It is time, once again, to take a look at the wall of games and work out what is the highest selling box with a disc in it this week. OK, not quite sure what happened with that first sentence, anyway, CHARTS.

This week sees the clambering of Mafia 2 to the top of the video game gang land, weirdly enough grabbing top spot from Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, with the biggest UK game launch since Red Dead Redemption. It’s clear that crime clearly does pay.

As we watch Just Dance slip like a fat kid on velcro slide down the charts, Wii Sports Resort is the biggest jump this week, going from 16th to 5th, mainly due to the Wii price drop, so nearly everyone must own at least five of them now, right?

Not even a unified Wingardium Leviosa is going to stop Lego Harry Potter from moving down a few positions, from 4th to 8th, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 maintaining its strong 7th spot. Generally this month has seen a bit of a bounce in Wii Software, from Wii Fit Plus to New Super Mario Bros. Wii (which is packaged in with some Wii Deals), both moving up the charts.

Shooters still dominate the ‘teens’, with both Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 hovering around the top 10 spots. This also sees the triumphant return of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which despite having next to no marketing budget, has reached its highest position of 9, crawling past Prince of Persia, who’s still wall jumping around the top 10 at 10th spot.

As mentioned before, Wii software is seeing another surge, with Mario Kart Wii (still one of my biggest Nintendo disappointments) returning to the charts at 27th, with former number one Crackdown 2 and fellow high flyer Blur returning back to the charts at 31 and 32 respectively. The old guard is still going strong, with Halo 3 and GTA: IV still hanging around awkwardly at 36 and 37.

And at last, but most certainly not least, Club Penguin: Herbert’s Revenge enters the charts at 40, showing that in the UK, there is always a place in a charts for some lovable penguins.

More charts next week, courtesy of GFK Chart-Track

Plain and Simple, see, even gold text!

In a move that will no doubt be blamed squarely on the door of the ‘economic climate’ that we’ve been living under for the past two years, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, other known as, of course, Major Nelson, has announced today on his blog that prices for subscribing to the Xbox Live service are going up in certain territories.

The UK, in addition to the US, Canada and Mexico are the countries affected, and depending on how you subscribe, the rise is actually pretty nominal, despite what some people would have you believe. The only tariff changing in the UK is if you want to pay monthly, which has gone up from £4.99 for a Gold account to £5.99, but I don’t know anyone who pays for Xbox Live by the month. The three-month and yearly packages are remaining the same for the UK.

The story is mostly the same for the other territories, with the monthly subscription again going up by 1 Canadian dollar, in of course, Canada, and if it means anything you to you less ignorant folks out there, the Mexican figure for a year subscription is now up to 599 Pesos.

It’s the US where a lot of forum goers are getting all catty about it, as all their packages have been affected. To start with, the monthly Gold membership is now up to $9.99 from $7.99, the three-month is now five dollar’s more at $24.99 and the 12 month fee is now (and I’ll refuse to use the word ‘hefty’ as some people have) $59.99.

OK, so the most popular package (yearly) has gone up, but I’m pretty sure that’s only something like 80 cents a month or something like that, so as long as they keep regular checks on their sofa change (and other people’s sofas if you are crafty about it) you should manage just fine. Nope, no one likes prices going up, but just as with games, the price will keep rising as people keep paying. Even so, around $60, which the price of a recently released full price game is approximately £38-40 quid, which is becoming the price of a budget game in UK. And we’re not even getting onto the incredibly inflated prices of the Australian market.

Whilst being available to all users, the New Xbox Experience factors heavily into Xbox Live

Indeed, some people may not be very happy about the cost, the main thing people seem to be complaining about at the moment is the way that MS have communicated it, claiming the hike is due to adding content and valuable user experiences. Whilst the New Xbox Experience and all it’s trappings probably cost a fair bit to implement, the common view is that many Gold users feel that, apart from perhaps Netflix streaming in the US (and soon Canada), most of the features, such as Twitter and Facebook integration are pretty useless on the system.

