Afterburner Climax Announcement Trailer.

It's Official, it's on it's way!!!

Youtube Nostalgia Trip II!!!

Thought i would post up a few more music vids I found on the toob.

First up one of the songs from SEGAs Initial D. Dave Rodgers Space Boy. J-Pop at its best!

Next Up some more classic Sega action, this from the Top Gun inspired Afterburner.

And I could resist after hearing the arcade version listen to the fantastic C64 soundtrack, just dont expect much from the game O.o

See you next time for more video game music goodies

A Few Days in London

Well it was the end of the semester and I had lots of coursework due in this week, naturally this involved a trip into Uni. Lots of work was done, a very funny 3D film was made and after transcribing a 25 minute interview about mechanisms of attention in video games I began to doubt the existence of the word "Frustrating".

Despite all this academic torture I did manage to get some gaming

in. A bit of time was spent on a friends PS3 playing Madden 10, Worms and posing as a sultry temptress on PlayStation Home. i also had my first experience of the gamerbase LAN centre in the Trocadero. Playing my first PC FPS in years. MW2 is way more twitchy on PC and lots more jumping is done. The controls just lend themselves to a different gaming style I guess. My left handedness didn't really help either as my fingers just weren't in the right place for the various buttons I needed to press. I did get to play some Eve there too, my god that game is beautiful on a decent PC with a big high quality monitor.

I also popped into my previous local arcade for a few credits on DoDonPachi DFK still hitting a wall on level 4 with a score of about 1.4 billion. None of the other shooter crowd were in so I had my credits and left.

The most fun of the few days though were my credits with

Afterburner Climax again at the

Trocadero. climbing into the moving mock-up ejector seat makes me feel ten years old again pulling loop the loops and gunning down scores of enemy fighters. All I can say is that this is what arcade gaming is all about, sod Final Fantasy, GTA IV and various other games that take up your entire life for about three months, get some cash, go down to Troc and get your arse onto that game. It is an experience (almost) worth the £2 a credit the thieving gits at Troc are charging . I can not wait to get the Xbox Live version when it comes out this year, even without the moving cabinet, It's gonna be schweet!

Eve Weekly Update 2

Ok so it's been a little over a week but never mind.


Several big things have happened this week.

1) Our corporation has left the SoL alliance. to be honest there didn't seem to be much reason for us to stay in the alliance. Very few alliance operations were being run, we seemed to be giving a lot of valuble reasorces to them with no benifit to ourselves. In the end I think out CEO just got sick of it and pulled the plug. Hopefully we can continue to grow as a Corp and find a better alliance to join in the future.

2) I had a couple of adventures in Low-Sec space. The first one ended badly with the loss of a Hurricane Battlecruiser to a few pirate frigates but it was my own fault, I wasn't fitted out correctly and it was a learning experience (I won't make that mistake again and at least I got out with my Pod intact!) the second was an little corp tour of the local low-sec systems. Although we didnt find any combat action we did get a good feel for the terrain and met some interesting folks in local chat.


I'm still training towards my Prowler and I am still trying to get my head around the market system. Hopefully within a week or two I will begin doing some trading runs between Jita and Molden Heath to see what products are profitable.


I'm also spending a little more time on the Eve forums hoping to learn a bit more about the game. It seems a nice enough place as long as you don't say anything stupid :)

Mushihime-sama Futari

I have finally got a hold of a copy of Mushihime-sama Futari from the nice people at Game Focus on Londons Goodge Street.

Unfortunatly I am not going to get a chance to play it for a fair few hours as Im at Uni in London and my Xbox is in Gloucestershire.

Watch out for more info soon.

Youtube nostalgia trip

I was having a cruise around Youtube checking out some old videogame themed videos and thought I would share a few with you today.

There is a Commodre 64 theme here, most of these tune send shivers up my spine when I hear them today and I truly believe the C64's SID sound chip was one of the greatest sound generating devices of all time (one of the reasons I own two C64's is because there are 2 models of SID chip.

First up,

Ocean Load Music version 4.

This was possibly the very first tune I heard on the Christmas day I got my C64. a great atmospheric tack.

