Most mature gamers out there can probably remember spending saturday mornings in their pajamas in front of the television playing Super Mario Bros for the NES. This little gaming box was amazing; truly remarkable. It brought you daily bursts of joy and entertainment. The graphics were out of this world, and you could even have fun playing multiplayer with your friends.

Jump forward to now. The televisions and consoles look a little different, but basically do the same thing. They bring you the same joy and amazement the little NES did. The graphics are still pushing the limits of our imagination, and even if you don’t have any real friends, X-Box Live is always there to help.

There is one major difference between then and now, and its one that is proving an annoyance to many gamers, including myself. You see, when I go into my closet and pull out my NES and SNES, they both still work great (a little blowing required). These machines are 10, 15, 20 years old, and still function like they were made yesterday. The quality of these consoles is unparalleled and something I wish the present-generation companies would imitate.

Everyone knows about the X-Box 360’s Red Ring of Death, and I’m sure people remember the issues plagueing the early PS2’s. These major issues receive a lot of media attention, but to me, its the little things that bother me. Last month my Nintendo Wii’s disc drive broke. I had to send it in for repairs, and Nintendo did a great job fixing it (even repairing the covers for the memory card/controllers) that had broken off). They even left my decals on the Wii. (Something Microsoft has been bad with).

Two weeks ago my Rock Band guitar snapped in half while playing Green Grass and High Tides on Expert right at 92%. Perhaps I was a little tough on it, but nothing beyond the normal wear and tear was used on both my Wii and Guitar.

Going further back, I own exactly 2 SNES and 2 NES controllers that still work perfectly. For the N64, I have 6 controllers. For the Gamecube, I have owned a total of 8 controllers and 1 wavebird. I am down to 1 Orange, 1 Platinum, and 2 black (one is sticky, the other doesn’t move up the best) that are functional. One of my Wii’s Nunchucks now has difficult moving to the left, but I spilled some alcohol in that so I won’t fault Nintendo for it.

Maybe I’m asking for too much, but I just wish gaming companies would  put a little more quality into their products. I shouldn’t be forced to replace products because they were used in one too many Super Smash Bros matches. There is no reason why a controller or console shouldn’t last its full duration if handled properly, and I pray for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo’s next generation of gaming devices that they put a little more time into quality control, and a little less time on giant enemy crabs.

Either the gods have blessed us gamers or Jack Thomspon is a jackass, both of which i’d say are rather appreciative comments to make.

It’s probably been the biggest news wave over the past two days that the infamous anti-gaming crusading lawyer in America (or the world to be truthful) has been found guilty of misconducting the ways of the law (… I suppose that’s one way of putting it :S). He’s been filed on several accounts of fradulent usage of the law, some of which are displayed below and the rest in the source.

• Knowingly making a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal
• Knowingly disobeying an obligation under the rules of a tribunal
• Communicating the merits of the case with a judge before whom the proceeding is pending
• Using means that have no purpose other than to embarrass, delay or burden a third person
• Engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation
• Engaging in conduct in connection with the practice of law that is prejudicial to the administration of justice, including to knowingly or through callous indifference disparage or humiliate litigants or other lawyers
• Making statements that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge

Check the source for the rest @ TheEscapistMagazine

Personally, he had it coming - one way or another he was going end up screwed for messing with the online gaming scene. There’s millions of us, and one of him - and lets face it, with all the blind accusations he was making; he was eventually going to trip over his own feet.

I can see that his interests mean good, but seriously; I think it’s pure ignorance to call Super Columbine RPG a tool for the murders that took place in the most recent school shootings. Essentially the guerilla made game is just a 2D RPG with hardly related graphics to the plotline of the actual game.

Hey guys & girls,

Yeah, I should really apologise for how long it’s been since I last posted - but then again that wouldn’t be really unlike me… so fuck that

First thing I want to crack on with is the kick-arse new venue that the blokes at Multiplay are setting up the next installment of the iSeries at. Personally, I can’t wait.. this is what really put the cherry on top of the cake for me, mainly because the event is going to hold more than 2,000 people in the gamer’s paradise (which is basically one warehouse sized room for gamer’s and their machines) and due to the M-Festival now becoming live, it’s estimated that about 10,000 people on top of that will be attending

For those of you who don’t know what’s so amazing and fantastic about the i-Series, well i’ll break it down for you. It’s mainly an even for gamers, however up until i34 - it’s now opened it’s wings to a larger audience what with the opening of the very first M-Festival. For the naive readers out there, consider it as Glastonbury, but injected with a digital dose of technology. Amazing combination, eh?