The issue is perhaps, that if MS raise the price, but don’t change the product, it seems more like an effort to generate reliable funds from an area of the business, especially as they are preparing to release the potentially risky Kinect system in November. I’m pretty sure most people are kind of ‘Meh’ about this, and will accept to paying a bit more, but they may start feeling Microsoft needs to start offering more to them, as opposed to the ‘casual’ crowd.

The price rise does not come into effect until November 1st, so if you renew your subscription by then, you can dodge around paying the extra cash, but this really only applies to those who are on longer subscriptions in the States or Mexico.

Also, in reaction to this, retailers in the US, such as Amazon.com and Newegg are dropping the price of the 12 month XBL cards to $40 dollars, so as a service to anybody from the US out there, check it out or buy multiple cards to last you forever! Or just do the single year on Xbox.com, the choice is yours.

Seeing as Bulletstorm is shaping up to be one of the most visually interesting first person shooters coming out in the near future, I thought it wouldn’t harm to take a look at a gameplay demo out of GamesCon that has commentary by the producer of the game Tanya Jessen.

I’m really into the design of the game so far, and the gameplay looks to be playing around with the typical stuff you see in the genre. Anyway, rather than me describing it, take a look at the video above and have  a listen to Tanya, as she’s far more knowledgeable than me.

Forget high-powered sports cars, this, is why I'm installing 10 Gigs

In a twitter post responding to fan’s questions, the creator of the series Kazunori Yamauchi said that whilst GT5 would only require you to install 256MB to the PS3′s Hard drive, for the smoothest of possible gameplay, a 10GB would be better. Whilst I’ve used many games that actually require a compulsory large install, I think a 10GB optional is the record, unless anyone else out there has any other ideas.

The issue of these installs though have largely gone away, mainly because developers have got better at managing the disc speed of the Blu Ray and because you can install games to the Xbox 360, parity has, in a  way, evened the playing field, with far more ‘optional’ installs.

The one thing I could imagine being a problem is the size of the install, and then the effect it actually has. Because it wasn’t exactly a detailed answer, being a tweet, ‘smoothest’ could mean anything from load speeds to actual frame rate, so the 10GB may mean faster loading of car models and other details, or the different between a constant frame rate and jittery racing.

At least, with regards to actual hard drive space, the majority of people will not have too much in the way of space issues, especially if you are, without question, going to be playing a lot of GT5. And for those still using the smaller hard drives, such as the 20GB models that came out in Japan and North America, it may be time for an upgrade now.

Gran Turismo 5 is out on PS3 in November

After nearly a whole months absence, the Ignition team return to bring you all the latest news including: the possibility of a PSP phone; Bioshock Infinite; Stephen Merchant’s appearance in Portal 2; the future of desktops and much more.

Duration: 120 mins

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Yes, include played out "Barrel Roll" gag here

OK, in the recent preview demo I played of HAWX 2 (the Tom Clancy game with jets in it), there were few surprises really. It’s still taking place in some sort of near-future war zone, however this time the influence of PMC’s is perhaps a lot less played (they were so 2009), instead you’ll be battling heavily armed and pretty mean insurgents. Most of the time. You’ll also be flying around in planes that don’t require a thick manual to work out how to manually adjust pitch and yaw to obtain the correct flight path. This is no flight simulator.

The slick quality of the presentation is also still there from the original, but then here are where some of the surprises factor in. The first game was a little tech-demo in its approach. Yes it had decent ground graphics, which is something all flight games are based on and had pretty hectic combat, fighting air and ground based units, but that was that really. Rio De Janeiro had never looked so pretty, but there was only so many times you fly past the cristo redentor and be impressed.

Instead, in HAWX 2, you’ll switch and changes between characters in war zones, for example, one moment you’ll be flying with the Russian’s over a mountain range battling insurgents who have nicked all your decent planes, to a HAWX operative, operating just off some unnamed middle-eastern country’s coastline. The good thing about this is that it probably represents real warfare better than the typical Tom Clancy tropes. Big foreign invasion forces all of a sudden appearing on your doorstep and double crosses and betrayals are not really the thing in modern conflicts, instead it being a constant, multi-front battle against a number of ‘funded’ insurgency groups. So at least in premise, HAWX is grounding itself in a little more reality.

