The Medal of Honour series is one that has suffered from the success of other franchises such as the Call of Duty and Battlefield series in the more recent generation of gaming, at the forefront of the FPS genre back in the day, Medal of Honour will always hold a place in the hearts of PS1 owners and with EA’s latest release for the new generation of consoles  it would appear they are returning to their gritty routes rather than attempting to appeal to the average teenage audience of the Call of Duty series.

With this game being only in its Beta stages currently, it is hard to judge it by its graphics, although  upon first impressions they look rather good, with environments looking exactly how you would imagine them to. The two maps on offer in the Beta show the best of both worlds, A desert warfare style map on a huge scale for a ‘Conquest’ style ‘Mission’ mode, and a more confined close quarters map for the regular team deathmatch style of play. Both of these have interesting environments and a god amount of atmosphere about them, for example, in the Team Deathmatch map, called, ‘Kabul City Ruins’ there are planes flying into buildings in the background, explosions, things falling down and dogfights in the air, whereas the larger ‘Helmand’ map has more of a focus towards the players rushing the various objectives to create it’s atmosphere, with desperate shouts from characters, explosions, screams and the sound of bullets flying past your head, it’s as immersive and chaotic as a scripted single player game, and this is something that I find excellent.

Speaking of rushing objectives, this is pretty much what the ‘Mission’ mode consists of, and it plays out very much like Battlefield: Bad Company’s Conquest mode, which is to be expected as the online of both of these games was created by Dice, this is where Medal of Honour could slip up…

Personally, I enjoyed Battlefield and preferred it to Call of Duty by a mile, however, I know that many people will automatically dismiss anything that isn’t Call of Duty and so Medal Of Honour could flop, however, once again, I think that EA have created a game that’s better than Call Of Duty and have clearly picked a good way of selling the game.

As Medal of Honour is set in the present day (which is often preferred to the historical setting) and Call of Duty is releasing it’s ‘Historical’ release due to their year on year off agreement they share with Treyarch, I think that despite the hatred for Battlefield, this game will still sell well.

Gameplay wise, it’s standard, it’s an FPS and there’s nothing new at all. There is however a killstreak system where you are given a choice between an offensive and a defensive streak, for example, after 40 points (you gain around 10 points per kill and 15 if it’s a headshot) you can choose from either a Mortar strike or a UAV, this adds an extra layer of tactics to the gameplay and helps to splice things up if you are defending a position, but chances are players will almost always go for the Mortar Strike. There is a weapon customization feature which is pulled off quite nicely and you can (much like in Battlefield) create a class whilst playing a game, allowing a sense of versatility whilst on the battlefield, with various attachments and weapons to be picked from, players can use this to their advantage, for example, when defending a position one might want to change to a sniping class rather than an all out close quarters assault class.

Overall Medal of Honour is shaping up to be a strong contender against the Call of Duty series, although I haven’t played any of the single player, if it’s anywhere near as immersive and atmospheric as the online play, it should be a winner.

- Dean Case

May 29^th, the middle of my GCSE exams and I’m standing outside the London Excel talking to people dressed as Tetris Blocks. Not only does the MCM Expo have some characters, but It was also one of the events I had looked forward to since attending the October 2009 day out.

Over the six hours I spent at the expo, I had the chance to meet many people in cosplay (some costumes were better and more ‘pleasing’ to the eye than others) and I interviewed several, including a rather nice gent dressed as Pacman (below.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aazcdd8alN4

I also interviewed a Deathnote who mentioned how ‘hateful’ the expo was, unfortunately the interview was a bit of a shambles as you can tell I’m not particularly popular with the ladies quote: ‘are you aware that you are being interviewed’ and I return I had a disapproving ‘no…’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIG8fLVhlLE

Talking of the costumes the amount of good ones there were was astounding , from Fonejacker and Gundam characters to some handmade ODST armour, the amount of variation and people’s interests really shone through, making the atmosphere of the place incredibly friendly and oddly enough, like everybody present was part of one big family.

Despite the regular people dressed as their favourite characters, there were also some professional cosplayers dressed as various characters from films and in absolutely stunning costumes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2zK80JOOg

Below are various photos from the event:

Even Predators like the Dukes of Hazard car.

I’m a hit with the ladies, I mean, Iron men…

V-Do and Kafai get pulled over…

My jaw hit the floor. (sadly sideways)

My Dream Ride

A Team Van

Pacman’s turning circle.

Cookie Monster

Intense gundam cosplay

Traditional Japanese dude (so traditional, he thinks looking into cameras will steal his soul)

Overall, as expected the MCM expo delivered,  and it did it with more of a bang than the October expo, with a world record breaking event of having the most Nintendo DS players present in one place.

Damian Field, Guinness World Records’ Official Adjudicator, commented: “It is a tremendous achievement for the MCM Expo to reach a number of 586, smashing the existing world record of 381. It’s rare for a UK mass participation to reach over 500.”

As for the gaming aspect of things, I have several hands on reviews coming, including Transformers – War for Cybertron and the much anticipated Quantum Theory.

So stay tuned to Wedotech.net for those pieces, coming soon.

I would also like to give a big thank you to all the people in the Press office at the expo for being so helpful to both me and my friends, and in particular David Axbey and Jane Ralph for being so welcoming on the day.

-Dean Case

PS.

Lunchtime was fun too.

Catering for gamers of every genre, the MCM expo will have everything from the latest Super Mario game, to housing the world exclusive first playable demo of Transformers: War for Cybertron and more!

Pocket gamers are advised to bring a DS and a game on the 29th to get involved with the MCM Expo’s Guinness World Record attempt at hosting the largest handheld game console party, with Nintendo offering consumers the chance to win one of five DSi XLs and more prizes from other exhibitors.

The games present at the May London MCM Expo 2010 include:

• Blur
• Dragon Ball: Origins 2
• Dragon Quest IX
• Fist of the North Star (FIRST SHOWING OUTSIDE OF JAPAN)
• Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalker
• Monster Hunter Tri
• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3
• No More Heroes 2
• Professor Layton
• Quantum Theory
• Samurai Showdown Sen
• Samurai Warriors 3
• Sin and Punishment: Successor Of The Skies
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Transformers: War for Cybertron (WORLD EXCLUSIVE: first playable demo)
• WarioWare DIY
• Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2010

With support from some of the biggest videogame publishers in the UK, including Nintendo, Activision, Namco Bandai, Tecmo Koei, Ubisoft, Rising Star Games and advanced ticket sales already up by 30 per cent compared to last year, this May’s MCM Expo looks set to draw more than 40,000 people.

On top of this there will be a heavy presence from Ubisoft who will be marketing Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands at the event, as well as offering the first 5,000 attendees of the show exclusive Prince of Persia goodies. Additionally, Yuri Lowenthal, the voice of the Prince will also be at the show signing posters and meetings fans.

Tecmo Koei, as well as showcasing Quantum Theory, will be selling a highly collectable limited edition figurine of Kasumi from Dead or Alive: Paradise, while publisher Konami will be holding the UK Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game National Championship and Turtle Entertainment will be running professional gaming tournaments as part of the Electronic Sports League’s Pro Series for the UK.

“You mean I have to fight it again!?”

Since Final Fantasy XIII’s announcement all the way back in 2006, the hype train for the game was truly going full speed ahead for the full four years since its original announcement, however, the journey was not without its stops, and the choice to port the game to the Xbox 360 was one that Square came under fire for, with fanboys boycotting the game and even all other Square Enix products, however, the train rolled on, until the game finally arrived on my doorstep in march.

This review is going to a tough one to write, on one hand I have to consider the previous games in the series and the huge franchise that is Final Fantasy, and how each one set a new standard in different areas, be that in graphics, soundtrack or gameplay. On the other, I have to consider the fact that this game was designed for the new generation of games consoles, and evidently aimed at a western audience a little more than its predecessors, which is something that is risky for a JRPG at heart.