It just so seems that this new “M-Festival” mallarchy is also going to attract and entirely different audience which will be interesting to see at the event.

As for now, I just can’t wait… I want to frag some pros and go home with the cash.

Axiom Gaming

Out of everything going on this year, this is one thing I’m absolutely getting high on. Why? Well, I just love LAN centres. It’s such a thrilling experience to play with others in the same room with high-end machines than it is to do it over the internet.

It’s a completely different atmosphere, why? Well for a start you can taunt your opposition with any means necessary. That’s right, you don’t have to bash the “K” (by default) button on CSS to get your bad-ass taunts across that would make Chuck Norris himself cry.

It’s also a great chance for you and others to browse around the place and check out other peoples machines. And if you really are the moneybags, then showing your machine off isn’t a problem either

This event specifically has also been renown to hosting the gathering of hundreds of clans nationwide. Luckily enough, i’m friends with a clan member who’s clan is supposedly appearing there this year. Enough said about my love to LAN gaming; getting to the point, i33 is a 3 day LAN Gaming Festival, consisting of pros & plenty of competitions.

Personally, I can’t wait - i’ve always said this to every gamer I tend to game with regularly that I just want recognition and to become professional at what I love doing; Counter-Strike: Source.

And it’s gaming events like this that make the dreams of my kind possible. I honestly can’t wait to get my grubby hands on some tickets because I know this is an event that i’ll be awake all night (before-hand) for.

Anyway, no doubt I will be posting pictures of the event when I go, however if you’re going; let me know!

LoveDuckie.

It was expected really, there was nothing unordinary about this piece of news - what with the “To Be Continued…” left right at the first game. But in all fairness, there really shouldn’t have been left room for a sequel. Why?

BECAUSE THE GAME’S FUCKING SHIT.

Atleast, that’s the most bluntest way of putting it.

I guess the best way of making any rant-ish blog post good is to atleast let the reader honestly know why you think it’s shit.

THE GAME IS FUCKING SHIT.

I joke, but I really do wish I could finish off this blog post with that single line. Anyway, lets start with the first game shall we?

Right, so first of all.. it’s easy to consider this as a sleazy console port, but looking back at the previous RS games, they haven’t necessarily been so widespread over different consoles. Granted, the way older ones hit Playstation & Xbox - But ever since that generation of consoles it definitely seems like the dev’s at Ubisoft are trying to plaster this piece of shit over every single platform. Including the handhelds.

Remove the first layer of shit, we eventually get to the inner bit of shit. Which is the shit that really counts; gameplay.

It’s a universally accepted principle that if the gameplay of the game is so good, then the person playing that game won’t be leaving his gaming platform til 3AM the next day. Granted - RSV had this element for about 2 hours of game play then it hit me, almost like shit to a fan.

Comparing RSV to the older RS games such as Raven Shield, it’s nice to know that the dev’s have finally tidied up the commands available to give to your team mates. And it’s even better that you no longer have to do hours worth of “level planning” just for one short-fucking-mission.

This is actually one aspect that kept me happy, just because it left you to have so much creativity as to how you entered > busted > cleared the room or building. Noticeably, this wasn’t at all what bothered me - especially with what cool new “duck ‘n’ cover” & “back to the wall” manouevres that were available to the player.

Artificial Intelligence - I would guess that this is one hell of a nightmare for game developers world-wide, just purely because it’s such a challenging task to create system for the machine to operate by that is almost human-like. But with RSV, from a sincere point of view - the devs must have been on atleast a pounds worth of cannabis while coding this part of the game.

First off, i’ve noticed that your team mates sometimes don’t wish to obey your orders. For example, you enter the next level… you got a great idea as to where you want to take cover. So you spam the space bar at the location that you have aimed at and as soon as you’re under fire your team mates find it logical to run like bad-asses at the terrorists. What makes it worse than snorting camel’s diahorrea shit is that you then have to go save their asses by “healing them” (in which you actually just stick a needle in their ass… no really) in order to continue the god damn game.

I guess it’s cute you being there for them, but who said I wanted Barbie’s Fucking Pony Adventures? Maybe if they want to be such jack-offs, the game devs could have made a shovel their secondary weapon so they could dig their own fucking graves and jump in it before I have to take a turn around to shoot off the terrorists that massacrated them.

What’s even more worse is, when you go down; thats it. Game over.

You can’t be healed by your own team mates but the stupidity of it is that you can heal them?

I’ll give you another example of how truly idiotic the AI is.

