This week on Ignition: Josh discusses the latest releases including the much anticipated Mass Effect 2; the team discuss MAG after having all played it in the past week; Stevie runs through the greatest firefox extensions; we give our first impressions of Google Wave after being invited to join the preview build; then we finish things off with 1 minute, 5000 questions where this week Matt tries to pitch the iPad to Josh and Stevie.
Duration: 65 minutes
The remarkably fun and free online shooter Battlefield Heroes, whilst being steadily supported, hasn’t really had much in the like of in game events. Well all that is about to change with the inclusion of something all…Twilight fans out there will be kinda, into. Good thing is, there won’t be many estranged quasi species love affairs in this one.
In this month long event, either early or late for Halloween depending on which way you look at it, night falls over some of the more familiar levels, and it all goes supernatural. For starters, if you’re feeling like really splashing the cash, you’ll be able to purchase alternative costumes and items to transform the Former-Royals into Werewolves and the Nationals into Vampires. If you are going to be spending your money on more essentials, then you’ll still be able to play in the 3 reworked levels, supposed to be all supernatural like.
So, if you’re like our very own Stevie and like buying battlefunds, you’ll be all set to head into the fantasy of being a Vampire that ain’t all glittery…
I take a quick look into the new world that is Google Wave. Nothing too in-depth, I’m afraid, but a good insight into how the system will work.
This is only thing that could possibly be linked back to Battlefront Online (Courtesy of Kotaku)
Few rumours floating around the net today, so may not be that reliable I’ll have you know, that despite all signs of Star Wars: Battlefront III (the battlefield-esque style ones) being dumped and forgotten about, Kotaku have learned that the series may being kept alive in the form of Battlefront Online, an Xbox 360 and PS3 title.
The people behind it are Lucasarts (of course) and Six Slant Games, who made SOCOM: Confrontation and SOCOM: Fire Team Bravo. My only issue with this is I know for a fact that when Confrontation was launched on the PS3 and some would say to this day, the online experience has been terrible. But, I’ll try my best not to put a downer on things, as it wasn’t too long ago where everything looked bleak for the series.
The people behind the first two, relatively successful games was Pandemic, but when they were bought by EA, the license got swished around studios and ended up in the hands of Free Radical. “GREAT!” I thought, being a bit of a Star Wars geek who enjoyed the two previous games, we may get a next-gen version. I was even more encouraged when I saw the effort made by Pandemic on their next-gen license Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which was garbage. Free Radical had all the old Goldeneye team, had produced another favourite series of mine, Timesplitters, and all looked good. Then they released Haze.
Bugger.
By this point, the reputation of Free Radical had plummeted and despite the occasional pieces of concept art for both Timesplitters 4 and Battlefront III being released every couple of months, employees turned up one day to find notices on the doors to go home.
Needless to say, it looks slightly more promising than it did.
It’s a little tricky at the moment to find any piece of technology news out there that isn’t involving a certain Apple product, therefore todays video of the day took a little digging to find (not helped by the fact that most of the Game Engine team have had their heads buried in MAG up until now, hence the late post).
Anyway, the video is the launch trailer for “Assassin’s Creed 2- Battle of Forli” which is a DLC single play add-on available today from both Xbox Live and the PSN. The plot of the pack is that Ezio (the main character in AC2) must protect the city of Forli from the Orsi brothers attempts to take over. The trailer itself looks fairly polished and has that look and feel of a rather cliched movie trailer that all games trailers seem to be aspiring to these days. Enjoy!
Hey, guess what. If you have an RSS feed, be it linked up to your favourite cookery sites, you’ll most likely of seen news about this. Apple unveiled the iPad today, like a bigger version of a iPhone, smaller version of a netbook. Check out Matt’s post on his impressions of the iPad. I’m going to keep my views under-wraps till this weekend’s Ignition, it’s for the best. Trust me.
But, seeing as everything on the internet has been taken over by it today, and the fact, it does, I admit, look pretty slick, the iPad gets the video of the day spot.
This image finally marks the end of months of insane hype surrounding the Apple Tablet
The biggest question being asked leading up to today’s Apple Event was not if they would be announcing a tablet computer, but what it would be called. So congratulations to everyone who put there money on ‘iPad’ however, I’m a little unconvinced by the name as I don’t think the idea of the latest tech being a ‘pad’ is necessarily that exciting. However, what most of us are concerned with are the actual features of the product, so allow me to give you a quick overview.
As some of you may have heard, the free press website WikiLeaks has suspended all operations during a fund raising drive (if you want to donate to WikiLeaks, which I recommend if you are familiar with their work, go to http://wikileaks.org). For people wanting access to repressed data then the loss of such a site, even temporarily, is quite a blow.
However, with the fall of one star comes the birth of another and the website http://data.gov.uk has recently been put on public beta (for UK residents) and promises to publish all government published, non-personal, data. Read more
Most of the time, when you find heavily modified versions of game consoles, they often end up being trashy things that look like they are going to fall to pieces. However, Hailrazer’s Kamikaze 64 looks nothing of the sort. In the comprhensive video above, as well as demonstrating three classic games (Super Mario 64, Goldeneye and Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time), he shows off the entire feature set of this incredible device.
Just seeing where all the parts and technology comes from blows my mind, from PS1 LCD screens to making custom versions of many of the standard connections found on an N64. But what really took me away was the small touches and ideas that went into making it. The implementation of the expansion port on the back, the use of a more comfortable Gamecube analog stick, as the N64 original sucked, a third party controller buttons because “they are flatter”. Not only that, but the system has a TV out and the ability to attach a little controller port with two slots, and all the standard features you expect to see in a modern handheld.
Whilst it’s not perhaps the most beautiful of machines, it does the job in a clever and ingenious way and deserves a heck of a lot of praise for doing so. Problem is, I want one now…
Thanks to the creation tools in Modnation Racers, nearly every race will be...unique
It seems that user generated content is all the rage. It’s starting to happen in Rock Band with the Rock Band Network, with games such as LittleBigPlanet pioneering the way people share levels. Yes I know, people on the internet sharing, it’s truly a miracle.
Modnation Racers is United Front’s and San Diego Studios attempt at capturing what made LittleBigPlanet change from a cutesy platformer with floaty controls, to an extensive network of players creating and sharing some strange and bizarre levels. It was impossible not to draw parallels to LBP following ModNation racers unvieling of it’s three concepts: “Race, Create, Share”, very similar to LBP’s “Play, Create, Share”. The fact they are both Sony IP’s just made it feel like this was going to be a kart racing rip off. So when I got chance to particpate in a closed beta, I now have a better idea of where Modnation Racers is going.