So where to start? Well the main thing that I suspect will come under fire by fans of the old series is the new battle system. Combat, unlike the older games in the series (with the exception of XII) is no longer strictly turn based, with the return of the ATB (Active Time Battle) and with users being able to chain moves and link abilities together in order to rack up chain bonuses on enemies and stagger them (making them more susceptible to attacks and less resistant to damage,) the combat system is not dissimilar to that of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, albeit with a few tweaks.

A system involving characters taking specific roles (known as the Paradigm system) is now in place, and the correct use of it is essential to winning a lot of the battles in the game. This system is in place of the ability to control every character on the field, as with this latest instalment, only one of the three in play is controllable, this will put off some fans of the old series as the flexibility of combat is slightly lowered, however, this doesn’t mean to say that tactics and thought don’t come into play at all, as simply using an all offensive Paradigm will not get you very far.

Characters are levelled based on roles, there are several, including; The Commando (Regular Attacks,) The Ravager (magic and elemental attacks,) The Sentinel (Withstands damage and provides shielding for other characters,) The Medic (Self explanatory,) The Synergist (Capable of casting protection and strengthening spells unto the party,) and finally The Saboteur (Casts hindering spells on enemies.) The levelling system is Final Fantasy XIII is called the Crystarium, a system which seems like a cross between Final Fantasy X’s ‘Sphere Grid’ and some aspects Final Fantasy XII’s ’licence board.’ Experience points are known as Crystogen Points (CP) and these can be spent on levelling characters in specific roles, each role has a different branch on the Crystarium, making it easy to choose specific areas to level a character in. This system is nicely pulled off and is fairly easy to use one you get used to It, however, the amount of levelling that can be achieved is unlocked as the story progresses, meaning that essentially there is a level cap on your characters until they get to a specific part of the story.

Switching up your roles and customizable Paradigms is essential to survive in large fights, however, a lot of the time one can simply use a Medic and Commando paradigm and tap the X button until the battle is over, this not only makes some parts of the game boring, but means that anybody who gets used to doing this may find the boss fights essentially impossible, the boss immediately springing to mind here is Odin. As I mentioned before about tapping the X button, sometimes this is your only choice, as some enemies have a stagger bar that is incredibly hard to raise without putting your characters at risk, and considering the fact that if the character you are controlling dies it’s game over, playing it the safe but boring way is often the best option. Some of the bosses and enemies in the game are incredibly overpowered, and the Watchdrones within the first hour of the game will easily make mincemeat of players not using their roles correctly, this is frustrating as all hell, seeing as this early into the game, players will only just be getting to grips with the system.

I have mentioned bosses quite a few times already, and I would like to take this opportunity to say how frustrating they can be. Battles can be long, gruelling and tiring and it can only take a few hits for you to get screwed over and lose all of your progress. Some battles can last for up to an hour and often you will have to fight the same boss more than once, not to mentioned that if you die you have to do the whole thing again from the start as you can’t just change characters, and considering the fact that Phoenix Downs are fairly rare or expensive, it means that if a team mate dies who has an important role such as a medic, then it is pretty much all over (unless you have a summon.)

That’s right, like in most of the Final Fantasy games the summons are back, named Eidolons this time around, the giant transformer mech like creatures will aid you in battle when summoned, much like the older games. However, this time around they are controllable in a vehicle form. As farfetched as this sounds, the system is fairly good, with a bunch of set moves to choose from that drain down a gauge depending on how powerful the attack is. Each Eidolon has a unique special attack that can inflict massive damage on enemies, although strategy is still required when thinking about when to use this move, usually when an enemy is staggered is the opportune moment to use it. Upon summoning an Eidolon your party will have its health restored and any downed members will be revived, so even summoning requires some tactical thought before it’s done.

Somewhat unfortunately, the game is based on an open world, similar to Final Fantasy XII enemies are visible on the field and can be avoided, although it is a little too easy to avoid them, making lots of the battles in the game optional, this isn’t necessarily a good thing, as it means that players can miss a lot out of the actual game and just run through it. Personally, I preferred the original and faithful to Final Fantasy random battles, some people had their problems with them although you were always given the option to flee if you really couldn’t fight your enemy, another thing that Final Fantasy XIII seems to lack.

Overall the new battle system isn’t too bad, although sometimes things can get rather boring, and with the aspect of being able to overpower your character and have a bit more fun removed, sometimes the idea of bothering to level up your characters properly seems pointless anyway, especially with combat being avoidable so much. Most of your main levelling will also be done by the story, as bosses usually provide at least 1000 Crystogen Points for you to spend.

Gameplay wise you will mostly be fighting enemies and progressing through the levels of the game. Unfortunately for fans of the older games in the series, the levels are now very linear, and there are no longer any towns to explore and use, although some fans were up in arms about this, it didn’t really take away from the experience the game offered, as the environments are huge despite having a set path. There are various parts in the game where you will do a free-running type obstacle course, these are merely jumps made to look nice with a few flips and rolls, and simply consist of holding your analogue stick in the direction you wish to move, this could have easily had a bit more interactivity, but for the amount of times that these pieces appear in the game, coding an entire section wouldn’t have been worth it. Expect to be popping in and out of your main menu a lot, as equipping characters correctly and using the aforementioned Paradigms is a very important part of the game and sometimes trial and error will come into play when fighting a boss, as often, after dying, the game will automatically put you into the main menu before it lets you set off to fight again. Throughout the game you will be traversing a lot of environments simply by running through them, and this doesn’t really complement the story very well, as the linear structure doesn’t seem to fit it at all.

Speaking of the story, Final Fantasy XIII is nothing short of epic, with a gripping storyline, memorable characters (for better or worse) and an ever twisting and interesting plotline, the game stands out from the generic albeit widely bought ‘terrorist plot’ games that seem to be cropping up everywhere.

The game starts off rather slowly, with the storyline remaining a mystery until it is gradually unfolded through beautiful cutscenes, flashbacks and short narrated pieces (that have cryptic metaphors) by Vanille.  I was fairly pleased with how the story was presented, and despite having the same formula of the other Final Fantasy games, this one seemed to use the old methods well, despite not being able to interact with so many NPCs due to the lack of towns.

Unfortunately I can’t really talk too much about the actual storyline of the game without ruining anything, as everything that happens is quite important in understanding the rest of the game properly, so, sorry if you were looking for an in depth story review.

As I mentioned, some characters are memorable for better or for worse. Most of the characters in the story are likable, although the one that really annoyed me was Hope. Hope if your typical whiney emo teenager, that spends most of the time crying and complaining about how his mother died in the war (sure it’s sad but Jesus…) Snow is also quite annoying toward the start of the game and his arrogance was simply a bit too silly for my liking. All of the voice actors do a great job on their characters, although some people found the voice for Vanille a little annoying. Personally, I think Vanille’s voice is fine, and I think the Australian thing is pretty hot to be honest.

Visually, Final Fantasy XIII is stunning, with lovely looking environments, great and smooth animations, fluid combat and absolutely fantastic looking cutscenes, the game shows how far graphics and consoles have come along since the original Final Fantasy on the NES. Actual gameplay sections looks like a great piece of CGI and the cutscenes look almost lifelike, with a huge amount of detail on everything imaginable (even the shine on Vanille’s beads.) Everything here looks genuinely amazing, and sometimes just panning the camera around to look at the environment will make you go ‘whoa.’ The environments you travel through are well designed and interesting to look at, despite the fact that you are moving on a set path the routes never get boring and there is always something nice like a sunset to watch for a bit if you do find things a little dull.

