The service will, eventually, show what channels your friends are watching amongst other features
Sky launched their streaming channel service on UK 360′s yesterday, promising access to 24 channels on demand. If you have an Xbox Live Gold account, with either a Sky TV or Sky Player subscription you can watch the ‘Base Entertainment Pack’, which includes GOLD, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, MTV One, Sky Sports News, British Eurosport, ESPN Classic, Sky News, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Nick Jr.Oh, and if you need your movie or sport fix you can add them as well, unless you have them already in your sky subscription. If you are not a Sky Subscriber, it’s £15 for the standard pack (per month) with an extra £19 for sports.
However, you now can’t on a 360. The service, which requirements were essentially a 2mb internet connection, appeared to be very unstable at launch, crashing quite a lot. So much for this digital TV revolution, and Sky have now taken the service down. A quote from CVG from Sky said:
“Sky Player engineers are hard at work to resolve the problem. We expect to have the full service available on Wednesday.”
Now it is Wednesday and apparently the service is still not yet up at the time of writing. Sky have also responded to calls for a similar service to appear on PS3 and the response has been the default ‘no comment’. So it’s just 360 users, who soon will have access to both Facebook and Twitter through the dashboard following the next update, will soon have their Sky TV back.
Larger size and cheaper, but essentially the same, so why is Microsoft blocking these memory units?
Microsoft’s recent decision to “lock out” unofficial Xbox 360 memory units has attracted criticism from third party hardware manufacturers, paticulary Datel according to CVG.
Users were equally critical after it was announced on Major Nelson’s blog that third party memory units, which often sell at a lower cost and larger size than Microsoft’s official units hold. For example, a 2GB Datel unit will set you back around £20, a 512MB official unit will be around £22 and if I needed to pick up a memory unit for my harddriveless 360, I’d almost certainly go for Datel’s offering, possibly even their 4GB version, giving my profile enough space for save games, even if its not great for XBLA games.
Here are some of the official prefs that you can get for the 360
Reasons behind this? Well, it’s not too clear at the moment why MS has taken the decision to lock out the “unauthorised” units. Nelson gives the advice of making sure that if you use them as a backup you move all recent data onto your official card, if you have one, as it won’t recognise anything on your third party card. Whilst there had been rumours of booting some strangeness into the 360 from the larger and unprotected memory units, I’ve never heard of a company taking a measure like this to block it.
A Datel Rep spoke to CVG and told them what they thought of the situation, ignoring the fact it’s a little bit of a sales pitch, they are not happy with MS.
“We are following this issue and awaiting the outcome like everyone else. If the Major Nelson blog is to be taken at face value then we’re disappointed to see that Microsoft are taking these steps to prevent customers from exercising their freedom of choice. Everyone is looking for ways to make their cash go further at the moment and we believe that Max Memory offers a good value, high capacity, alternative to the official Memory Unit.”
Unfortunately, it appears to many of the people who posted on Nelson’s blog that this is MS attempting to stop the selling of units which MS doesn’t make a profit from, nevermind freedom of choice. Now no one will mind me saying that the price of official 360 Hard drives, wireless cards and other official peripherals is silly money, when there are unofficial items on the shelves next to them. I’m not here to slam MS, but present the facts really, and the fact is that you can get the stuff without a little MS sticker on far cheaper. Whilst I personally wouldn’t recommend “Madcatz” stuff, which seems to be made out of sticky back plastic, I’ve had pretty good luck with unofficial stuff over the years.
I take it back, thes Mad Catz MW2 controllers are amazing. I tell you that on the grounds of only seeing that picture
I had a unofficial rumble pack/controller pack for my N64, which had the equivilent of 4 selectable packs (they saved your data on them so it didn’t stay on the cart) and the rumble pack had, and in fact still has, a very responsive and violent kick to it. I had a wireless controller for my PS2, not quite sure who made it, not quite sure what dangerous rays it emitted, but it performed all the functions of a dualshock 2, but without any wires (you could say that should’ve been the Sixaxis and I’d agree). I’ve also got a memory card for my Gamecube which is about 100 times bigger than the standard cards Nintendo provided and despite the fact I have to move it about a bit in the console to get it to read, it’s served me well.
What do you readers think of alternatives to official peripherals? A good value product that should remain usable or piece of cheap plastic you are not going to miss.
In this weeks edition of Game Engine’s Ignition Podcast, we have a chat about oh so many games, the health benefits of modern consoles, whether a Spore movie is a good idea and in fact, what would be a good video game movie? All this and more in the Ignition Podcast!