I have my team follow me into a room, and as soon as i’m being fired at by terrorists, the chinese bloke says (repetitively) “GET OUTS OF TEHH LINES OF FYYY-AHHH!”. At this point of the game, for once you can tell the developers actually understood what us gamers wanted.

Chinese special ops personell telling me to play the game better. Fuck.

Amusing. And yeah, it really did make me laugh.

I’ll give the poor guys at Ubisoft some credit though, as the two guys that follow you around are incredibly good as cannon fodder. That’s right. Line those retarded pieces of code against a wall, tell them to bust - wait for about 5 seconds… and as soon as both of them go down - go around, take another entrance - and wallah! Room cleared. Play ass lovers for about a minute with 5 inch needles (and this revives them?), then carry on with the game.

The next point that i’m coming to is the enemy. Suprisingly, it seems that Ubisoft had spent more time into the AI of the enemy rather than the AI of the two key people who are going to keep you alive in the game. Seriously, they should have just easter egged Death, with a scythe & and a black cloak into the game somewhere… it’s that unbalanced.

Example - I don’t advise you to play with “Realistic” or “Normal” mode, because with every room that you run into - you’re fucking dead. It’s almost like running into some kind of camouflaged grave. And that’s me truthfully speaking; these terrorists only unload one bullet on you, and you’re dead. Absoulutely out of here.

Which doesn’t make sense, because even with the most highly damaging weapon in the game - it still takes about 3 shots to take a single terrorist down.

There’s so much more to say about this game, but the real reason why i’m dreading it’s sequel is that it’s got real big shoes to fill if it’s going to come out any better than the first one. And I mean that, especially with the appauling PC multiplayer functionality - atleast online was fun with the Xbox 360, even if it did look worse.

PS: If you have a fairly low end machine, I thoroughly recommend for you not to get this game. Not only is it shite, it’s going to eat your systems resources like a fat kid in McDonalds.

I need sleep.

Trailer Link: YouTube

- LoveDuckie^

Ok. So this isn’t really the earliest I could have done this. However this is more of a discussion than a review. In all honesty if you haven’t played Rock Band yet , find three friends and get the game immediately. It is truly a party treat. It’s an experience that has only been rivaled by playing in an actual band. Plus the song choice is amazing. From Enter Sandman to to Cherub Rock and even Faith No More’s “Epic” this game has a laundry list of awesome titles.

No I am not going to rant about the gameplay or anything like that. I am going to rant on the crappy peripherals that came with the damn thing. First off, I did not purchase this game. A friend of mine happened to receive it for christmas.
We notice right away that the guitar responses are horrible. To get any strums recognized you have hit down as hard as possible. Or you strum upward the entire song which sucks. Then during one of the sessions the whammy bar (which is hardly ever used) snapped off the guitar. Finally the drum pedal broke into two pieces. (maybe we were playing the drums a little too hard though ).

I AM NOT SAYING that every single kit you buy is cheap and will break. There are just some obvious flaws with some of the equipment. Not only has my friend had problems but many people I have talked to.

So , I guess be extremely careful not to abuse the instruments. They can’t take much damage (although I think the drum kit could have been better assembled ).

OH THERE IS A WARRANTY BY THE WAY. I almost forgot to mention it. The company will replace broken instruments. It’s just a pain to have to do so.

No matter what though , this game provides hours of fun. I am talking 12 hours of non-stop rock here. So no matter what complaints I may throw at you it’s definitely worth the buy if you have some friends to play with.

- assimilator

may contain spoliers.

In this game, the main character is Toni Cippriani at his young days. You took out the laundry for this guy in gta 3, yes?

Salvatore Leone (gta3, gta SA) is one of the main characters in this game, and Toni’s intentions troughout the game goes a lot along the lines of being loyal to the family. What I find really awsome about the storyline of this game and any gta game for that matter, is how the storylines are merged. This game plays a lot on that, and answers a lot of mysteries related to the previous games.

The main storyline is a war between the Leone family and the Sindaccos. In the beginning of the game, the Leone family has Portland totally under control, but due to a war on a lot of fronts with the sindaccos, triads and diablos among others, the end result is uber fail.

If you’ve played gta 3, you might have noticed that there are no sindaccos in liberty city .. and yes, there is a relevance there.

