Jake "OrangeGoblin"
July 4th, 2009 No Comments »

Is Nintendo’s runaway success starting to slow down? Sales figures released at the Annual General Meeting of The GAME Group suggest this could be the case.

The statistics show that from the start of February to June 27 this year, the Wii sold 300,000 units whilst the Xbox 360 sold 600,000. The data was released by GfK ChartTrack which cover all retailers, not just GAME, so this represents the full UK market.

Whilst the Wii is still well ahead on total sales (5.4 million versus 3.9 million) these latest figures indicate that consumers may be turning away from Nintendo. In these tough economic times, perhaps the Wii simply does not represent value for money.

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John "wardrox"
July 4th, 2009 4 Comments »

How much is $20 worth to you? Think of all that crap you have spent $20 on, yeah, quite a lot right? Well, waste some on this. The money pays for clean water, something we all take very much for granted, in areas where they don’t have any.

I’m assuming a fair number of people who have seen this post have probably stopped reading now, what with the realisation this post is about some charity, or something. Don’t worry, that’s cool. This is a videogame website and posts like this really don’t belong here. I just thought you lot, the regular readers, might have your interests tippled.

However, I don’t want to come across as one of those pushy types being all up in your shizzle et cet eh ra, so feel free to stop reading now. Now. NOW! Hmm, can’t get rid of you eh? Ah well, go give charity: water $20. Realistically, it’s not going to break the bank is it? I just thought it was worth a post on this fine Saturday morning.

Most of us have never really been thirsty. We’ve never had to leave our houses and walk 5 miles to fetch water. We simply turn on the tap, and water comes out. Clean.

Yet more than 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have clean water. It’s hard to imagine what a billion people looks like really, but one in six might be easier. One in six people in our world don’t have access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can’t imagine going 12 hours without.

Sam "verygoodyear"
July 3rd, 2009 5 Comments »

You know the classic 70s shoot-rocks-and-occasionally-an-alien game? Well some bright spark has thought that it would be a good idea to make a movie out if it. A lesser writer would have just shot himself, blood and brains all over the monitor, but just for you I’ll continue. For those of you who haven’t played the game, it’s essentially a black screen and some white asteroids. And that’s it.

There’s no plot, story arc, protagonist, antagonist, hero, heroine, or badguy. Yet it is being made into a film. Mathew Lopez is set to write the story (!?!?!?!?) and Lorenzo di Bonaventura is set to produce. What make this even more funny is that 4, count ‘em, 4 studios were bidding to grab the licence, with Universal Pictures finally clinching it.

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John "wardrox"
July 3rd, 2009 1 Comment »

Too hard to be fun
Clumsy swinging into death
I wish I could jump

John "wardrox"
July 3rd, 2009 1 Comment »

Come on, it’s not like you already pay them enough money for a service that should probably be free in the first place is it? In news sure to please greedy advertising companies; Microsoft have been boasting about how they will soon be allowing Silverlight adverts on the Xbox.

MediaPost report that the adverts will not only be able to play video in HD but also play 5.1 surround sound, just to make sure whatever shitty product is being advertised is drilled into your head before you actually play your games.

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Phil Doherty "Philbart999"
July 3rd, 2009 3 Comments »

In an industry that is over-run with hyperbole, very few games actually deserve the hype their publisher’s marketing teams work to build and perpetuate.  Burnout Paradise, since January 2008, has been one of the few games that not only has lived up to the hype  of being one of the best arcade racers of all time, but has also been part of changing the console gaming landscape in terms of downloadable content (DLC).

The release of the first of the free content, named “Cagney Pack” in 2008 contained new vehicles, new challenges, and new Freeburn Challenges that were quite substantial. The “Bikes Pack” that followed, virtually gave us a free motorcycle game.  And all along the way we got music updates and patches that proved Criterion’s commitment to the franchise.  For an initial outlay of approximately $60.00 Burnout Paradise just kept getting better and better.  While Burnout fans rejoiced over Criterion’s apparent self-destructive commitment to giving us all the free stuff we could ever need, some of us did start to wonder when the party was going to end.

