Haven't had much to blog about recently - I've slipped into a habbit of falling asleep early on the sofa during the evenings, meaning time on the Xbox has been limited. And anytime I do go on it tends to be FIFA that gets the nod, despite it sending to me asleep itself!
But during this time one thing has really got on my tits - the newly designed Xbox 360 dashboard.
Its a sad time when playing games becomes a secondary function of a games machine. I've never seen it before but this Xbox dash update confirms Microsoft's sad intentions - to appeal to the wider market and turn the 360 into an entertainment hub, leaving idiots like me who might expect some kind of games focus incredibly frustrated and saddened.
I used to enjoy turning on the machine and looking at the latest game features, demos & coverage on the home screen, but its now hidden through multiple menus in a dark sweaty corner, barely making a whimper. New demos are just not advertised, new XBLA releases are unknown. Instead I get some more news about Facebook & some shitty movie being available to download.
Message to Microsoft - get a grip and remember who got you here - the hardcore gamers who purposely picked an Xbox and a 360 to play games. Tossers!
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Bang Bang and Games That Should Have Been Better
Just when I think there is still nothing to blog about, rejoice in the magic that is XBLA, as we now have another top-down racing game in the pipeline - Bang Bang Racing, due to hit XBLA and PSN fairly soon.
I'm a complete sucker for a top down racing game, and while there have been a few interesting ones knocking around in production this in particular looks like it could be something quite special.
Maybe its just my age, but I'm more excited by this than any of the recent full price releases in recent years.
Talking of being old, I enjoyed a screening of Robocop on TV last night. Its a great movie for so many reasons... the characters, the storyline, the 80's coolness, the social and political satire - but it made me wonder why they messed up so much with a recent remake of a Robocop game on the original Xbox? The licence deserves so much more... but we at least do have the memories of the Spectrum version of the game, with its music which can only be described as FUCKING AMAZING. And for those who didn't know it first time round... here it is. Amazingly ahead of it time.
I'm a complete sucker for a top down racing game, and while there have been a few interesting ones knocking around in production this in particular looks like it could be something quite special.
Maybe its just my age, but I'm more excited by this than any of the recent full price releases in recent years.
Talking of being old, I enjoyed a screening of Robocop on TV last night. Its a great movie for so many reasons... the characters, the storyline, the 80's coolness, the social and political satire - but it made me wonder why they messed up so much with a recent remake of a Robocop game on the original Xbox? The licence deserves so much more... but we at least do have the memories of the Spectrum version of the game, with its music which can only be described as FUCKING AMAZING. And for those who didn't know it first time round... here it is. Amazingly ahead of it time.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Faults, give-aways & memory
It had to happen at some point, it seems.
My bashed up old Xbox 360 Core unit that I bought on the cheap pre-owned (stupidly) the day before the new Xbox 360 Slim was released in the UK has given up the ghost and suffered the same RROD fate as most the others in existence. Wonder whether it is the last one left to do it in the world????
That makes it 3 units knackered - my original 20GB unit that got replaced under warranty, the replacement which I unsuccessfully tried to do the X-Clamp fix on, and now this Core unit replacement. That is approx £300-400 worth of consoles just breaking one after another after a matter of months through no other reason that being played (and not even that much!)
Yet the sad thing is that this is entirely normal. Microsoft has obviously fixed things somewhat with the newer chipsets and internal set-ups on the later Arcade/Elite & Slim versions, but I can't help thinking that (if I still had it), my good old 1991 Sega Megadrive would work 100% of the time if I flicked it on now regardless of how I positioned it under my TV or how much I played on it. Its a similar situation to today's mobile phones. I have the charge the battery of my HTC Wildfire S every single night - whereas my old Samsung G600 easily lasted a week between charges - why is the battery so insufficient? How is it that newer technology is far less reliable??
Fortunately, my lovely lady wife is getting a new mobile phone contract which conveniently had the option of having an Xbox 360 Slim 4GB + Kinect thrown in for free. Talk about good timing. ;) I'm sure I'll get away with just buying her some wool or a crayon or something as a thankyou... if only.
The fact that the console (plus Kinect even though we have one already) is essentially free shows how the world has changed since the early and mid 90's when I was getting into gaming. Those were the days where the thought of a games console being given away for free so flippantly was frankly unheard of.
I remember the Japanese Sega Megadrive (there wasn't really a particularly great reason for getting a Japanese one in all honesty) my elder brother and I got for Christmas back in 1990 (along with Golden Axe & Whiprush!) must have been an epic purchase for my parents to make. Likewise, the Sega Saturn that we got later in 1995 launched with a retail price of £399 without any kind of bundled freebies. Of course, mobile phones & incentives for taking out contracts simply weren't around back then, but there is no way that a games console would be 'given away' with any equivalent thing.
