoured that Microsoft is building a gaming tablet called the “X Surface” in similar vein to the Microsoft Surface, will be another Windows 8 based tablet that works in conjunction with the “New XBox” either for media controls or Wii-U style game play.
…Seriously, I’m not getting a new XBox, Microsoft can suck Xbox Live, seriously…
So, the trifecta of gaming news ends with Nintendo, as they announce new games for the Wii-U on their latest Nintendo Direct that was broadcasted this morning.
Nintendo is celebrating the Famicom’s thirty year anniversary by releasing a Wii-U “Gamepad-i-fied” virtual console game each month for the dirt cheap price of 30 cents.
UPDATE: The 30 cents offer works as a 30 day rental, after 30 days, the game expires, you you have the choice of purchasing it or not. But users who own the Wii version of the virtual console game can purchase the GamePad-i-fied version at a discounted price of 99 cents.
Yes, it does mean that you’ll have to download a new version of a Virtual console game after buying so many for the Wii. But for 30 cents it’s not TOO bad, it’s just a shame that they can’t just upgrade all your Virtual console games to have GamePad support for 30 cents a game. Guess you can’t win all the time huh?
Each month, Nintendo will release a single Wii-U-i-fied virtual console game with GamePad support each month, starting with Balloon Fight for this month of January. Personally I’d rather see more games, but for 30 cents a game, maybe Nintendo is seeing the whole iOS/Android 99 cents games as being a big deal and wants to join the Apps bandwagon.
More details on Bayonetta 2 were announced, such as a peep at Bayonetta’s new clothes and guns. New locations such as a Cyberpunk world and a broken down cathedral. I loved the first game, and if there’s a game that might get me to buy a Wii-U it might very well be this one!
A Shin Megami Tensei – Fire Emblem crossover!? I so didn’t see this coming?! Not a lot of details about this one, though it would be interesting to see how they match these two franchises…
Titled “X”, this is Monolith Soft’s (the creators of XenoGears and XenoBlade) next game for the Wii-U. They haven’t announced if this is, or not a sequel to Xenoblade on the Wii. But looks at the game’s HUD and combat, it’s clearly a sequel, and I’m kind of excited for it!
Eiji Aonuma has announced that he’s working on a high definition version of Zelda Wind Waker for Wii-U. Adding a lot of detail with light and textures, and it looks very pretty! Mind you Wind Waker isn’t the best game in the Zelda franchise, but it isn’t the worst either. It’ll be nice if they add more content in this version such as new dungeons and temples, as Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t have a chance to truly finish working on Wind Waker.
Update: Here’s the full Nintendo Direct video that was broadcast this morning.
So yeah, lots of console news and talk today! So much in one day! It’s like super early E3! Hope you like what you’ve heard today. Write down any comments below and I might reply to them!