The use of Kurt Cobain’s likeness in Guitar Hero 5 has caused a fairly big uproar. His old band mates from Nirvana have condemned it and more recently Jon Bon Jovi weighed in agreeing with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic that it is distasteful. Cobain’s ex naturally came out and had a moan as well even though it was her that signed an agreement with Activision allowing the use of his likeness. In typical Courtney Love style she leeches yet more money from the memory of her husband while simultaneously moaning about it.
There is no doubt that he would not have approved and that’s reason enough to not do it. Have some respect you big business whores. Reviving corpses to make extra money is a filthy act. We were all screwed on this after the first big profile case when the family of Steve McQueen agreed to line their own pockets and let Ford use him in a car advert, splicing together footage from his films. It seems you no longer have any rights after you die and your greedy, graspy family can whore your likeness out to the highest bidder.
Sadly there isn’t too much we can do about Cobain in Guitar Hero 5 other than not buy it. This is the only way the game was going to get this level of publicity because it is a tired series which has pushed on past its sell by date. Just like the truly great bands you have to die or break up to leave a genuinely awesome legacy.
Talking about celebrity appearances in videogames it may be too late for Kurt but we can do something to prevent Ant and Dec appearing in videogame form. I’m referring to this story at MCV which reports that Nintendo have signed them up. Prepare for the ultimate awful Wii release. I’m not against them using a videogame likeness of Ant and Dec out of respect, more because they are a couple of overexposed no talent arseholes. For non UK readers who have never heard of them, I envy you.
The recent tweaks made by the PlayStation 3 Firmware 3.0 update may not have blown your socks off but there is one addition that is proving super popular here in the UK. Since they added the BBC iPlayer link to the XMB the PS3 now accounts for 10% of all iPlayer usage. Macs only account for 8.5%.
The presentation on the PS3 is very nice and iPlayer is awesome, offering many of the BBC’s programs from the last seven days as free streams. It works well but no one could have expected such a massive instant response.
Is there any escape from spammers? Well not if you’re online there isn’t. In fact spammers are even infiltrating games now. They are approaching gamers in MMO games like World of Warcraft and touting in game items and levelled up characters in exchange for cash.
Sony Online Entertainment have decided enough is enough and they’ve put together a team of spam busters who police games like Everquest and Free Realms stalking spammers and building up a picture of their evil organisation. Just like undercover cops they wait to find Mr Big before they call SWAT in and fill them all full of lead…or ban their accounts at least.
Most of these characters farms are based outside the reach of the US so there isn’t much the publishers and developers can do about the trade which is estimated to be worth several million dollars every year. You can read about this in more detail here.
I love the idea of that job working for Sony. What is their job title? Virtual Detective? MMOG Police? It must feel really rewarding to bust spammers, they should raid them in game and stick their characters in stocks for gamers to throw rotten veg at before they ban their accounts. Then hang, draw and quarter them and leave their heads on poles as a warning to other spammers.
Apart from the fact that EA blatantly ripped off the art style of Team Fortress 2 I was looking forward to playing Battlefield Heroes, not least because it is free. They have slapped together FPS game mechanics with an RPG style consistent character and presented the whole thing as a first/third person shooter. The two forces are obviously Brits vs Nazis but the game is like a watered down version of a typical shooter, that is if you can get into it!
I’m sure EA were delighted with their browser based install system which is obviously intended to make things easy but I’m not a big fan. Poor layout and a refresh problem which you aren’t warned about meant my installation took a while to complete and I don’t really like having to sign into the browser every time I want to play. It is like having an individual Steam for one game and it runs Punkbuster as well, which after install wants to start itself up whether you are playing or not.
With the game installed and my character created I tried to start the game. The tutorial worked fine and I was ready for my first battle but everytime it connected the server would dump me and an error message would pop up. The forum revealed that the game has been plagued by errors and the dev team have been slow to post solutions. Considering it was delayed it is disapointing that they’ve released a buggy game and while I’d buy the whole “What can you expect for a free game?” if it was made by an indie I am less sympathetic when it comes to someone with pockets as deep as EA.
Once in the game is underwhelming. It should be called Battlefield Lite. It may appeal to casual gamers or non FPS players but then again why would non FPS players want to play an FPS? Anyway it’s not too bad, there is some fun to be had and the microtransactions are easy to ignore but I can’t see them making much money from it. It will be very interesting to see how well they decide it has done, especially since it is part of their Play 4 Free range.