With this conveniently-timed free upgrade from an old broken Core unit to a brand spanking new 4GB Slim comes an frustratingly awkward decision on how on earth I can transfer the contents of a full 20GB hard-drive onto a 4GB Slim memory. It shouldn't be anywhere near as complicated as it appears to be if external storage wasn't so strictly managed by Microsoft. Why should I be in the position of - having bought a load of games off XBLA and having all the games, saves, profiles, music stuck on one now unusable hard drive - now needing to possibly shell out money for a shitty official transfer cable just because Microsoft doesn't feel comfortable or reasonable enough to let gamers use any kind of modern-day external storage devices that they use in every other data transfer application in the world??? Yes, there was always the option of forking out another £200 on a 250GB Slim version, but why the bollocks should I buy the same console for a third time??? Surely in any other market I'd be already classed as a golden customer, thanked for my loyalty to Microsoft and given a free god damn unit as an apology for the shitty customer service me, like millions of others, have had to endure?
Again, it brings me back to wonder why the glory days of the trusty Sega Megadrive - with it's big, indestructible instantly-loading cartridges with in-built memory - have not been improved on in terms of reliability. Maybe I should just sack it all off and get a Megadrive instead? I probably would if it wasn't for me being a tight git and needing to pay for it!
My bashed up old Xbox 360 Core unit that I bought on the cheap pre-owned (stupidly) the day before the new Xbox 360 Slim was released in the UK has given up the ghost and suffered the same RROD fate as most the others in existence. Wonder whether it is the last one left to do it in the world????
That makes it 3 units knackered - my original 20GB unit that got replaced under warranty, the replacement which I unsuccessfully tried to do the X-Clamp fix on, and now this Core unit replacement. That is approx £300-400 worth of consoles just breaking one after another after a matter of months through no other reason that being played (and not even that much!)
Yet the sad thing is that this is entirely normal. Microsoft has obviously fixed things somewhat with the newer chipsets and internal set-ups on the later Arcade/Elite & Slim versions, but I can't help thinking that (if I still had it), my good old 1991 Sega Megadrive would work 100% of the time if I flicked it on now regardless of how I positioned it under my TV or how much I played on it. Its a similar situation to today's mobile phones. I have the charge the battery of my HTC Wildfire S every single night - whereas my old Samsung G600 easily lasted a week between charges - why is the battery so insufficient? How is it that newer technology is far less reliable??
Fortunately, my lovely lady wife is getting a new mobile phone contract which conveniently had the option of having an Xbox 360 Slim 4GB + Kinect thrown in for free. Talk about good timing. ;) I'm sure I'll get away with just buying her some wool or a crayon or something as a thankyou... if only.
The fact that the console (plus Kinect even though we have one already) is essentially free shows how the world has changed since the early and mid 90's when I was getting into gaming. Those were the days where the thought of a games console being given away for free so flippantly was frankly unheard of.
I remember the Japanese Sega Megadrive (there wasn't really a particularly great reason for getting a Japanese one in all honesty) my elder brother and I got for Christmas back in 1990 (along with Golden Axe & Whiprush!) must have been an epic purchase for my parents to make. Likewise, the Sega Saturn that we got later in 1995 launched with a retail price of £399 without any kind of bundled freebies. Of course, mobile phones & incentives for taking out contracts simply weren't around back then, but there is no way that a games console would be 'given away' with any equivalent thing.
With this conveniently-timed free upgrade from an old broken Core unit to a brand spanking new 4GB Slim comes an frustratingly awkward decision on how on earth I can transfer the contents of a full 20GB hard-drive onto a 4GB Slim memory. It shouldn't be anywhere near as complicated as it appears to be if external storage wasn't so strictly managed by Microsoft. Why should I be in the position of - having bought a load of games off XBLA and having all the games, saves, profiles, music stuck on one now unusable hard drive - now needing to possibly shell out money for a shitty official transfer cable just because Microsoft doesn't feel comfortable or reasonable enough to let gamers use any kind of modern-day external storage devices that they use in every other data transfer application in the world??? Yes, there was always the option of forking out another £200 on a 250GB Slim version, but why the bollocks should I buy the same console for a third time??? Surely in any other market I'd be already classed as a golden customer, thanked for my loyalty to Microsoft and given a free god damn unit as an apology for the shitty customer service me, like millions of others, have had to endure?
Again, it brings me back to wonder why the glory days of the trusty Sega Megadrive - with it's big, indestructible instantly-loading cartridges with in-built memory - have not been improved on in terms of reliability. Maybe I should just sack it all off and get a Megadrive instead? I probably would if it wasn't for me being a tight git and needing to pay for it!