For me one of the highlights of the game was the soundtrack, composed by Masashi Hamauzu rather than the Final Fantasy veteran Nobuo Uematsu, each track seems to have a nice place within the game, despite each having a very different feel. Occasionally, there will be doom and gloom evil battle tracks, and other times there will be some happy trance to keep you listening whilst walking through a beautiful looking woods in game. I have purchased the soundtrack and the main riff hear within the main menu called ‘The Promise’ is used throughout the almost the whole of the album, with only a few exceptions such as vocal soundtracks such as Leona Lewis’ ‘My Hands’ and ‘Kimi ga Irukara’ by Sayuri Sugawara (personally I love the later track.) From soul stirring and battle taunting scores to calm and sad piano pieces, Hamauzu has it down to a tee, and despite the fact that I do prefer Uematsu’s work, it doesn’t take away from the fact that this game has a brilliant soundtrack.

Oddly enough, I found it hard to dislike this game, there are plenty of reasons why I should, be it the frustrating boss battles, linear environments, occasionally boring battles, lack of towns and a stray from the norm of Final Fantasy games. The reason why I do like it is simply because of its technical achievement, Square have managed to pull of something so huge in scale and make it look this good, and that is admirable. Even though this game was clearly designed with the western audience in mind, I don’t think it will truly capture the minds of the mindless Call of Duty and FPS followers out there, and this is a shame indeed, despite being understandable. The casual and FPS gamers don’t want something they are going to have to think about, most of them aren’t too worried about tactics, bosses or levelling, and it’s because of this that I don’t think any Final Fantasy will be successful amongst this audience. Sure, some fans of the older games may come back to it after a stint of Fifa and Call Of Duty on the Xbox, but I feel that this isn’t the sort of game that they would want to come back to.

Unfortunately, I feel that Final Fantasy XIII will be one of those games that will be discarded by many now, but claimed as a ‘Classic’ in the future as it definitely has a good solid game behind all of the flashy effects and graphics. One thing I urge Square to do in their later games (currently Final Fantasy XIV can go two ways), is revert back to the old Final Fantasy style, and lose the flashy combat systems, your true fans will appreciate it and I’m sure that fans of other JRPGS will be happy too.

Overall, I am going to give this game a good score, and I would recommend that you make a purchase of it, however, don’t expect to be rushing through it, it’s more of a game I would save for a rainy day, and considering we have had plenty of those recently, I am awarding this a 4/5. Not Perfect, but solid at that, much like this game.

-Dean Case

YLOD again? FFS!

Is now the time for Sony to introduce an extended warranty to their service? What with our experience below, we feel it’s time Sony stepped up to the plate and recognised that the Yellow Lights of Death problem is starting to become more common place, what with the issue happening to us twice in a matter of weeks we’re just one of the growing number of users that are calling for Sony to take action before a possible cataclysmic PR disaster. Though we realise the widespread issues are nowhere near the echelon that Microsoft experienced during it’s introduction to the next-gen space, what confidence do PS3 owners have whom have experienced this problem repeatedly? It’s one of which you could argue that it is now more safe to be an Xbox 360 owner, thanks to Microsoft’s 3 year express warranty on any E74 errors.

Will it soon be easy G's?

First of all, I would like to clear something up, I am a Sony fanboy, if you look through all of my reviews on the site, you will notice that nearly all of them are for the Playstation 3 and no other console, this Is because my Xbox decided to pack up and leave me (before Microsoft put their 3 year extended warranty in place) whilst my Playstation stayed loyal and worked properly. Admittedly, after around 9 months of owning a Playstation 3 (since launch in 2007) My first console had a problem that was due to a poor game patch that hadn’t installed properly, and was replaced with a reconditioned unit in the early months of 2008.

One of many website images, offering repair

Two years on towards the start of this month, during an intense game of Hardcore Search and Destroy on Modern Warfare 2, my Playstation decided to switch itself off, and give me the warning lights for an overheating problem, this didn’t really scare me, I simply unplugged my console, and left it on my dining room table to cool off for a few hours. The following day, I returned my Playstation to my TV, where it belonged, and turned it on only to find that the Yellow Light Of Death had developed. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, I tried to restart the console, unplug and replug, check my cables and even tried to run a fan test, nothing worked. Suddenly, it dawned on me, I had owned the console for two years, and due to its warranty only lasting half of that time, I realised I would have to shell out some cash.

Reluctantly I picked up the phone to Sony’s technical support (who’s service is EXCELLENT if I may say) and eventually handed over my card details in order to pay the £130 sterling that I had been saving up for a gaming PC with. Within just two days of the phone call, I received another refurbished console, and the black tower arrived just in time for the launch of Square’s Final Fantasy 13. Happy that my console was working although still a little annoyed that I had lost all of my save games, I hammered through Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s story and managed to get back into my stride in both Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2. A few days went on and Final Fantasy arrived at my doorstep, I played it, got into it, and thoroughly enjoyed what I was experiencing, the beautiful landscapes, the decent characters and nice storyline were excellent and made me want to keep coming back for more. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy absorbed just ten hours of my life over my seven days of ownership due to education.

Why should we buy the revolting slim, to rest our minds at ease?

So, two weeks since my refurbished console arrived and I am sat here again, looking at yet another broken PS3. This was my third console from Sony, and without any mistreatment, very little playtime and no hard shutdowns whatsoever, I feel cheated. Some people may understand why I have lost a lot of respect for Sony, others will simply say I am over reacting when I say that it seemed pointless even bothering to have another console delivered to me in the first place, as it has simply caused my hassle. I have lost my Final Fantasy 13 game save (a game that I was meant to be reviewing) my level 61 character on Borderlands and all of the DLC that I had recently purchased with that and my Bad Company 2 save, just as I was rebuilding, the lot has been knocked down again.

Overall, I am genuinely pissed off that Sony’s technical support have simply sent me another 60GB launch model, as these are the ones that have failed me in the past, it’s not that I disagree with the fact that it is covered under the warranty, I just think that after three failures, some compensation should be deserved, especially seeing as it was my only console worth playing nowadays. One thing that Sony briefly mentioned to me over the phone was that reconditioned units only have a 3 month warranty – this is nowhere near good enough, and seeing as it has now been two reconditioned units that have broken, whats to stop that happening again further down the line?

Yesterday, I purchased an Xbox 360 from a friend, with the YLOD error cropping up more and more frequently, I am surprised that Sony has still kept to their one year warranty and not extended it at all.

So what if the 360 has a higher failure rate? It it is claimable under warranty due to Microsoft wanting to rectify the problems with their console, and not just releasing a ‘Slim’ version and making their customers buy it in order to have the safety of little to no failures.

Would it be too much to ask for Sony to make changes in line of Microsoft? If it restores product faith and gives peace of mind, in the long term surely it is most beneficial what with Sony’s ten year support span ethos. More importantly, we want to know your opinions on it, should Sony be waiting until the issue becomes a more prevelent problem, or should they act now to avoid embarassment. These issues are definately not subsiding, only getting worse. Food for thought.

Sony & BskyB’s partnership at an end

As reported around about the time our website launched in June 2009, Sony GO!VIEW was having it’s content asset stripped after it’s video download service ceased to renew it’s license for BBC, NBC & Disney content. The video download service launched between BSKYB and Sony looked initially promising and there were even plans to make the video service work without the intervention of a PC at all. However, with the development of news later in the month during the three day trade show E3, it became obvious why the asset stripping took place.

On the 17th June 2009 Sony announced the PS3 slim and also the arrival of the European video store for November 2009. Couple this with the launch of the store in November and a quick step over to the GO! VIEW website suggested that the only content available that actually got updated was the weekly sports highlights. Despite this, they still had a dedicated customer base until a final decision had been made and announced in the last 24hrs to kill the service off on the 25th March 2010. We received an e-mail stating that our account will be automatically cancelled as you can see below. Here is a, exert from the e-mail itself, which clarifies the second death of the GO! product range.

What does it mean to me as a customer?

• If your renewal date falls anytime between now and 25th February 2010, your payment will be taken as normal and you can enjoy your last month of great videos on your PSP ®

• If your renewal date falls anytime after 25th February 2010, no additional payment will be taken and your access to service will be stopped on that day.

