Just Cause

This game is a couple of years old, so I managed to pick it up for 5 pound. There are lots of problems with the game, but the map is massive and there is loads to do. Ive put about 15 hours into the game, I managed to complete the main storyline but have loads of sidequests, races and collection missions that need to be finished. I might go back to it eventually but I have a backlog of games to catch up with.

Halo 3: ODST

Ill have to admit, I wasnt too bothered about this at first but as ususal Bungie sucked me in after watching all of the video content on xBox live. After a couple of hours of play I am really starting to enjoy it. To anyone who has played the other Halo games it feels no different apart from having to think about your health. Firefight mode is fun and the Halo 3 multiplayer on a seperate disc is a nice addition. I will write a full review soon.

FIFA 10

Annoyingly I had ordered this for release day, but those bastards at Royal Mail ensured that I had to wait another week before I got my hands on it.

EA Canada have made some great changes to the game and although the new 360 degree dribbling system takes a bit of getting used to, FIFA 10 is the best football game yet. This is another game that needs a review and that will be up soon.

Stupid xBox

I bought an xBox elite last October, the NXE then came out which allowed us to install our favourite games on to the Hard Drive which would reduce wear and tear on our Disc Drive. A year later and my machine starts to break down, but what part? The bloody disc drive!! Thats right, the one that doesnt get used very much, the last thing you would expect to break, luckily it was still in warranty and to be fir to MS, they have really improved their repair turnaround times. I sent my console off on Tuesday, it arrived in Germany on Thrusday and was back on my desk at work on Wednesday. I have to presume its all ok as I am not back at work until tomorrow, but if it is the well done MS you have one thing right.

There is only one game that will really dominate this month, its out on the 10th November and involves shooting, I think you know what I mean…

Other Posts of Interest

• September 14, 2009 -- FIFA 10 Achievements

Beautiful Visuals

KOF XII has some of the well-animated and all-around gorgeous sprite art about. Each fighter is hand drawn and it’s a shame there are only 22 characters (the lowest of the KOF Series). If you want you can find out more about dot art here. The different stages have also been given lots of detail thrown at it with all sorts of classically SNK-flavoured nonsense taking place in the backgrounds.

But..

Despite all of the effort put into the visuals it seems they didn’t have time to play with the menus, a horrible blue background with a spinning logo and TIMES NEW ROMAN font EVERYWHERE, yuck.

Fight!

Every character in King of Fighters XII has a Light Punch, Heavy Punch, Light Kick and Heavy Kick. These four attacks make up your absolute basic move set and can be used to execute all the other advanced techniques found in the game. Pressing both Light Punch and Light Kick will make your fighter take evasive action (usually in the form of a roll) while hitting both punch buttons will execute a throw.

Hitting both heavy attacks together will perform a Blow Back attack, which will give your fighter some room to breathe. Alternatively, hitting these buttons while holding back on the D-pad (or joystick) will perform a Guard Attack, which parries an oncoming strike and automatically follows up with an attack of your own. 

Each character also has an assortment of special moves, which will be familiar to the fans of the series.  One of the new systems included is the Critical Counter system. Fill up a gauge during combat and, once filled, counter your opponent’s attack with a Heavy Punch or Heavy Kick while in the neutral position. This will activate a special combo state where you will be able to unleash hell on your opponent for a few seconds.

Apart from the Arcade mode there is a practice and area and a replay mode, but unfortunately there is no survival mode which would have been really good. Thankfully there is an online mode.

A patch has been released for the PS3 and xBox 360 to solve the online problems from when the game was released in the US, all of the matches I have played (and lost!) so far have been fun and I experienced no problems.

Conclusion

Despite the great visuals and sound fighting, this game feels a little unfinished and probably warranted a place on the xBox live Arcade rather than a £40 retail title. Fans of the series will feel most disappointed but if you are new to King of Fighters you will enjoy yourself.

7/10

Other Posts of Interest

• No Related Post

Researchers have harnessed the powerful silicon chips used in the Xbox 360 console to solve scientific conundrums.

Academics at the University of Warwick believe they are the first to use the processors as a cheap way to conduct “parallel processing”.

Parallel computing is where a number of processors are run in tandem, allowing a system to rapidly crunch data.

Researchers traditionally have to book time on a dedicated “cluster” system or splash out setting up a network of PCs.

Instead, the Warwick team harnessed a single Xbox 360 Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). The chip was able to perform parallel processing functions at a fraction of the cost a traditional systems.

Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher on the team, built the system to help him model how electrical signals in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells.

Dr Scarle, who previously worked as a software engineer at Microsoft’s Rare studio, had first hand experience of tapping into the power of GPU technology.

Speaking to BBC News, Dr Scarle said that the the code controlling the chip was modified, so instead of working out graphical calculations, it could perform other ones instead.

“You don’t quite get the full whammy of a cluster, but its close,” he said.

“Instead of pumping out stunning graphics, it’s reworked; in the case of my research, rather than calculating the position of a structure and texture it’s now working out the different chemical levels in a cell.”

Real world computing

There has been cross-pollination between game consoles and real world computing in the past.

Roadrunner, officially the worlds fastest supercomputer, uses the same processor technology as that found in Sony’s PlayStation 3.

However, it is thought that this is the first time an Xbox has been used to perform parallel processing, albeit on a single chip.

Roadrunner is used in nuclear weapons research
Dr Scarle said that linking more than one Xbox together using the techniques would not be impossible.

“It could be done, but you would have to go over the internet – through something like Xbox live – rather than a standard method.”