New additions to the city and the gameplay would be great multiplayer, side missions such as car salesman, a new mob being construction workers on strike, motorcycles and more realistic (faster) driving. But aside of driving, I would say that the on-foot controls suck even more then the console version of gta 3 (speaking of the autoaim crap in general)

6.8 out of 10 !
The on foot controls drag the game down a lot, but they are not bad. You might find the autoaim difficult to handle during some shootout missions, but after several deaths and mental issues, you might get the hang of it. The storyline is great and most missions seem to be relevant in one way or another. IMO, a must have game for any psp/ps2 owners.

- kaptein_knivkamp

So I guess the biggest stir in at the moment within the World of Warcraft community is the new commercials that have been released by Blizzard.

Hands down, that was a wise move by the role-play loving developers at Blizzard. Who would have thought Mr. T’s face representing the game would really make it so cool again?

Anyway, there is a William Shatner one out there for all you Trekkie fans but I think the beam of light is really coming from T’s commercial.

And in all honesty, Blizzard were sitting on a gold mine anyway with the release of WoW, so it’s really no suprise to see that they can afford celebrities (even of a low class) to participate in their new advertisements.

Good going to them too.

Anyway, so here’s a story for you folks!

Back in July (14th to be precise), me and buddy headed to Croydon to see the Episode 14 screening for PurePwnage. So anyway after the day was concluded, and we decided to head home… Paul gets a mag with a WoW competition in.

As it had already been a good day.. I thought well maybe my luck could get even better. So I decided to enter this competition by texting 3 answers (the answer required was Azeroth… don’t ask what the Q was.) in hope that i’d have a better chance in winning.

So.. virtually 5 months later, I get an e-mail from the editor asking me for my address to send me the following:

A WOW collector’s edition

A WOW: Burning Crusade collector’s edition

A WOW mouse mat

A Through the Dark Portal collector card set & booster pack

A Molten Core trading card raid deck

Although I did come as a runner up, I was stoked that I was getting all these freebies. I’ve always wanted a limited edition version of WoW & BC mainly because I love the games (even if they are stupidly repetitive sometimes). So I sent back my address and hopefully I should get it in the post soon!

Much love,

LoveDuckie

Hot Links:

Mr. T WoW Commercial

Okay, everyone has heard about it. No doubt most of you have played it. Crysis. The game that had everyone talking for years after it was announced. It was the be the “New Benchmark For PC Systems!” offering unrivalled visuals, that looked so damn real even I, at the time an AVID RTS gamer found myself solely excited for this one game.Fan sites sprang up before the game was even released, and when the demo was released the buzz reached an all new high. With my substandard internet connection, I couldn’t download the immense file required to play it, so I happily skipped off to my local EB Games 2 days before the scheduled release date to pick it up, as most people did, and rushed home in my car, a hot little steel-book case of Crysis on my hand.

I understand that there was already consternation brewing as some countries did not receive a steel-book case with the Collector’s Edition. The Australian version certainly did, pictured below:

It even looked pretty on the inside:

The special edition contained a small 16 page art booklet, the game on a DVD, a DVD with “bonus features” (which for the record cannot be used in a conventional DVD player like the extra one in Bioshock) an unlockable APC for online multiplayer gaming and a copy of the soundtrack, which is in my humble opinion, pretty sweet.  

So I fired up the game on my PC only to find that the game’s system requirements completely ate my video card for breakfast. Finally finding a sweet spot (lowest settings on a slightly higher resolution) I set about invading Korea in a spectacular fashion.

Well , after a nice vacation for Thanksgiving, its time to get to some serious gaming done. So many games so little time. Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 4. My list is repetitive you say? Well, I think 150 dollars worth of gaming is plenty. For now. Just wait. I am going to make the holidays my bi#!&…

Over the nice three day vacation I got the pleasure of spending some time with my Wii. Ok so it wasn’t my Wii, but I did have a great time with it. I played a game called Boogie. I had never heard of this game so, no, I had never seen any reviews. I have to admit while it wasn’t really fun, it was that simple “make yourself look stupid for laughs” pleasure that made it fun. The game includes dance modes, a karaoke mode, and a Make a Video mode. The dancing portion of the game is controlled by the Wiimote, and all you do is wave the controller in any direction in time with a song and your little character , called a Boog, dances in a certain style. The gold is found in the Karaoke however. The selection of songs is actually pretty interesting including, Love Rollercoaster by Ohio Players, Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, Milkshake by Kelis and many more party type songs.

Ok really the point I am trying to get to is that the Wii is a party system to those who haven’t figured that out yet. Yeah you can play Zelda by yourself, but Nintendo still shines at creating games that are simple and creative that bring together friends and allow them to enjoy themselves for hours on end.

-Assimilator