Thursday, 13 October 2011
To be this good takes Sega ages
Like a huge mother hen, Sega has been sat on its lovely eggs, keeping them warm until they're ready to hatch.
Following up the recent neat Renegade Ops release, they have now unleashed the beasts of Treasure's Guardian Heroes AND Daytona USA!!!! - two genuine gaming classics - onto our laps. Its quite overwhelming, and does this signal the start of a real change in attitude from the company? Have they realised XBLA and PSN are too good an opportunity to miss???
We've all known that they have spammed the Sonic brand to the point of breakage over the last few years, and after the insipid release of the Dreamcast Collection I thought there was no way back for them. But after downloading and really enjoying the joys are Guardian Heroes last night, which has been updated and revitalised with loving care for a change, there is real hope for bringing the Sega love back into the world.
Its clear that they have suddenly started to listen to what their fans actually want. Daytona USA will be a conversion of the arcade game, not the inferior Dreamcast version. It means a fair bit more time and effort from them, but its going to make a lot of gamers very happy.
The mind now boggles as to what other old arcade games or Saturn releases they may already be working on.... Panzer Dragoon series? Dragon Force? Scud Race? Burning Rangers?
Maybe if we all ask nicely it will happen...
We've all known that they have spammed the Sonic brand to the point of breakage over the last few years, and after the insipid release of the Dreamcast Collection I thought there was no way back for them. But after downloading and really enjoying the joys are Guardian Heroes last night, which has been updated and revitalised with loving care for a change, there is real hope for bringing the Sega love back into the world.
Its clear that they have suddenly started to listen to what their fans actually want. Daytona USA will be a conversion of the arcade game, not the inferior Dreamcast version. It means a fair bit more time and effort from them, but its going to make a lot of gamers very happy.
The mind now boggles as to what other old arcade games or Saturn releases they may already be working on.... Panzer Dragoon series? Dragon Force? Scud Race? Burning Rangers?
Maybe if we all ask nicely it will happen...
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
More-tal Demo Generosity
Wow - long time no blog. And just look at how naff that title is! I've clearly gone a bit wierd.
But, just like Eminem, now I'm back with a brand new rap. Or more accurately, a brand new post.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the new demo for Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection up on XBLA last night. Never one to miss an opportunity to re-live my childhood, a few minutes later the demo is downloaded and I'm off playing.
In a previous post I have raised my concerns over the generosity of some Indie developers in how much they show on a demo. While this Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is a standard XBLA release, it seems the developers have forgotten about why a lot of people played & enjoyed Mortal Kombat - the fatalities.
The demo gives the player just 1 match-up on all of the 3 Mortal Kombat games (1, 2 and Ultimate 3), but all characters are available from the off. Therefore, with the relatively quick restart of fights it is completely possible to spend a fair bit of time just running through each of the characters on each of the games messing about doing the special moves and fatalities, babalities, animalities or whateveralities to your heart's content.
For me, thats plenty entertainment for a game that was only ever going to be a quick blast. No need to buy!
However, given I've got over 900 MSP burning a virtual hole in my virtual Xbox points wallet, I might actually invest a chunk in this decent value collection. Even if it is just to perv on the woefully pixelated Sonya, Mileena and Kitana and their lovely lycra outfits... which is unfortunately not quite as hi-res as this. Oh well.
But, just like Eminem, now I'm back with a brand new rap. Or more accurately, a brand new post.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the new demo for Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection up on XBLA last night. Never one to miss an opportunity to re-live my childhood, a few minutes later the demo is downloaded and I'm off playing.
In a previous post I have raised my concerns over the generosity of some Indie developers in how much they show on a demo. While this Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is a standard XBLA release, it seems the developers have forgotten about why a lot of people played & enjoyed Mortal Kombat - the fatalities.
The demo gives the player just 1 match-up on all of the 3 Mortal Kombat games (1, 2 and Ultimate 3), but all characters are available from the off. Therefore, with the relatively quick restart of fights it is completely possible to spend a fair bit of time just running through each of the characters on each of the games messing about doing the special moves and fatalities, babalities, animalities or whateveralities to your heart's content.
For me, thats plenty entertainment for a game that was only ever going to be a quick blast. No need to buy!
However, given I've got over 900 MSP burning a virtual hole in my virtual Xbox points wallet, I might actually invest a chunk in this decent value collection. Even if it is just to perv on the woefully pixelated Sonya, Mileena and Kitana and their lovely lycra outfits... which is unfortunately not quite as hi-res as this. Oh well.
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