There are moments that look like they are straight of the back-cover of Microsoft Flight Simulator, but that's probably just because it's a plane

The tech you are using is also not too over the top to be un-believable. The planes, even some of the later ones I have seen, if not flown, are the kinda things that, whilst you wouldn’t expect to see over your house any time soon, are relevant enough to current technology to make sense. It also doesn’t attempt to re-invent the wheel. One of the missions I played was all about precision bombing, launching essentially guided missiles from my stealth jet at ground targets. If you’ve played either of the Modern Warfare games, this will be instantly familiar, as the black and white thermal screen flares up as you hide in the clouds.

Speaking of which, the missions utilise the fact that the game seems a little bit more grounded in reality. For example, in the mission I was just talking about, first you have to take off from the air craft carrier, which is almost like a bit of a mini-game style thing and then fly to a nav point so you are on the optimal flight path. In the mission, you have to try and take out the bombers who are trying to escape the airfield you are leaving a lot of craters in, and if any escape, you then have to engage in air-combat, whilst staying above 1500m, otherwise, you’re in the firing line of enemy flack. Then you’ve got to try and land back on the carrier.

For those of you sitting there thinking that you don’t actually want to play a combat flight simulator, don’t worry. It seems that the game is going to give you plenty of assists to make it easier for you to approach, for example, the re-fueling plane, if you’re not so much a dab hand at manoeuvring behind another aircraft, and doesn’t penalise too much for inaccuracy on the regular difficulties. The flying definitely feels more like a simulation though, as opposed to an arcade, with all the stuff from the last game, with random ‘stall falls’ where you would drop out the sky to avoid missile lock has been got rid of in favour of good old barrel rolls.

If you've happened to play any of the 4000 modern military games

However, what has remained is the in-flight, quasi-military chatter and occasional Top Gun, campiness that would have to be in the game in order for them to actually be allowed to release it. There are not particularly cut scenes, as it’s also carried out in battle, but it allows for a briskness in the story telling without going too deep and dramatic between missions. I’m not expecting miracles from the story, we’ve all seen it before, but it feels so far like it complements the game.

There is a bit of a void of flight games at the moment, with another Ace Combat game not being in production, leaving HAWX pretty much the remaining mainstay of the genre. By the looks of this preview, the game is much more appealing to both simulation and arcade fans than the first game, and makes some logical improvements on what the first game fell down on and keeping up with the high production values. The question will be, of course, can it keep it fresh and new for the full game.

Screen's like this make Far Cry 2 look 'cooler' than, unfortunately, it is

Whilst I know roaming through a couple of square miles through the war-torn African heartland wasn’t to everyone’s cup of tea, Far Cry 2 wasn’t a bad game, despite it perhaps being not too memorable. Whilst it was a little gimmicky, even compared to Far Cry 1, for example the idea of repairing every vehicle known to man by tightening up a bolt on the engine (have tried, does not work in real life).

And whilst I thought that FC2 had some issues, such as the incredibly aggressive AI, slow build up and pretty floaty vehicle controls,I enjoyed my time with it, so perhaps wouldn’t be too opposed to a new one, if they tightened many of the mechanics. So it was rumoured in the ‘spy’ column in PC Gamer that development of the 3rd game is in ‘full swing’, being handled by Ubisoft Montreal, with Relic Entertainment’s former  Creative Director (the guys behind Company of Heroes and the Warhammer 40k games amongst others) Josh Mosqueira jumping into the vacant role in Montreal’s team.

However, we still know nothing about the game, Linkedin profiles and other such things don’t really say much about that, but it has been rumoured that the next Far Cry would most likely retain its African setting, although someone did mention Antartica…which isn’t going to do much for all that Fire technology they worked on for the last game

I recently stumbled on a very insightful article on Mashable (http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/wikileaks-journalism/) in which several professional journalists from different backgrounds give their opinions on WikiLeaks and whether it is a necessary evil or simply evil. The range of journalists was quite diverse. One of the journalists, who previously wrote speeches for George W. Bush while he was in presidency, was unsurprisingly against the website and called it a, “threat to national security”, while the other journalists were content to write it off as an internet fad and it provided little more in the way of secrets than what they had access to already.