Next an arcade conversion, Outruns famous

Magical Sound Shower (ala SID chip!)

and what SID chip tune article could be complete without possibly the greatest C64 tune of them all,

Sanxion (Load Music)

Hope you enjoy :P

This Week i have Been Mostly Playing... (7)

Sorry about the delay on this post but it's been one hell of a week here with Pc's blowing up, then cars blowing up and then all sorts of other stuff going on but fear not I am here and ready to update you with my weeks gaming fun.

Xbox 360

Bayonetta

As soon as I started reading about this game I knew I had to own it and I am far from disappointed. It's quite different to most games I play and it is taking me a while to get used to the combat system but the game is so easy on the eye (and I'm not just talking about Bayonetta's rear end!) the whole graphical style of the game is fantastic. Get this game it is nuts!

Forza III

For all those petrol based fantasies I have Forza lets me act out most of them on my Xbox, I can not over state how good this game is for anyone with even the slightest interest in a realistic driving game. GT5 has a hell of a job to live up to this.

Mushimhe-sama Futari

Don't ask me how much I paid for this import, lets just say I was prepared to pay more if needed to get my hands on this Cave shooter. I am not disappointed, the game is a wonder and surprisingly accessible to those people looking for a more casual bullet hell experience (even my GF has 1cc'd it on novice mode) If you have the means I would highly recommend picking it up.

Fallout 3

Due to a Uni assignment about game aesthetics I have been playing a little more Fallout 3 as it seems as good a game to study as any other. Needless to say I have lost several hours studying time to just wandering around the wasteland and shooting Robobrains, Rad Scorpions and various other wasteland denizens. I must get around to trying some of the DLC for it.

PC

Silent Hunter IV

A new PC due to a rapid laptop death has at last allowed me play Silent Hunter IV Wolves of the Pacific. I'm not sure if I like it as much as the previous games set in the Atlantic though as I just have very little interest in the WWII Pacific theatre as a whole. Only time will tell but with so many other games needing my attention I'm not sure I will coming back to this game for a while.

This Week i have Been Mostly Playing... (6)

Xbox 360
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

It has taken me over a week to complete this FPS (on normal difficulty too!). This game is not without its flaws but it is a unique FPS and well worth checking out if you like to use a bit of grey matter in your games.

Forza Motorsport III.

The best racing series just keeps getting better. I've

been pining after this game for months and i was finally able to pick it up after Christmas. well worth the wait and it has lived up to all expectations. cars are beautiful tracks are amazing and the user interface is a nice improvement over Forza II

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

Picked this up on a whim and it is great fun. Do you enjoy in depth simulations with manuals you could hollow out and live in? Well this isn't one of them, it's

a pure arcade flight sim. Oh and I seem to be quite good at it if my performance in multi-player is anything to go by.

PC

Gratuitous Space Battles.

If you like space and like blowing things up I suggest picking up this game. A sort of cross between a tower defence game and an RTS. You basicly build your ships, arrange your fleet, give it some basic tactics and then sit back as it takes on your opponents fleet with quality 2D graphics. There is even a demo to try it out so go on try it today, you will not be dissapointed.

Fritz Chess 12.

Okay a little secret about me, I love chess. I was given this software by a journalist friend of mine who had received it through work, he didn't know much about it so he gave it to me. For those who don't know, Fritz is one of the best pieces of chess software and earlier versions have drawn games against the likes of Garry Kasparov. Needless to say Fritz at full power is well beyond my chessic abilities, but it is a wonderful training tool and comes with millions of games to study and learn from.

Links:

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Forza Motorsport III

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Gratuitous Space Battles

Fritz 12

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

Modern games have a reputation of being easy compared to the classic games of our youth. No longer is the question 'have you competed it?' it is now 'how long did it take?'. In the genre of current generation first person shooters we feel satisfied if a games main campaign takes 5-6 hours and we get the usual multi-player shenanigans. Now this game is a little different, its sheer difficulty level gives it longevity of a type not seen in most FPS games.

Now Codemasters Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (from here on referred to as OF:DR) Is billed as a tactical shooter along the lines of Ubisofts Tom Clancy games like Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. Set on the fictional Russian owned island of Skira (somewhere in the hotly contested Kuril island chain) you are play as various members of a US Marine Expeditionary Force sent to retake the island from Chinese forces to try and prevent a war between the Russians and the Chinese. Mission objectives range from taking out radar sites, rescuing POW's, sabotaging fuel depots and attacking airfields. All done with a nice touch of realism.