Please remember that if within this period you decide to purchase movies or premium programmes standard prices will apply.

We will refund any outstanding pre-paid credit on your account to your registered debit / credit card. Please contact us if the debit or credit card you registered with us may have expired or if you have not received your refund by 2nd April 2010.

To ensure security of your payment details we will delete all credit / debit card information from our systems on 9th April 2010.

There was some element of confusion and some hope for the service when Sony announced at Gamescom that the name of their new PSP handheld would be called the PSP GO! Given the similarity in name you could have been mistaken for believing that perhaps the service was to be given a new lease of life in a download only format, but nothing materialised. GO! Messenger was axed shortly after GO! VIEW began and it would appear that GO! Maps are the only remaining survivor of the range, to think people paid out all that money on the webcam attachment for the PSP too. All and all an interesting piece of news none the less, one of which we feel that, had the software not be dependent on the PC to encode the DRM in the first place, the download only option could have been a major success, had the application been built onto the PSP very much like GO! Messenger.

As the above e-mail states, some customers could be seeing an unexpected refund appearing from the service as its premium content aspects required using an e-wallet to top up funds. Any unused refunds required a call to customer services to make a manual refund. This will now be an automated process and as far as we can tell should users wish to make any last queries the support lines should still be operable until the closing date.

Zero gravity shooter free to play and 50 percent off this weekend

Futuremark® Games Studio today announced that Shattered Horizon, their PC exclusive multiplayer first-person shooter, will be free to play and will have 50 percent off to buy on Steam this weekend. Shattered Horizon’s innovative zero gravity gameplay has recently been enhanced by the Moonrise content pack which added four new levels and a major update which included many features requested by players. “This weekend PC gamers everywhere can play Shattered Horizon for free,” said Jaakko Haapasalo, producer at Futuremark Games Studio. “And for the duration of the weekend, even though we recently doubled the size of the game by adding new levels, we are offering it to players for half the price, just $9.95″ In Shattered Horizon, a catastrophic explosion on the Moon has filled near-Earth space with billions of tons of rocky debris.

Teams of players fight in zero gravity to control the limited supplies that mean the difference between survival and death in the cold of space as seen in the “Escalation” gameplay trailer:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/escalation-gameplay-shattered-horizon/58509

Moonrise Free Weekend on Steam:

Starts 00:01 GMT Friday 19 February (19:01 EST Thursday 18 February)

Ends 21:00 GMT Sunday 21 February (16:00 EST Sunday 21 February)

Players can start pre-loading Shattered Horizon from Steam late Wednesday evening onwards.

System requirements: Shattered Horizon requires DirectX 10, a DirectX 10 compatible video card, and Windows Vista or Windows 7. There is no support for Windows XP or DirectX 9. Minimum and recommended hardware requirements: http://www.shatteredhorizon.com/support/hardwarerequirements/

Dedicated Servers: Players and game hosting companies who would like to put up their own servers during the free weekend can get the dedicated server files now from the Shattered Horizon website or from the Tools tab within Steam.

About Shattered Horizon: Shattered Horizon is the innovative first game from Futuremark Games Studio that immerses you in the cold reality of zero gravity combat in space. – Multiplayer first-person shooter set in near-Earth space 40 years from now. – Experience intense zero gravity combat and complete freedom of movement. Use your rocket pack to fly freely through space then land on any surface. – Join your friends in action-packed 32 player battles fighting across eight space based levels from hollowed-out asteroids to the ruined remains of the International Space Station.

Shattered Horizon is available now from Steam and the official website: http://www.shatteredhorizon.com/buynow/

Because we all make spelling mistakes now and then…

Sometimes we all need a break from slashing demons, shooting Russians and yelling at Americans, and a puzzler is usually a good way of doing so, with nice colourful levels and the whole ‘having to use your brain’ affair, L!ght Deluxe isn’t anything far from the norm when it comes to puzzlers, however, there are a few things that make this game unique.

The gameplay of L!ght Deluxe, is pretty simple, you need to get a beam of light (projected by a small square) into the receiver (another small square.) The game takes place over a board made up of squares,  there will be various types of block in each square, each one has a different purpose and most can be freely moved around the board. By freely I mean, in left, right up and down directions, as when moved, blocks will slide along the board until they come into contact with the side or another block. Sounds complicated? Well the levels vary quite a lot, and the difficulty is insanely out of order, usually you would expect the difficulty to ramp itself up as the levels continue, however, the variation in difficulty here is a little bit too much. One good thing is that levels can be skipped over and picked individually, but, to unlock more of them, all of the other levels must be completed. With objects such as mirrors, prisms, colour changers and various blocks on movement, the way that levels are completed varies quite nicely.

Graphics – It’s a puzzler, sure its colourful and crisp, but there’s not really too much I can comment on. One thing I have noticed is the fact that on the level selection menu, prev. Page is spelled wrong, so it says, ‘Perv. Page,’ upon clicking it, I was highly disappointed that it just had the previous levels.

The music is fairly nice and is pretty catchy, with a nice variation in styles that fit a puzzler properly. There are no sound effects on the blocks and their movement is silent, it’s not too noticeable, but the music loops, so occasionally It can get boring.

There is a level editor, which means that you can use all of the tools used to build the actual levels in the game, this is pretty flexible, with lots of options available. There is also a feature which allows you to upload your made levels to the nemo games website, where they can be downloaded and frustrated over by other people (making near impossible levels is easy.)

Apparently there is a story line to this game, but I don’t really see why It needs one, seeing as it doesn’t crop up at all throughout the game.

There at 100 levels in the game, 50 in the regular difficulty mode and another 50 on the hard mode, that should be enough to keep anybody entertained, as this isn’t the most relaxing game on hard mode.

This was a short review, but that’s simply because I cannot actually find anything to say about this game. It’s just another puzzler, sure it’s pretty original, but it’s just rather ‘meh.’ I honestly cannot give this game as higher mark as it probably deserve, simply because the fun factor wasn’t there for me, however, taking this into consideration, I do believe I have marked it accordingly.

-Dean

Slashing through my soul since Wednesday…

After a slight issue with actually receiving Dante’s Inferno due to the postal service not being able to fit a CD case sized object through my clearly A4 sized letterbox, I didn’t actually get a chance to play this game fully until Wednesday of this week, I just sat at home with my last two cans of Mountain Dew and played through the Gates of Hell demo that was put onto the Playstation store a few weeks back, hoping I could gauge a good idea of what the game would be like. Unfortunately the demo didn’t really show too much, and so when I finally got a chance to get into the game on that Wednesday night, I really wasn’t expecting half of the stuff that I came across.

The poem, Dante’s Inferno, depicts the nine circles of hell and describes each one with meticulous detail, essentially, this is what this entire game is based upon. You play as Dante, a former crusader who went  to the city of Acre crusading and basically murdering anything that moved (apart from women, because there is a lust circle in this game…) His girlfriend – Beatrice, is taken by Lucifer, and Dante goes after her into hell, in order to save her and be the hero of the day. From the start of the game you can tell Dante as a character won’t be too deep, as your first task is to simply slaughter a whole bunch of people with a pole axe. This sets the task and gameplay style for most of the game, and within the first ten minutes of it, you will have killed nearly sixty people and cut the grim reaper in half with his own scythe AND stolen it from him, Pretty cool eh? Well, the truth is, like this game, hell goes downhill, and if I get this out of the way now, the story is not that great, and the ending is pretty terrible.

A whole new twist on going out with a bang.

So after Dante returns home from a tough day of sewing a cross to his chest, you will be treated to a nice cutscene with a man with a crucifix in his eye and a dead lady with a tit hanging out (for no apparent reason I might add.) This ‘Lady’ is Beatrice, Dante’s lover, who’s soul leaves her body in a dramatic fashion, showing some more boobs and then the enemy – Lucifer, she is taken away by Lucifer and after Dante yells; ‘BEATTRIIIICCCEEEEEEEE’ (you will hear this a lot) the nice looking cutscene goes to the in game graphics, which I will talk about later.