Duration: 1:26:00
“I’M SO GOD DAMN EMOTIONAL ARHGHGHGHG”
Dragons tend to, or would do if they were outside my house, conjure up quite a strong emotion of “Oh Crap”. Well, in Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 (dragons unconfirmed for that one) Bioware want you to feel this and many other emotions which you would feel in real life, from love to hate to jelousy.
In an interview with Dr. Ray Muzyka from Bioware with VideoGamer.com, he points towards pivotal scenes in gaming such as the death of Aeris that shows that gamers can show some emotion other than a vicious teabagging and perhaps even…shed a tear.
Whilst it’s debatable that video games do create any strong enough emotional content the same way films or books do, Dr. Ray says that creating the emotional reaction within gamers is a priority with Bioware games.
“People know when they see something that’s not real and credible – like your eyes not moving right. It makes you realise maybe it’s not real. Or the facial expression’s not quite right, or too much dialogue or too little dialogue, or a whole range of things that could be just not quite right about looking real and making you feel like the character you’re talking to is credible.
“If you don’t have all those things just right, you can’t break through that barrier to get the genuine emotional engagement with characters. That’s where you get some of the more difficult emotions to convey, of love, sadness, regret, fondness, hatred, dislike, these are all valid expressions and emotions we strive for, and they’re hard to do.”
From what I have played, it does seem difficult to do and the danger is that Dragon Age: Orgins, with the availibilty of prostitutes and have quite a lot of freedom over how your character develops, that emotional content gets lost over fighting those pesky dragons.
Prepare to punch and be punched…and the odd illegal head butt
Boxing is a sport which you would reckon to be fairly difficult to represent in a video game. It seems to go either the way of the Wii, with a novelty motion controls that essentially involves swinging your arms around wildly or the more conventional approach, which leads into having a convoluted and difficult to grasp fighting system.
The original fight night managed to hit that stereotype with a right haymaker, leaving it panting and sweating on the ropes. Whilst areas were not perfect, some of the movements were a bit stilted and the face deformation was a little overdone (think the last fight in the Matrix Revolution and you get the idea), but as a boxing game, it was probably the greatest since the legendary PunchOut! on the NES (now Wii as well).
Fight Night Round 4 attempts to refine this even futher as well as attempting to significently improve areas that were already pretty good in the first game. In the preview I played, there was a choice of four fighters in two different weight classes, from legends such as Ali and Tyson, to more current fighters such as Hatton and Pacquiao, mirroring the real life bout. I got dumped into a tutorial mode that introduces to one of those EA Sports staples, True Control.
As a gimmick almost as overused as “waggle attack”, EA like using the right analog stick for everything from moving a hockey stick, golf club or in this case, fists. As a honest reaction when I first started using this, I was almost begging with the TV to let me use buttons. Poor neglected buttons, used for rudimentary movements that you forget about after using True Control for some time. Yes that’s right, forget, as despite it being difficult to pull of some punches consectively and others too easy (I found myself throwing a lot of straight punches to either side of the head and body, but low blows and haymakers were a bit “hit and miss” literally. However, after spending around an hour with it, I was begining competent enough that if I managed to dodge or block a technique cleanly, I could follow it up sucessfully with a series of blows.
FNR4 really catches the brutal glamour of professional boxing
Without getting too caught up in how precise the system is, the games other “back of the box” feature is sweat. Not perhaps what you’d expect unless you have played the previous Fight Night, as every punch, especially the clean ones, sends a mix of sweat, blood and tears flying over the ring. Thankfully, the kind of greased up look the fighters had as soon as they started the fight has gone, replaced with visible beads of sweat dripping down their face, often replaced by blood, tattoos on fighters such as Hatton being readable, and probably the best part of the fighters is that they all look distinct. Ali is most definetly Ali, with long limbs and not overly bulked up, with Tyson being the opposite. And the expression of Ricky Hatton getting chinned is priceless.
Speaking of which, you can now mix weight classes within two classes of their own, which poses some interesting fights and scenarios that isn’t seen in the real world. The lighter, faster fighters must use their speed and head movement to evade the slower, but stronger guys and whilst boxing, despite its image, is a very tactical sport, the mix of weight classes forces you into the ring with different strategies for each fighter.