So Microsoft have announced they are cutting the price of the Xbox 360 Elite by $100 which will make it $299. The same price as the new PS3. Both machines are 120 GB but I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would buy a 360 over a PS3. The PS3 is a far better console with support for Blu-ray and web browsing. The fact that Sony take a loss on each console sold shows you what a good deal it is for the consumer. Meanwhile Microsoft cut out the free HDMI cable they were bundling with the Xbox 360 Elite package and they still claim to be making a profit on the hardware.
I found their statement about how they had planned this price drop all along quite funny. It just happened to be something they were going to announce anyway even although they didn’t announce it at GamesCom, it has nothing to do with their major competitor dropping the price of their console, honest. Yes very convincing. Microsoft also plan to phase out the Xbox 360 Pro which is dropping in price to $249.
If you missed the indie developed awesomeness that was Mount & Blade then I pity you. A realistic melee combat system allowed you to engage in medieval battle on horseback with a lance, sword fight, smash skulls in with a mace, slash and hack with an axe and throw spears. There were bows and crossbows and castle sieges and while the whole package was a little rough around the edges it was great fun and completely unique. I got addicted for a few weeks.
Now there is a new version, Mount & Blade Warband and they have given the whole game a graphical makeover but more importantly they have added a multiplayer option so I’ll be a smashing a skull near you very soon. Check out the video.
Sony made some interesting announcements at the GamesCom 2009 Expo. First up was the predictable news that they would be releasing a slim version of the PS3 on the 1st of September. It is 33% smaller, 36% lighter and 10% less loveable. I’m just saying that because I already have a fat PS3 and I love it anyway. None of this shallow obsessive dieting for my PS3.
They are also doing a firmware update for PS3s big and small. It will let you watch BBC iPlayer through your PS3 which is awesome and there are a few other bits and pieces as well. You’ll now be able to browse the PS3 via any Bravia remote so yet another reason why I need to buy a new Sony Bravia TV, the wife will surely cave this time.
There is also the PSP Go, the dinky version of the PSP which slides open. It will be getting a download service where you can buy mini-games, by which they mean under 100 MB puzzle games and casual titles. It has a way to go to catch the Nintendo DS but this still looks like a smart move from Sony.
I used to play first person shooters for hours daily. Working at a games developer it is pretty common to play games at lunch time and sometimes even stay after work to have a big FPS session. Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Vietcong, Call of Duty, Medal of Honour, Wolfenstein, Halo, Team Fortress 2, Mafia, Doom, No One Lives Forever and our own game The Ship. There have been some great multiplayer FPS games over the years and nothing beats sitting in the same room as your team so you can actually communicate. The rivalry was fierce and epic gaming sessions would really spark the adrenaline.
I’m a really bad loser when it comes to games. Verbal abuse at work was always part of the fun though, or at least it was for me, but there came a time when the world of FPS combat lost its appeal and I stopped playing FPS games altogether. It wasn’t a deliberate decision there were just other games that I wanted to play. It wasn’t like I had fallen out with FPS’s or anything. In fact just recently I had to play one for a preview (Section 8) and I thought to myself why has it been so long? Welcome old friend perhaps I’ll play you regularly again. It soon became apparent why I gave them up.
Within five minutes of joining I had been killed three times before moving from my spawn point, stabbed in the face by a leaping hardcore nutter twice and been called a fucking useless noob by someone on my own team. Within half an hour I had the old aiming skills back and the adrenaline was flowing. Within an hour I had repeatedly raped the knife man and helped my team to back to back to victories. I would not be able to stop until I had fought my way to the top of the scoreboard and once I did after an hour and half I had to stubbornly resist the urge to type who’s the noob now you fucker! The truth is FPS games don’t bring out the best in me.
I shut it down before the next map could load up and suck me in and turned to see the horrified face of my wife holding my baby son. Having been subjected to a loud string of expletive laden screaming and completely ignored she was not best pleased. My son didn’t look bothered.
Just been playing a Nintendo DS game called Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward which I’m reviewing and it was really pretty poor. Like a Flash browser game except they want $20 for it. It’s something I’ve noticed in general about Nintendo lately, they’ve thrown the whole idea of quality control out of the window. This game had the Nintendo Seal of Quality on the back of the box, just like all the shovelware Wii games they churn out. Didn’t that used to mean something? Actually no, they always churned out more than their fair share of total crap you just tend to forget the bad ones.