While the fact that WikiLeaks is a threat to security is still under scrutiny it is true that, to journalists, WikiLeaks provides little more than convenience. More negatively, WikiLeaks even hurts journalists as the site has removed all opportunity of an exclusive scoop on the information it divulges. This fact bluntly means than journalists will continue to track down leads themselves because recycling old news simply doesn’t sell newspapers.

However, I don’t think this means that WikiLeaks has no place in our modern word I think it just needs to be re-branded. WikiLeaks may not be serving the media industry as, “an important journalistic tool” as the website dubs it , but as an important tool for people who demand greater transparency from their governments. For the first point in time people have been offered a single location to see what the governments that represent them are doing and, for arguably the first time ever, the same governments are being held accountable for their actions. WikiLeaks is not a tool for the press, it is a tool for the people.

A very good example of this is the recent video they released that clearly shows US forces opening fire and killing civilians and Reuters reporters (if you’re interested, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0. Please don’t watch this if you are in a good mood, it is distinctly upsetting to watch). Without this exposure, those reporters and civilians would have died in vain, buried more in secrecy than soil. WikiLeaks did an admirable job of exposing this monstrosity and it led into an investigation into the personal who committed it.

Despite the fact the families of the reporters finally know what happened to their loved ones, the media coverage was minimal and even negative of WikiLeaks actions. The fact of the matter remains, journalists see the unpleasant side to life that many feel obliged to cover up. To journalists, what is exposed on WikiLeaks isn’t surprising and it certainly isn’t newsworthy. To the people, WikiLeaks offers insight into governments and business that they would never normally have a look in edgeways with. They are not just given media speculation but cold hard facts to base their opinions on and this doesn’t change if the transparency is legitimate or leaked. This is why WikiLeaks is important regardless of where it stands on the moral scale. If people are not safe if the truth comes out then that begs the question what have they been involved with that puts them at risk? Maybe if we lived in a society where governments could expect almost total exposure of information there would be different decisions made about finance, law or even who we decide to go to war with.

Anyway, I apologise for the brief article. Consider it unsubstantial at worst and food for thought at best.

Okay, so it has been a while since I last posted and I guess I owe everyone an explanation. That’s why I am dedicating the first part of this post to personal matters (*groan from the background*). The biggest thing that happened is that we, as collective A level students, received the results that told us if we are going to be functioning members of society or dole-seeking reprobates who collectively drain the very social culture we live in. Luckily the members of Game-Engine were not among the 200,000 people being turned away and we all got into our first choices.

I myself am heading to De Montfort to enrol on an IT course where I see the minimum amount of Windows possible (to which my dearest mother pointed out that the term, ‘seeing no windows’, was wholly appropriate for computer security – oh how refreshing her trust is). I have to say I am quite looking forward to it. I have been outgrowing the small town that I live in for quite some time and I am wholly for hitting the world renowned(!) comedy circuit in Leicester. However, I think it is a much safer bet to swat up on C than to put all my eggs in the comedy basket.

Anyway, sinking to the deeper levels of intimate personal secrets, I am going to be blunt about the reason I haven’t written anything: I just haven’t had the focus to do so. For the last few months I seem to have sunk into a kind of embittered state in which I seemed a lot happier feeling sorry for myself than actually doing anything productive – doing anything about my predicament included. Well, I have mustered up some emotional energy and I am now forcing myself to write about technology so people don’t get mad and beat me while yelling, “nobby-two-shoes”.

In some ways you can look upon my silence as a form of blessing. Putting it as bluntly as Wayne Rooney is sharp, what I would have written would have been crap.

Anyway, personal explanations over. Let’s talk about some tech news!

I guess the first story in popular consciousness is Oracle being complete and utter bastards with what they now own through their Sun Microsystems acquisition. The biggest story with this theme is the lawsuit Oracle are pressing on Google for making their own Java runtime environment.