One of the best elements that really highlights the way Fight Nigh t Round 4 has captured the thrill of a fight is that there can be brutally exciting nine rounds where both fighters take it to points, or the dullest one or two rounds in fighting history, yet out of the blue there is a knockout. Or the scenario of one fighter dominating, as happening in my Pacquiou v Hatton fight, yet I scored a knock out on Hatton in the 8th round. It almost sounds like I’m describing a real bout, which perhaps is what I think will be the greatest strength of Fight Night R4.
There are, as usual with EA sports games, attempt to “Gameify” each area of the fight, giving the player control over ever area. For example, when you get knocked out or down, you must move the left stick gently to steady yourself straight, then use the right stick to stand up. The first few times I did this I thought it was suitablly difficult, especially after a few times (yeah, ok, there was a bit of a learning curve), but I fear it could become easy to engineer so whatever the fighters condition at the time, they can recover from a knock down.
Fighters like Ali, feel like I suppose Ali would feel like, floating around the ring like a butterfly, and stinging like a bee
Also, you gain points for fighting well throughout the round, such as accuracy, which you then spend or save during the break. This can be used to replace you health or stamina, which the bar gradually decreases, or to heal any damage that has been inflicted on you. I’m not sure real managers think in points, but it probably solves what would of been a far too autonamous system, but you can choose to do it automatically or customly focus on certain areas.
There is a lot to Fight Night Round 4 and in most sports games I usually end up playing the demo for around 45 mins max, I played this for over an hou and feel like playing some more. If that is not the sign of a promising game, I’m not sure what is.
Fight Night Round 4 is out now on Playstation 3(version played) and Xbox 360
Hiro’s height won’t stop him taking on the huge/average sized samurai ninja bloke
It appears that not all developers have given up completely on the “cartoony platforming” vibe of some of the early 3D games that appeared. Whilst not reminding players of a paticular game, it appears from the recent demo of Mini Ninjas, that IO Interactive’s mission seems to be to create a quirky fun platformer, which is easy to pick up and play, yet hides a surprisingly large amount of depth.
In Mini Ninja’s, you take up the main role as Hiro, a little ninja who in our demo, is off to help a friend find some of his fellow ninjas which have gone missing and to investigate the appearence of samurai carrying a mysterious crest on their banners. That’s the rough plot set up, Now onto the real business of, how does it play.
Well, like any platofrmer of past 10-15 years, it involves you being able to run around a colourful, if pretty linear version of Feudal Japan. There are brief, “Lego Games” style cutscenes, setting out what is happening, what you need to do and then letting you get on with it. It has all the elements of a hack’n slash, with a basic attack button and a “power attack” which is enhanced by the collection of gems (suprise suprise there) and a block button, indicating that despite the enemies in the demo, some may require a bit more technique than just hammering on the attack button.
The samurai’s you are fighting come in a few forms througout the demo, from the bog standard sword fodder, to a red version that is a bit tougher and a bit handier with the block, spear men, a commander type and a large boss type. So variation on the design is pretty slim, that kind of fits in with the variation of attacking. The option to change character during the game is a touch which is obviously designed to add some logitivity to the exploration areas of the game, and although I could only play as Hiro or the stereotypical “big dude and big hammer” and “sleek and slender girl ninja”, you’ll find yourself going back to the happy medium of Hiro for most of the demo anyway.
There are enemies of all different sizes and types that need despatching…If not too stealthily
There is not only just characters you can change when it comes to the taking on the world of mini ninjas. There are loads of things that are collectable from flowers, which some characters will ask you to find for them…Despite the fact they are only just down the path from them, as well as activating shrines to give you more magic or other bonuses. Yes magic indeed, you have access to all sorts of things, in the demo for example we have a inferno and thunderstorm spell which are used against enemies and a spell which allows you to take control of an animal, many of which are around the place, seeing as the samurai turn into foxes, rabbits, frogs and many more, and a spell letting you find your way to one of the aforementioned shrines.
The radial menu allows you to add any of the many pieces of kit you quickly acquire as you go about your adventure. Not all as are useful as others, but you can equip anything from a fishing rod to shuriken. One of the main drawbacks with the system is that if you are another ninja, most of the offensive spells and items could not be used unless you are Hiro. Although the hats you can find, although I only had access to one during the demo, gives all ninjas some kind of help, for example letting you row a hat-boat down the streams and ravines, useful when it makes it part of the level.