“However, without development tools, it wouldn’t be easy.

Xbox live allows gamers to play against each other over the internet.

“Sony have been into this [parallel processing] for some time, releasing development kits, and Folding@home comes as standard,” he added.

Folding@home is a project that harnesses the spare processing power of PCs, Macs, Linux systems and PlayStation 3’s to help understand the cause of diseases.

The network has more than 4.3 petaflop of computing power – the equivalent of more than 4,300 trillion calculations per second. Roadrunner, by comparison can operate at just over one petaflop.

The results of the University of Warwick research are published in the journal Computational Biology and Chemistry.

Other Posts of Interest

• No Related Post

For a full list check out Console Monster.

Other Posts of Interest

• February 11, 2009 -- 30k
• November 1, 2009 -- Gaming Roundup: October 09
• September 14, 2009 -- Batman: Arkham Asylum Review
• August 10, 2009 -- Red Faction Guerrilla Review
• June 16, 2009 -- xBox Live is Back!
• June 9, 2009 -- E3, theaftermath…

The lengthy cut scene brings you right in to the dark world of Arkham Asylum. Batman has captured The Joker but he didn’t put up a fight which gets Batman worried. It’s with good reason too because it isn’t long before The Joker’s plan come to fruition and Batman finds himself trapped in the asylum.

It’s at this point you are introduced to the fantastically simple combat system, which involves a button to punch and kick and another to counter, moving Batman in various direction will send him crashing into his next opponent to keep your combo up, there are various combo achievements up to as high as 40 which will keep you busy.

Once you have been taken through the basics you start to really get into the story, completing different objectives and taking on Batmans familiar foes along the way. When you enter different rooms you get to use the fantastic detective mode which allows you to scan the room for enemies, from there you can decide whether to take the stealth or gung ho approach. If the enemies have guns you need to take the stealth approach or you will have no chance and will be faced with the fantastic game over clips.

Batman is helped by loads of great gadgets that you can collect at different points in the game. Completing story based objectives, beating up the bad guys and solving The Riddlers’ riddles all give you points that will allow you to obtain new moves and upgrade your armour or gadgets.

The visuals are brilliant in the game and the voice acting is really cool too, especially The Joker. He adds a great atmosphere to the game, especially when he is goading his own goons. Harley Quinn is another of my favourite characters from the game.

The game doesn’t stop once you have completed the main storyline, there are 240 riddles/trophies for you to solve or find which will help rack up your gamerscore. There is also a challenge mode full of different combat and stealth scenarios, and they will keep you entertained for a while too.

In the next few days there is some free Batman DLC coming out which will keep you at the asylum for a bit longer!

This game really surprised me and I’m can easily say this is the best game I have played this year, it’s unlikely to be the best at the end of the year because of games like Modern Warfare 2, but this is a game you really need to play.

9/10

Other Posts of Interest

• September 14, 2009 -- FIFA 10 Achievements
• August 10, 2009 -- Red Faction Guerrilla Review
• June 16, 2009 -- xBox Live is Back!
• June 9, 2009 -- E3, theaftermath…
• June 1, 2009 -- 4 Weeks Later…
• March 31, 2009 -- Feature Review | FIFA 09 Ultimate Team review

In my last post I wrote about how I had loads of games that I had started and needed to really get some points out of them, below are the totals from back in February and next to them are as of today.

As you can see, I’ve got a good few points from each of the games, but my completion percentage has gone down because, I’ve added 14 more games to my played list, you can see a full break down here.

Gaming Highlights…

I’ve played some great games over the past 6 months but these have been my favourites:

Battlefield 1943:  What a great game that is, amazing graphics for an arcade title, plus great action especially when you get together with a squad of 4 friends.

Red Faction Guerrilla:  This is a game I really enjoyed, you can see more in my review.

Dead Space: It took a while before I picked this one up, but I am so glad I did. A brilliant Survival horror game. Here’s my review if it takes your fancy.

Plenty more to get…

I still have a massve list of games to get me through (let alone the HUGE amount of games on my wish list!) to 50k, but I get the feeling it will take a bit longer to get there this time. With games like Modern Warfare 2 I see my self putting in quite a bit of time into multiplayer (who could blame me?).

What are you current gamerscore targets? What are your Gaming highlights from the past 6 months?

Other Posts of Interest

• August 10, 2009 -- Red Faction Guerrilla Review
• June 21, 2009 -- Dead Space Review
• June 9, 2009 -- E3, theaftermath…

Social Gaming- Is the PS3 Disconnected?

Other Posts of Interest

• No Related Post

The price drop confirms the end of the Pro or Premium machine which retailed for £169.99. Retailers will now cease to sell this model brand new.

The announcement also confirms that the price of the Arcade Edition will rise to £159.99, however this won’t take place immediately.

Retailers Game and Gamestation will offer a tasty bundle with two free games including Call of Duty 4, Fight Night Round 4, Tiger Woods 10 or GTA IV, all for just £199.99.

Other Posts of Interest

• September 30, 2008 -- What’s going on?

Pinnacle Station will force you to “test the limits of your combat prowess aboard a remote, top-secret Alliance space station,” brawling through 13 new “combat scenarios,” and adding 2 to 3 hours of play time to the soon-to-be-sequeled space opera.

It will cost you 400 MS points, click through to go the xbox.com marketplace.

Other Posts of Interest

• December 4, 2008 -- 2008 Gaming Roundup
• November 18, 2008 -- NXE
• March 27, 2008 -- Back to Blogging

Other Posts of Interest

• No Related Post