So once Beatrice has been taken, you get to see for the first time the enemies that you will be fighting for six hours or so, the minions of hell, the minions are fairly well designed, but don’t quite stand up to the gluttons that are found a little later in the game. One thing this game doesn’t do too well is first impressions, when that first minion pops out from under the ground, the gravestone being destroyed just looks a little shoddy, however, the show must go on. So whilst messing up some ghouls, you may have noticed the convenient wall of fire that is blocking your path, I don’t have a problem with limiting where your character can go, but when the fire looks this rushed, and is unexplained, (presumably it’s from hell) it definitely needs a mention, most of hell is fire after all.

So after walking into a church and being treated to some more boobs, you will see hell for the first time, the walls of the church crumble away, and there it is, a big red and orange hole that you will be inevitably entering and traversing. After murderising some more minions and getting blood all over the church basement floor, you will instantly get the feeling of being an all powerful can-slash-the-shit-out-of-everything character, reminiscent to Kratos of the God Of War games, and when I first played this section, I giggled with a slightly strange glee, not quite like when I played borderlands for the first time, but close enough to make me cringe at what I had just done. Once the gates have been reached you finally enter Limbo, the first actual section of hell in the game.

Before I go into enemy design and graphics, I would just like to talk about the gameplay. Basically, it’s just a hack and slasher, not dissimilar to God of War, which also has a few rather poor platforming sections in it. The main reason I call these platforming sections poor is mostly due to the camera angles, which are fixed. This means that trying to make a tricky jump with a bad sense of perspective will often go wrong and some aspects of the platforming are just cheap, with sections that will get you killed (fucking ropes) and others making you stop your flowing combo of jumps and swings to pull a lever or push a barrel of some sort. There are a few decent puzzle sections in the game, none of these are too complex and can often be worked out in about five minutes or so. The hack and slash gameplay is the usual button mashing affair and the controls are solid, with your face buttons doing various attacks and jumping, and you L1 and L2 buttons accessing magic attacks and blocking. If you get used to the controls and know what moves you can chain together, you might actually use them properly, instead of smashing x, square and triangle all the time. The combat seems to suffer from an unfortunate repetitiveness, most hack and slash games will consist of the same thing throughout, but it is normally spaced out nicely, generally I found this game quite boring, whether it’s fighting the same wave of enemies just with a different backdrop or the fact that there are only about five types, just with different characteristics about them.

The design in this game is brilliant yet sick at the same time, to think that a person designed the demons and environments is a very odd thought, and when you see enemies such as the gluttons (with mouths for hands and saggy man boobs) it is hard to imagine how they were thought up. This game has pretty much everything to make you feel odd, Tentacles out of vaginas, boobs with dead babies coming out of them,  vagina shaped doors, penis shaped columns, trees with screaming faces on them, people trapped in walls, people being burned-raped-stabbed-impaled-crushed AND spiked, decapitations, rivers of fat, people in boiling blood, giant worms that eat you and creepiest of all, Babies with sword arms. Yes, babies, not quite as scary as Giygas from earthbound, or what I am currently playing, Sweet Home (thanks ironfury, I won’t sleep for a week.) The enemies are incredible, from giant demons with wings and huge swords to minions that suicide bomb you and fat man boob wielding gluttons. The designs for Dante are ok, but for some reason he is topless in his main costume, which in fairness wouldn’t be the best form of protection compared to a condom in the lust circle (sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The boss designs are pretty cool, but not massively memorable, and unfortunately, the Lucifer they went for is generic and quite stereotypical.

The graphics are pretty decent I suppose, however, I mentioned the fire in the start of the review, and throughout the game it is noticeable that the fire looks quite 2d. The walls of people trapped look pretty horrible, and are clearly layered video as they look incredibly flat and there are hardly any 3D effects on them at all, this is a shame, as I think that that extra depth would have made things look a lot better. Character animations are fairly smooth and fighting looks nice and the blood and gore complements it so well, despite being incredibly graphic and over the top. Unfortunately the graphics don’t really hold up to the games out today, which is an awful shame, because I think that with simple improvements they could be very good. The cutscene CGI is very good looking, and if they had used that as the in game graphics (Don’t say it can’t be done, look at uncharted 2) this could have been very nice indeed. There are also some cartoon cutscenes that help break up the storyline of the game, these look nice, but are unfortunately rather short.

The final challenges that are at the end of the game are pretty ridiculous, some will be mega easy and the others might take some time to complete, I like to think I am fairly good at this sort of game, but there was a challenge at the end of this in which you had to kill around 50 enemies without losing your combo, this is a pretty tough challenge, simply because, getting hit will break a combo, stopping button mashing for a second will break a combo and accidentally grabbing enemies will also end a combo. It’s as if the game throws a big ‘Fuck you’ in your face towards the end, what with the story’s ending and these challenge sections let alone the bullshit final boss’ attacks, it just seems odd that essentially there isn’t a reward for going through this.

The game is around six to seven hours in length, and I finished it in about 6 and a half hours, even if you are a trophy whore, there isn’t much reason to come back and play this game through again, as finishing the game on any difficulty will get you a gold trophy, and it isn’t required that you try the game on a higher difficulty to finish the trophy set.

To finish up, Dante’s Inferno is a game that simply could have been better, improvements on the graphics would be a start, but the fact of the matter is, I found the game quite boring, sure it was fun in some parts, but the bullshit ending after all of that frustration just made me sigh rather than saying ‘OH MY GOD, MORE!’ to the(minor spoilers) ‘to be continued…’ at the end. By all means pick this up, but remember, you can always wait for God Of War 3, or get hold of Bayonetta for a cheaper price than this.

-Dean Case

War, War never changes…

This being my first movie review, I thought I would go for one of the slightly overshadowed movies of this year, with Avatar sweeping the box office audiences up by the thousands, quite a few films have been overlooked by the public, The Book Of Eli is the perfect example of one of these movies. This was a actually recommended to me by a mate of mine sometime ago, although I only got around to seeing it with a few people last night. Our choices were;

Invictus – Morgan Freeman and Sweaty south Africans, not perhaps the best combination, although it would probably make a very interesting reality show.

Avatar – The big one which incidentally I haven’t seen yet, the length was an issue here.

Astroboy! – Just kidding.

Anyway, The Book Of Eli is an interesting film with a setting similar to the legendary Fallout 3’s post nuclear wasteland, with vast deserts and self built towns reminiscent to the spaghetti western movies immediately you can tell how well made the sets are. The film stars Denzel Washington with a machete as Eli, Gary Oldman (FOR THE MOTHERLAND!*) with a town and an almost endless army of people in paintball masks and bad airsoft gear plays Carnegie, and the rather ‘phwoar’ Mila Kunis as Solara. The cast is fairly well picked and Denzel Washing  ton pulls off the mysterious albeit cool Eli rather well and adds quite a bit of depth to the character.

*Oldman is Reznov the lovable commie in Call of Duty: World at War.

'I DONT WANNA SET THE WORLLDDD OOONN FIREEEEE' Fallout's wasteland coming through in the movie, Add a dog and turn Denzel round, and you have the boxart.

The Book of Eli is a film that you get back what you put in concentration wise, the story is quite deep and can get fairly complicated if you aren’t paying attention or practically yelling in whisper form; ‘BOOM HEADSHOT’ or ‘UAV ready for deployment’ every time Eli kills some people. The deep story revolves around Eli’s book (obviously) which (MINOR SPOILERS) is a bible, the last in existence to be precise. Oldman’s character, Carnegie is trying to hunt down the bible, as he grew up with it before the nuclear war and is trying to expand his cities and rule the wastes, but has had no luck finding it, but then Eli comes along with an Ipod and empty battery that needs charging, he is given the offer to work with Carnegie on expanding, but refuses, Carnegie then sends Solara to ‘comfort’ Eli in his room, but he turns her down (Quoting one of my mates James: ‘Why the fuck not?!’) He has dinner with Solara in the average way, but, says grace before eating. After Eli has left, a guard gets a bullet in the face after Solara says grace and Carnegie recognises it, realising Eli has the book, the rest unfolds from there.