Java is the primary programming language for the Android phone operating system and to avoid any legal complications (ironically) Google made their own version of the Java runtime environment. For people not in the know how programming languages work (*gasp*), Java works by running code in an isolated environment that deals with how memory is assigned and makes sure the program runs safely. It’s kind of like the application the programmer has written provides the instructions and the isolated environment (the runtime) is what actually runs the instructions from the program.

However, by making their own, “clean-room”, version of the runtime environment, Oracle (who now owns Java) claims Google has violated the patents they hold on Java and are holding them for damages. This comes as a shock considering Sun (the previous owners of Java) went to great lengths to open-source Java and allow people to use it without fear of such lawsuits. Sun really wanted the mantra, “write once, deploy anywhere”, applying not just to the technical aspects of Java but the legal aspects as well. But it turns out there was a silver-bullet Sun was holding over its intellectual property: you only benefit from patent protection if you use their free Java implementation. By making their own, Google does run afoul of Oracle’s patents.

How will this end? Well many people Google will just cave in and settle with Oracle as the costs of making their own runtime environment have mounted to be quite substantial. An improbable explanation – but still quite realistic – is that Google gives up on Java completely for Android development. There are already a lot of other languages that run on Android which means loosing Java may not loose the platform. Google are also making their own language called Go which seems quite suited to mobile development as well. At this stage, it’s anyone’s guess.

In other Oracle news, it seems as if the open source port of their UNIX operating system Solaris, imaginatively dubbed OpenSolaris, is being retired. This is quite sad to a budding technology historian such as myself (ergo, massive nerd) as OpenSolaris was the only open source project to be totally derived from System V – the first UNIX operating system ever made forty years ago. In a leaked memo from Solaris kernel developers it was confirmed that OpenSolaris will not be receiving any updates.

This is a shame because, with a little work, OpenSolaris could have been big. UNIX is big player in large deployments and making an open source version of Solaris Oracle would have completely priced out any company with UNIX systems for small and medium sized companies. This may well have symbolised the death of UNIX and the birth of Linux as the major data-centre player of the future.

Or maybe I speak to soon. An effort led by Nexenta – who earn a living making their own OpenSolaris spin – has unofficially taken over development of the retired project. Project Illumos was originally designed to replace all the proprietary components of OpenSolaris and create a completely open source distribution. In combination with Oracle – who will still update the open source components, just not create a distribution – it seems Illumos will take OpenSolaris development as its own.

In non-bastardary news, the people behind the GNOME desktop (one of the most popular graphical desktops in the Linux world) have announced that the third major version – imaginatively called ‘GNOME 3′ – is to be delayed until the first third of 2011. This isn’t a major surprise as the new interface, GNOME Shell, is far from stable and even looking like the final release. In some ways this is a good thing, the animated mock-up of how the shell will look simply appears amazing. With the increasing stability and speed of KDE and the new looks of GNOME, Linux may very well be in its way to rivalling the look of Mac OS X.

Shell Yes! motion design mockup from GNOME Shell on Vimeo.

While we are on the topic of the look of OS X, Apple have quietly released a graphical update to their proprietary operating system which is supposed to improve gaming performance dramatically. Valve have claimed that their ported games work around 300% faster than on previous versions of OS X.

When it was announced there would be Co-Op in Portal, people didn’t actually know whether they wanted it or not. Part of what made Portal such a classic game was the experience of being a single character going through a mysterious test lab, so wouldn’t making it just a series of cooperative challenges not really add too much.

However, what those people tend to forget is that Portal was simply fun, a fun game to play that people wanted more of. Of course, the single player is shaping up to be great, but more Portal 2 can’t be a bad thing, right? So, in this brief trailer from GTTV shows you and a friend playing as two test robots, but even from this short section, it’s clear that they have a bunch of personality.

Whilst people have attempted to add Co-op to Portal through Mods, having a fully fledged co-op campaign could add more value to what is growing into a far larger game than the original.

Portal 2 is due out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on February 9th 2011