I’ve never been much of a fan of Nintendo and in the past they had games like Mario Kart which is undeniably awesome but now I could count the number of decent Wii and DS games on one hand and most of them are repackaged classics or multi format releases. The top selling game on the DS is Nintendogs and on the Wii it’s Wii Sports. Not exactly inspiring stuff. Anyway not sure what my point is just some aimless Nintendo moaning
I’m not sure when or where it happened but there was obviously a law passed at some point which states that any PC intended to be a top of the line gaming machine must come in a stupid case. Apparently gamers are desperate to see the inner workings of their machine preferably with a blue glow applied. There’s nothing better while blasting aliens and building empires than to glance down and see neon blue shining through a zig zag pattern on the side of your PC. Thank god, zeus, odin, allah, or whoever my motherboard is still there!
If it doesn’t have the cutaway with the mad lighting then it has to have a moving or sliding face plate. Something completely pointless and impractical which actually detracts from the precious gaming time you have because you have to wait for this mechanical wonder to unfold everytime you want to put a disk in the machine. Some of them are now disguising the shape altogether. I may be a PC but I don’t have to be a box shape, I can be all angular like dazzle camouflage. Behold my glowing weird awesomeness.
I have to wonder do the people who buy these machines just give up gaming altogether and sit round the PC case in the dark? The only thing worse than the stupid cut away effect is getting a custom paint job on your PC. It’s not a car ffs, who are you trying to impress with that flaming skull? Do you cart it around on a skateboard so people can see? Maybe I’m missing the point but I don’t really need to be sitting in the bridge of the Starship Enterprise to get immersed in a game. I’m more interested in what’s inside the machine. A big black brick is fine with me as long as it is quiet and really, really fast.
The recent tweaks made by the 
Apart from the fact that EA blatantly ripped off the art style of Team Fortress 2 I was looking forward to playing Battlefield Heroes, not least because it is free. They have slapped together FPS game mechanics with an RPG style consistent character and presented the whole thing as a first/third person shooter. The two forces are obviously Brits vs Nazis but the game is like a watered down version of a typical shooter, that is if you can get into it!
So Microsoft have announced they are cutting the price of the Xbox 360 Elite by $100 which will make it $299. The same price as the new PS3. Both machines are 120 GB but I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would buy a 360 over a PS3. The PS3 is a far better console with support for Blu-ray and web browsing. The fact that Sony take a loss on each console sold shows you what a good deal it is for the consumer. Meanwhile Microsoft cut out the free HDMI cable they were bundling with the Xbox 360 Elite package and they still claim to be making a profit on the hardware.
Sony made some interesting announcements at the GamesCom 2009 Expo. First up was the predictable news that they would be releasing a slim version of the PS3 on the 1st of September. It is 33% smaller, 36% lighter and 10% less loveable. I’m just saying that because I already have a fat PS3 and I love it anyway. None of this shallow obsessive dieting for my PS3.
There is also the PSP Go, the dinky version of the PSP which slides open. It will be getting a download service where you can buy mini-games, by which they mean under 100 MB puzzle games and casual titles. It has a way to go to catch the Nintendo DS but this still looks like a smart move from Sony.
I used to play first person shooters for hours daily. Working at a games developer it is pretty common to play games at lunch time and sometimes even stay after work to have a big FPS session. Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Vietcong, Call of Duty, Medal of Honour, Wolfenstein, Halo, Team Fortress 2, Mafia, Doom, No One Lives Forever and our own game The Ship. There have been some great multiplayer FPS games over the years and nothing beats sitting in the same room as your team so you can actually communicate. The rivalry was fierce and epic gaming sessions would really spark the adrenaline.
Just been playing a Nintendo DS game called 
I’m not sure when or where it happened but there was obviously a law passed at some point which states that any PC intended to be a top of the line gaming machine must come in a stupid case. Apparently gamers are desperate to see the inner workings of their machine preferably with a blue glow applied. There’s nothing better while blasting aliens and building empires than to glance down and see neon blue shining through a zig zag pattern on the side of your PC. Thank god, zeus, odin, allah, or whoever my motherboard is still there!