Eli, from the start of the film is simply travelling west, if you didn’t get the reference that to ‘go west’ means to die and go to heaven, then this is probably the point that you will lose the idea of the film until about three quarters of the way through, this is somewhat unfortunate, as the person next you will probably constantly be asking you ‘why’ that happened or he is saying stuff etc. Despite having quite a few action scenes, the point of this film is more ‘philosophical’ that just mindless violence, which is fine, but seeing somebody get owned with a giant axe or throwing knife never gets old, and the twists and turns in the plotline may be a bit too much for some people. In fact one person next to me walked out and didn’t come back when the film got all deep and philosophical, although there is a Nando’s right next to the cinema, and maybe he had a bad one.

At this point in the movie, I immediately did my caption price impression. "LETS DO THIS"

The film is not entirely serious, with a pretty hilarious part involving Michael Gambon and some big guns that I am not going to ruin for you, but you will probably find it on YouTube in a few weeks, along with about 18 remixes of it. The action scenes are pretty awesome too, with ‘OHOOOO’ moments throughout the fighting scenes, as well as little snippets of violence throughout. The plot twists I mentioned before, should keep you hooked and guessing, although occasionally the predictability of what is going to happen shows up a little bit towards the end, this isn’t too major though.

The soundtrack is fairly decent, although the first time Eli listens to his iPod is a pretty good part, which they could have easily reused the song in the end credits, but didn’t, If you have seen the film you may agree it would have rounded off the ending a little better.

The one problem I had with this film is how slowly it starts, it takes quite a long time for it to pick up enough, although, once it does, you are in for a good ride.

So overall The Book Of Eli is a film you have to understand, getting references and links back to the earlier parts of the film is an important part of watching this one, and it’s not quite a film you could go and see just for the action aspects of it. I would recommend picking this up on Blu-ray as a film to watch when you’re in the mood for something deep, but not boring.

-Dean Case

Because there are other FPS games than Call of Duty…

Counter strike: source is deemed a classic by most old school FPS fans, not so much the Call of Duty generation, but the people who love the PC shooters that paved the way for what we have today. The amount of content this game has to offer is astounding for its age, and with it being on the PC people are still modding it to this day. I recently reinstalled the game after around a year of not playing it and god damn do I realise how much I missed this game, and the amount of n00b5 online is still fairly good, meaning I get a chance to do the Tetley Teabag now and then, as well as screaming ‘BOOM HEADSHOT’ every five minutes…

CSS comes bundled with Half Life 2, and runs on the acclaimed and still strong source engine, that quite a few games use today. This means that for the games time, the graphics were great on the default maps, with a style that looks totally different to its dad, Half Life, this is a good thing however, as futuristic and dark environments wouldn’t quite fit this game. The default maps in the game are well built and look lovely, as well as being extremely playable, and what with the options to make your own maps, the amount out there for download is immense and the community for them is still going strong. Guns, Models, and Props in the game look nice, with quite a few props being recycled from Half Life, this is fine however, as it’s not like zombie models are used for corpses (although if you want that on your map, then that’s doable too.) Guns are fairly realistic, and most of the time you have the option to attach a silencer with the right click button and change the fire mode of some guns, such as pistols and assault rifles. Character models are fairly good, despite there being just eight in the default game settings, four for the terrorist teams and another four for the Counter terrorist teams, however, extra character skins can be added to servers, these skins are often reserved for mods or top ranked players however.

Your control system is your average PC FPS controls, however, a PS3 or PC games controller can be used if you really must. One thing that I occasionally had a problem with is knifing, being accurate is pretty tricky, and unless you find out that right click does more damage (you can thank me later) you will be constantly wrecked by elites and Germans, although, you must remember, EVERYONE RUNS FASTER WITH A KNIFE!

Maps and addons are downloaded upon joining a server, and depending on your connection, they don’t take too long to download due to their fairly small sizes. Sound packs and admins files are also downloaded, meaning that you can use quake noises, intro music, effects on your characters after a kill streak and then the aforementioned ‘BOOM HEADSHOT’ sound bite that never ceases to make me grin like a kid again. Game modes can also be downloaded, allowing for special servers hosting games such as, hide and seek, Gun games, and zombie matches. Gun Games are definitely one of my favourite modes, as you kill enemies you level up in gun level, starting out with a Glock or other pistol and usually levelling to an M249 (Para) these games consumed my time when I started playing a few years back, and do now having reinstalled the game. Zombie games are something I have just got into, but unfortunately haven’t played them enough to write about fully. The basic premise is a giant game of Tag, with one player starting as a zombie (with just the knife equipped on their screen and a different model on the other players) and the others having to run away or kill said zombie. The Zombie player has to infect other players in order to win. How could I forget surf maps? Quick races to the end of a map with a scout sniper and a knife is always fun, and there is always a skill involved in knowing where to jump to at the right times.

The sounds are fairly decent, although some sound a little bit tinny (even with skullcandies on) but they are easily replaced, and if you know what you’re doing, a Call of Duty conversion kit can be installed just for the sounds, but to give the full CSS experience, its best to keep the originals.

This game is ran through steam’s online features, and therefore is cheat secured with VAC, most servers have this implemented, although if the admin allows cheats, then anybody can use them. Personally I used to host Desert Eagle games and set my player to noclip mode, meaning I can jump out of walls and ‘ghost’ people, before engaging with their head in a flurry of ballsack dippings and ‘tactical insertions’ (seriously, I had to put a Call of Duty pun somewhere in here.) Talking of steams servers, they are VERY good, and as I mentioned before, the game still has a flourishing community which appears to still be growing despite the games age and release of call of duty. There are simple extra features in the game such as graffiti tags, a weapon buying system and even a detailed text chat and radio system. This is definitely one of my favourite games, and takes me back to the days when I used Skype, had a high voice and played Runescape and Flash games (level 78 mage for the win… oh god, memories of no life…)

-Dean Case

Braid, the game that’s both Artsy, fun and downright tricky all at the same time.

So its Braid up for review now, the much praised Mario and Prince of Persia puzzler with a hint of salt hybrid. Seems like a tough idea to get your head around right? Well you’d be wrong, before I get deep into the game I would like to say how struck I was with it as soon as I started it up for the first time, I was confused, perplexed and interested before I had even gotten into the first level, normally this wouldn’t be a good thing but with Braid, it truly is.

So the game opens with you currently a mere silhouette, Tim, standing on a bridge with a beautiful watercolour background and some truly amazing yet haunting music playing, at this point I was expecting some sort of menu to pop up, with the average, Continue, Load and Options buttons that are ever so familiar nowadays, but no, just the music, and that amazing background. Don’t get me wrong, people will look at this game and immediately draw the conclusion that it’s rubbish, for example on Steam just before writing this review;

\DEANO/: just gunna write up my review for braid

NATHAN: lool looks crap

A prime example of somebody who doesn’t appreciate the depth and art in a videogame (wow look at me sounding like a spend my weeknights criticising people who don’t understand the Tate modern.) Anyway, as I was saying, the lack of menu immediately shows the game is different, but whether or not this was intentional I am unsure. So you walk to the right a little bit and soon see some more stunning backgrounds, I’m not sure why I like them so much with a starlit sky and streetlamps with an urban vibe at the same time, after crossing the midpoint, you will see Tim come to life, the style of his character is reminiscent of Maplestory, with a nice colour palette and 16 bit style, yet still keeping the look of an ordinary guy with a suit and tie. Continuing right you will step into Tim’s house, from this area you can access all of the worlds you have played and view how complete your puzzles are (which I will go into later.)