The DS version looks to be fitting straight in with the style, perhaps even enhancing areas
MN seems, from what I have played appears to be aimed at the game aware kid, rather than perhaps the person who has heavily refined their skills on many different platforming titles. It teases you along a path, with the amount of hints and pointers I recieved in the first five minutes, although from the demo I didn’t get the feeling of it being a cheaply made title. It’s clean and vaguely reminscent of what I used to play years ago, and even has a little of a Croc feel (the quicker this system comes in so I can show you that game, the better) .
Without playing through the full game, I couldn’t tell you if it is going to turn into a boring hack fest, or continue with the charm and rolls on that soley, though the fact it’s downloadable and out on Wii and DS can only work in it’s favor.
Mini Ninjas is coming out on PC, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3 (demo played) and Xbox 360 later this year.
You often have an idea of what to expect when a game claims to have a massive world with a variety of vehicles and “mud effects”. My original thoughts about FUEL, developed by the relatively unknown French developer AsoboStudio (I think they may of made WallE…So good pedigree there) and published by Codemasters was going to be essentially Motorstorm, the PS3′s off road racer, crossed with a bit of Burnout openworldness. Unfortunatly, if I base my views on the preview I played, the game falls short on the “racing” and “open world” counts, which is a bit of a big deal.
FUEL contains a variety of vehicles which you would expect to see in an offroad racer. From dirt bikes, to buggies, to crazy rally cars, although I only had the oppitunity to play as a buggy and bike. Probably my favourite out of the two was the motorcross bike, perhaps because it gave me the ability to go between trees and other obstacles in the environment, as well as hitting jumps which don’t really make any difference, apart from of course, doing a “Crazy Ass Stunt”, which as far as I’m aware, you have no control over it.
The world of FUEL is what supposedly took up so much of it’s development time and in one way or another, I can see why. It is one of those large and madly varied worlds, based on various areas of the USA, which according to the “story” was a result of some apocolyptic act, which may go some way to explain to randomly burning trees and drained rivers etc, but there is a conspiculous lack of rad-scorpions, which would of instantly made the game 1000% more enjoyable. Rivers, which when you go down to them, you fall through them like the water doesn’t exist and it’s a bottomless pit, is pretty funny for the first few times. There are parts of the world which I was allowed to access which looked pretty good, but the main problem that I found, again, I can’t vouch for the rest of the game, that the world does not aid the racing at all.
By that I mean that whilst there are the traditional ramps and stuff, you can’t really take any short cuts as the nearly militant GPS system forces you a specific route. When it doesn’t, I found that in the few of the races I played, I could basically go a straight route from what checkpoint to another in a straight line, whilst the AI refused to go from the roughly drawn route it has set for itself. The races are structured in such a way that for most of them you go in one long lap, from checkpoint to checkpoint. The system isn’t necesserily flawed just doesn’t feel refined enough to promote good and intense racing.
There is also online mulitplayer included in the game, essentially acting kind of like a Burnout system, but with less speed and more vehicles. There will be 16 players online and various mulitplayer challenges and race modes. My fear for the mulitplayer is that, unlike with Burnout: Paradise, there is no built up crazy areas to jump out of, no dynamic crash system, so will it actually draw users in, who may not be paticulary happy with the single player anyway?
Another factor that my preview didn’t really promote was racing difficulty. I probably touched the brake once or twice round a very sharp corner, but there wasn’t really an oppitunity to drift around on the muddy apocolyptic land. I pretty much could hold the accelerator and cruise through the preview races. The upside of this that I felt damn good going straight into the game and winning by miles, even on the higher difficulty. And of course, you do get dropped off at a race (you can warp to them if you don’t want to drive across the barren wasteland) by a Chinook helicopter. Slightly random, but not a bad choice of vehicle transport.
Comparing this to Pure, the ATV game which I kinda harboured a secret affection for, with all it’s pre-loading, super high jumping madness, and very inventive tracks, I feel that, even from this preview of FUEL, they should of translated some of Pure over to Fuel (PureFUEL, Now that’s a title), give it a bit more “shazam” rather than being uninspiring. Whilst it may be unfair claiming that an open world game should have elements of a single vehicle track based title, it set the bar pretty high. The full game does have a massive world and plenty of activities, including challenges and lots of vehicles, but the jury is out still on whether a massive world and lots of races means that you can get away with fairly bland environmental choices and unchallenging race AI. So Codemasters, you have lots of good racing, both on road and off road games, and if your’re reading this and stuck on which series to carry on, don’t let it be FUEL.
FUEL is an offroad, post-apocolyptic, open world racing game with a variety of vehicles and is availible on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.