By realism I mean you die a lot!

Think Halo 3's Legendary or Modern Warfares Veteran and add extra frustration. The number of times you will be scooting through some bushes just to have your head taken off by some sniper you didn't see 400 meters away will make you scream ( and this is on normal difficulty!).

On top of that the friendly AI leaves a lot to be desired (as does the rotary menu system used to control them) leaving you struggling to control your squad of four in the middle of fire fights. The AI's reaction to incoming fire leaves a little be desired also.

The game also occasionally disappoints in the realism factor it seems to try so hard to convey. You as a lowly marine can fly helicopters and drive APC's and tanks. You are also expected to loot enemy forces to access the weapons needed to complete missions ( I thought this was the USMC not the British Army!). In a game trying to be realistic ( to the point that you can not select your weapon load out at the beginning of a mission, taking only what uncle Sam sees fit to give you ) you would think that these other game play over realism factors would have been stamped out too.

Despite these flaws I really enjoy OF:DR. When it works properly it gives an immense sense of satisfaction. Missions need you to use tactics and plan your moves in advance otherwise you will quickly end up in a bloody mess on the floor. This process however is the most enjoyable aspect of the game. In one mission for example you are behind enemy lines tasked with calling in an air strike on a radio station while also tracking an enemy officer. Do it right and you end up calling in the air strike as he enters the base and you then have to exit the area while the rest of the Chinese forces start looking for you, You then end up in a tense yomp across enemy territory, dodging enemy patrols and avoiding ambushes. Needles to say this mission was one of the most tense 45 minute I have had on my 360 and by the end of it, despite having been caught in an ambush I had expended all of 8 rounds of ammunition.

Good Points:

The most realistic FPS you will find on a console.

Well constructed missions.

Nice Graphics and effects.

Great sense of achievement when missions are completed

Bad Points:

Poor friendly (and enemy) AI at times

user unfriendly command interface.

illogical balances between realism and game play at times

I hope Operation Flashpoint becomes a console franchise. It would be nice to see how Codemasters could iron out the problems with this release and produce a fantastic tactical shooter.

Links:

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising official website

Eve Weekly Update 1

Hopefully a start of a new series charting my progress through the wonderful world of Eve online.

First a quick overview:

I have been playing Eve for just under six months and am a member of a PC Corporation called the Deorbit Burners (which is part of a larger alliance). We make our money mainly by mining, production and trading.

In December I finally managed to get my mining skills up to a level sufficient to fly the Hulk mining barge only to have the price of the Hulk sky rocket after the release of the Dominion patch. I decided to buy a Maelstrom battleship instead and do some harder NPC missions.

This week:

I have returned to mining in my trusty Covetor this week, mining the asteroid belts of Eldulf whenever I have had the chance. I have also done a bit of ice mining in the nearby systems and taken part in a large alliance fleet mining operation. The alliance fleet op was cool. we had a fleet with seven Hulks three Orcas and various other ships all mining away. We cleared a large asteroid belt in Horaka in less than 50 minutes!

Training wise I have decided to halt my combat skills training in favour of training towards a Prowler freighter. As we live in a high-sec bubble in Eldulf with the notorious pirate infested system of Atlar between us and the best trading hubs, a sneaky freighter like the prowler would be a useful ship to have.

Well that's it for now. See you all next week.

Hawx multi-player I am Top Gun!

Well I picked up Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. last week for the barganus sum of £12. Personally I like all of the Tom Clancy games I have played this generation (all of them apart from R62) and H.A.W.X is a decent enough and enjoyable game with a nice single player (and drop in/out co-op) campaign. I played the multi-player VS mode tonght for the first time though and was very surprised. In my first game, with players of a superior rank I (pardon the following leet speak) PWND them! I couldn't believe it, next game was the same, and the next too. At first I thought it was because I was using some noobtoobesque (good word, eh?) technique but no, I am just awesome at it!

Ooooh Yeah Welcome to the Danger Zone!

Yo Ho Ho and a Happy New Year!

Well after a sort of self enforced absence I am back. to spread my thoughts and opinions into the hearts and minds of those people who read my little blog. The last few months have been a little sparse but I hope to liven things up around here over the next few weeks.

Watch out world MCT is back!