After going through the first door, you are faced with a series of six books in a beautiful looking cloud room, the first immediately made me think of Mario, yet hooked me at the same time, simply because of the first two sentences are ‘Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible evil monster.’ This made me think of ‘Sorry, try another castle straight away, but then the hook at the bottom of; ‘this happened because Tim made a mistake,’ just made me want to read on. Incidentally, you can sprint through this and get on with the game straight away, which was a good choice to let the player choose what they do. The thing is, what happened to the princess and why she is gone I honestly can’t tell you, not for fear I will be had a go at for not marking the review with spoilers, but because there are so many points you could look at that there seems to be no exact answer. The story makes a reasonable amount of sense, and is given to the player through handy bitesize chunks through the books before a level, a decent yet somewhat forgettable way of doing things.

Graphically, as I mentioned earlier, the game is a stunning mix of 16 bit art with watercolour paintings and beautiful backgrounds, and at some points it feels like you are playing a work of art more than a game, the animations are simple but flow incredibly well, and the smoothness Is something I noticed from the start. Through the game you will traverse environments from lush green plains to frozen tundra’s, the amount of visual goodness that you will see reminds me of Lost Winds and the first time I set eyes on Little Big Planet.

Gameplay is definitely reminiscent of Mario, jumping on enemies to kill them is something that never gets old, however, in Braid, you cannot die, you simply have a death animation which you can rewind to correct your mistakes, the amount of rewind time is brilliant, and at no point have I ever been truly stuck in a spot where I have a repeated loop of death. Braid is even more unique than most games, not because of the time rewinding, but because of the sheer scale, thought and toughness involved in the puzzles, there are 12 puzzle pieces per world and a total of 60 dotted around the entire game. Putting together a puzzle will open up a pathway leading to the final level, and the general ease of the puzzles varies as you continue through the worlds. Each world teaches Time a different skill, with the ability to rewind time present in all levels from the start. Every skill you gain from a world will be useful in its levels, and a good example is the ‘ghost Tim’ which does the task you did before you rewound time, for example, if you hit a switch, then rewound, ghost Tim would hit the switch again, interesting, and useful for navigating the levels.

The sounds in the game are minimal, with the orchestral pieces you hear at the start of the game looping throughout, whilst playing the music seems to simply lie in the background, gently taking you through the game. Aside from the jump sounds and Tim’s death sound, there isn’t much else to offer, however, this minimalistic approach seems to be a good choice and goes well with the games ideas and themes.

My final thoughts on Braid are that it is truly a stunner, with puzzles making you think to backgrounds your eyes can feast on. The one thing that concerns me is the length of the game, If you are willing to get stuck in and do all of the puzzles, then you will get a lot for your money, if you just want to play through and attempt a few of the puzzles, you could probably finish the game in around an hour, not so great for the money you pay for it. To truly recommend this game I would suggest being in the mood for an original puzzler, because it doesn’t get much better than this.

-Dean Case

___________________________________

What is CODEOS?
It is caused by a biochemical imbalance in the hypothalamus due to constant playing of Call of Duty and lack of sunlight sure to being indoors all day.

For many people CODEOS is a seriously disabling illness, preventing them from functioning normally without continuous medical treatment.

For others, it is a mild but debilitating condition causing discomfort but not severe suffering. We call this subsyndromal CODEOS or ‘COD blues.’ It is estimated that a further 17% of the UK population have this milder form of condition.

________________________________________
Who are we?
The CODOES Association is a voluntary organisation and registered charity which informs the public and health professions about CODOES and supports and advises sufferers of the condition.

We are the UK’s only support organisation dedicated to
CODOES and currently have around 1500 members.

Right now in the world there is an Earthquake in Haiti which just probably killed thousands of people, a secret underground society trying to take over the planet and we’re being poisoned by Fluoride and Aspartame in our every day drinking water and consumables, the problem is that isn’t much fun and while I take all of these things into account, how can you expect many people to do much about it when we’re also busy trying to own people online with triple headshots, thrashing score lines and online taunts.

Being on the receiving end isn’t much fun, much to think of it I’d rather have Lisa Riley sit on my face than be subjected to being owned on a daily basis, seriously! The frustration and anger that leaps out of me as I get taunted or as another ball hits the back of the onion bag, boils my blood like a red lobster being cooked for supper. There is something about the whole affair that fills me with glee, when your on the right side of course.

Just last weekend I started to play ranked matches on FIFA and the fun thing was that I was well above my skill level, beating people with sublime skill, eloquent passing and cheeky lobs brought a satisfying glow to my online experience, it’s made me return to online play for good. I guess some of my thanks should be paid to one of my Xbox Live friends Cattermole 79 whom has single handed got me involved in a Halo 3 clan and a 2vs2 FIFA league on YFL. Before this my online play was pretty vacant. I had enough Xbox Live friends, but they had the attachment rate of a complete unknown adding you on Facebook which kind of begs the question. Why the fuck did you add me in the first place? As a mental note, I’ll probably have a clear out and start devising a smaller close nit friends list of people that actually chat and have a social outlook on the service.

The whole situation leads me at a loss though, in some respects I feel guilty for indulging in the pleasures of beating people, being better than them at something but lets be honest it’s a videogame and unless you have the hand to eye co-ordination of The Predator your hardly going to make a career of Pwning noobs anyway. The day I ever get MLG skilled is the day I grow a vagina on my forehead. It just isn’t going to happen. It would bring a whole new meaning to a head fuck though.

Oh god, the webuyanycar.com advert has just come on again, I wish the actor would die of AIDS. Sorry, am I diverting this article? My apologies! I don’t know whether I just needed a break from the gloom of reality that is outside or that I just wanted to spend some time taking my aggression out on others but faking an adrenaline & serotonin mix by winning a match in the dying minutes does feel good.

As I progressed through my online week of fun and frolics I decided to headfast into Halo 3 ODST and then reality crashed on me again, I could not get away from reality because Illuminati symbolism is all over the game, especially around 3 hours in where you have to blow up one of your own buildings, there are Pyramid symbols all over the place. So thank you Halo 3 ODST, your subliminal New World Order message has set me back on track and put my mind on the right thinking path to see 11:11 again and spread the word of truth to the masses.

-James Joell-Ireland

Due to a recent lack of Hack and Slashers in my big ole’ games pile (now unfortunately consisting of shit and FPS games,) I decided to pick one up before the release and 40 quid retail of Bayonetta, incidentally I picked this game up for a tenner in GAME, not bad for what it is I guess, but I still think I could have bought something more useful, like a kebab.

Unfortunately, due to not owning an Xbox anymore, getting hold of a decent game to play for 5 minutes without having to go through the Playstation store is a pain in the arse, FPS games are too repetitive, RPG’s take too long to start up and Racers usually have long loading times or take a while to find an event, but the Hack and Slash genre is perfect. Short killing sprees with frequent save points is pretty much all you need, and due to the crushing difficulty of games such as Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, this doesn’t make these features accessible for some people. X-Blades is set aside from these two, despite taking ideas and making them shit from both, the shooting and spells from Devil May Cry and the swordplay from Ninja Gaiden. X-Blades also has its own ‘style’ that being a cell shaded anime affair, which I now have to compare to Borderlands, making X-Blades look terrible, when the truth is, it really isn’t that bad.

Now, where to start…

Ok, so you play as a scantily clad treasure hunter called Ayumi, sounds promising right? Well, it is, Ayumi has absolutely massive and incredibly well rendered spells, her bikini is alright to. The first problem in the game Is her, the voice acting throughout is annoying, teeny, and genuinely a headache to listen to. She sounds like Peaches Geldof mixed with Rouge the bat from sonic, and her 4 or 5 vocal samples for attacking and being hit can really get on your nerves in a tough combat situation. Talking of being hit, the game employs an absolutely ridiculous knockback system, which means that when Ayumi gets hit, she is stunned for a second or two until her sliding back animation is finished, this looks nice, but, when trapped in a tight space and trying to move away, it can be a ridiculous annoyance, simply because, it also happens when you jump, making jumping out of  a situation annoying…

The combat is ok, nothing special at all, slashing through enemies feels exactly the same as just testing your attack buttons on the air, with almost no resistance whatsoever, and with just one sword attack button, the ability to pull of combos simply consists of mashing the Square button and hoping that you hit something. The jump attacks are fairly useless, with no ground pound or downward sweep, the closest to the ground pound being the earthquake skill that is bought (forcibly I might add) at the start of the game, you can only pull this off whilst on the ground, despite the fact that Ayumi jumps in the air to perform it, annoying! Speaking of the ground pound, onto the magic…

The magic is decent, again, as with the combat, nothing special, with your average fireballs and lightning swords, it lives up to the cliché that games are all the same, which is unfortunate considering that the idea of a hot blonde anime girl in a bikini slashing the shit out of everything has now been used up in this annoying and downright crappy title. Shooting just feels plain stupid, the lack of being able to run and gun and the fact that the automatic lock on system occasionally goes bat shit and tries to target you the player (most probably having mercy and putting you out of your misery,) just makes it a pointless feature, unless you are willing to stand in the middle of a horde and take hundreds of hits just to take down another unimaginative ‘Phantom’ before it kills you in one hit, is just unreasonable, and god knows why they didn’t just tweak the code and change some animations so that running and gunning could be implemented – hell, it’s not like the guns are overpowered.

The game has more of an arena combat style, where you travel through locations killing seemingly endless waves of enemies, not a problem, but, when you spend about 20 minutes slashing through the same type of enemy, to move onto the next level and spend only 3 minutes on it, it just doesn’t seem right. At around the third level of the game you are thrown into your first big fight, that being against a horde of generic lizard men with knives and a pretty big fire breathing crab like creature that will lock onto you and start bombarding you as soon as you spawn, at this point you are pretty underpowered, and the funny thing is, the next level only lasts two minutes and has about ten enemies in it. Speaking of the level with the crab thing, there is a fallen pillar which quite literally stands at an almost straight angle, which you can run up perfectly, much like you have a low gravity or noclip cheat activated, at least put an invisible wall there, have you learned nothing from the marine base in the opening of the Avatar game? Saying that, this game was released in February last year, and so is nearly a year old, despite looking rather outdated and like a PS2 game, although I’m not sure if it just looks that way because my eyes have been overpowered with the amazing graphics of the fall of last year…

Music wise, well, unless you’re listening out for it, it’s not really something you will notice too much, however, the menu theme is pretty decent, so I suppose that is a redeeming factor of some sorts.

I would expect a few people to disagree with aspects of this review, however, I am expecting to agree with the fact that it’s a game that makes you think ‘I would rather be playing Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden/Bayonetta/Call Of Duty/E.T on the Atari.’ My friends will agree with me, and I’m pretty sure you will too.

-Dean Case

(First off, a quick apology for not getting this review up sooner, for the past two weeks I have been sitting in exams room, and have been genuinely exhausted, now I have a day off and have finally got a chance to get my teeth into this DLC and write up this review.)

Borderlands again, time to eject my Assassins Creed 2 disc and place it back in its box before putting it neatly back onto the shelf in alphabetical order to most probably and unfortunately gather dust for a few weeks. The DLC for Borderlands is something I was eager to play, I’m a sucker for zombies, big guns, and general chaos, which is exactly what this DLC is all about.

The DLC opens up with a storyboard piece much like the opening of the main game, with the Borderlands sense of humour intact and used effectively straight away, and some good voice acting to go alongside it. You can travel to Dr. Neds island as soon as you have downloaded and installed your DLC, and no fooling around on the mainland of Pandora is required to be able to play it, which is a nice feature. As soon as you enter the first location of the island, you will notice how atmospheric the game is despite the humour used before, with a vibe similar to Ravenholm in Valve’s Half Life 2 except with the cell shaded sexyness of Borderlands and not to forget, everything you have collected and worked for over the course of the regular single player.

Another thing I noticed straight away were that the zombies are levelled to you as a player, meaning that you can enter this DLC at any time and not be at a disadvantage or otherwise, which is definitely a well played move in my opinion. As always, sticking with Borderlands’ style, the zombies are well designed, look nice and crisp, and have some nice gore to keep you entertained whilst blowing them away with shotguns. There are various types of zombie, the basics being, Your regular ‘Average Joe’ of the undead, Defilers (that throw up on you, reminiscent of Left 4 Dead’s ‘Boomers,’) Psycho Zombies (much like the regular in game Psycho’s but scarier,) and Midget Zombies (Think Wee-Man and resident evil’s basic brain muncher fused together, and you’d be close.) There are also several types of unique zombie, that I’m  not going to go into, as when you first come across them it’s one of those ‘OH SHIT’ moments that I mentioned in the review of the full game. On the subject of characters, a loveable one and one that is up there with Crazy Earl, is definitely the title character, Dr. Ned, when you notice what is wrong with his moustache, I can guarantee you will physically laugh, and his introduction and build up to meeting him is a truly funny moment, breaking up the tension of being vomited on or jumped nicely (and if you have played the DLC, I hope you will agree that the elevator scene was pure genius.)

One thing that annoyed me quite a lot was the fact that I lost my favourite gun due to accidently picking up a shotgun and the good one I dropped clipping through the wall, not good. On the subject of weaponry, your arsenal is widened by quite a bit across this DLC, with a few more unique weapons to pick up, and a shitload of weapons crates lying around the well designed environments.

Another point, the environments, from swamps to graveyards and hospitals to villages, the entire map of the DLC is vast, with some incredibly in depth locations, some very atmospheric places, and some great set pieces for boss battles, which brings me nicely onto my next point.

I don’t want to ruin anything, but the first boss battle you fight made me physically laugh, Dr. Ned sends you on a mission to find the vials that contain the prototype cure for the Zombie virus, which uses Skag DNA as its main ingredient, unfortunately the person guarding the medicine has been infected, and as a reaction, taken the antidote, and turned into a Wereskag (awesome.) Upon his entrance you are treated to a pretty epic jump and the classic Borderlands freeze frame with the characters name, and all I’m going to say, so as not to ruin this truly funny moment for you, is, ‘Nice Hat.’

One thing that this DLC does occasionally suffer from is repetitiveness, sometimes, due to the spawning, you will have to same fight twice in a row, be it a horde of regular zombies, or just a few Defilers, it’s not too noticeable, but if you’ve just come out of a tough fight with some Badass Tankensteins, and then they respawn again shortly after, it might annoy you a tad (thankfully I have the survivor class mod, meaning my health regenerates, classy.) Don’t think you are getting off easily just because your enemies are zombies either, you will often find yourself getting jumped, hit, mauled or defiled no matter how cautious you are, this will often leave you on the floor dying or sprinting for cover whilst rapidly trying to find that last healthpack in your backpack, or even a gun that still has ammo in it.

Training your character is fairly easy to do in this DLC, as you can fight endless waves of zombies in certain spots around the DLC area, meaning that you can just farm your XP, weapon and ammo drops, and if you’re lucky, elemental artefact pieces.

To finish up. This DLC really is something, and Gearbox have pulled out the stops with the full game and this DLC. The pricing is ok, but not cheap, and I was discussing this with James a few days ago, In my opinion all DLC has been overpriced since GTA4’s sell out to Microsoft, however, this DLC retails at £6.29 compared to the £7-8 of most games, which I suppose will leave you enough change to buy a can of Euroshopper Energy Drink or Super Stardust HD when it’s in the sale. So a good all rounder that will keep you entertained and glued to Borderlands for quite a while.

-Dean Case