And end it did.  The early packs of paid DLC came in the form of cursed little micro-transactions for specific vehicles, then came the Party Pack, and then the Ultimate Box that was launched with the PC release of Burnout Paradise.  Most recently, Criterion took what may be a first step towards expanding on not just, the feature set but also the playable area of Paradise City in the form of “Big Surf Island.”

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John "wardrox"
July 3rd, 2009 No Comments »

Thirty? That seems like a lot. You know what else seem like a lot? The collective volume of sweat myself, Gandy and NJ (but not Brandon because America has more freedom) excreted during this week’s show. As well as the weather, we also spoke about;

• The ending to Klonoa (spoiler warning)
• Starcraft II’s lack of LAN and how great it is
• The Xbox 360 is getting more adverts, good job we don’t pay for it
• Microsoft hates community games

As always if you like the show, please do help spread the word. If you don’t like the show, let us know why and we can pay you vast sums of money to like us.

MP3, iTunes (review us here), PodFeed, Podcast.com, Digital Podcast, Any other RSS

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Sam "verygoodyear"
July 2nd, 2009 3 Comments »

Eagerly waiting for Activision’s latest money grabbing scheme? Can’t contain yourself over the “Wow! I’m a DJ, look at me spin these dex!!” extravaganza? Just want some friends? Thought so. Well, if you were thinking about buying the upcoming “game” DJ Hero, I’ve got some bad news for you, it seems the goliath publisher hates you. Lots.

The game, which is due for release this November, looks to be more expensive in the UK than it will be in America. The UK version will ship with the game, plus the crappy turntable for around £107.99, yet the US version will have a retail of $120 that’s around £70 in GBP, quite a chunk.

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Matthew "MJP"
July 2nd, 2009 5 Comments »

The original Ninja Gaiden 2 was a bloody game. Slicing various body parts off your enemies resulted in a satisfactory red fountain that painted the surrounding environment. However, in the upcoming PS3 remake those wonderful blood fountains have been replaced with a sparkling blue glow. GamesRadar questioned the game’s director and producer, Yosuke Hayashi, about this change and he explained that:

Each game has its own concept and with Ninja Gaiden 2, the focus was on extreme violence. But with Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, we really questioned whether violence is a necessity for a game, so we decided to move away from that trend. So the violence ‘approach’ is not the way we approached the development of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.

Is violence a necessity for a game? When your game is Ninja Gaiden then yes, yes it bloody is. Apparently the answer that Team Ninja came up with was “no” though I do not know why or how they came to that conclusion. This sudden decision that Ninja Gaiden needs less blood is an odd one.

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Francis "njsykora"
July 2nd, 2009 2 Comments »

When OnLive was unveiled to the gaming press it instantly solved every imaginable problem with PC gaming, cured prostate cancer and gave every woman in the world a simultanious orgasm. Though that may have just been the combined forces of Adam Sessler and Brian Crecente. Naturally there were people who gazed in awe at the Crysis humbling system and hastily announced that they too were working on a videogame streaming service.

Fast forward a few months and Dave Perry’s weeaboo-tastic sounding Gaikai has finally been demoed in the form of an 11 minute video of the service running the likes of LEGO Star Wars 2 and Need for Speed ProStreet. Using a server 800 miles away with a 21ms ping Perry also shows off Spore and Mario Kart 64, which hilariously drowns out him talking. What is never mentioned however is publisher support. By his own admission the version of Spore being run is a store bought box copy installed on the server, whereas Mario Kart 64 is running on an emulator. With OnLive boasting lots of publisher support this is looking like the stumbling block for Gaikai.

Right now though that seems to be the only problem, while obviously we only have Perry’s word for the fact that the games were running through the service on his home computer the technology seems solid enough. Perry has promised a full live demo of the flash-based tech at the Develop conference in Brighton later this month and if that works out, maybe his promise of playing full games through Facebook may become a reality. I do have one question though, does anyone here want to play Spore or WoW through Flash?

You can check out the Gaikai demo through David Perry’s site. Also worth a check for the hilarious “About DP” page.

Via: Eurogamer

Brandon "RavenSan"
July 1st, 2009 14 Comments »

Can’t wait for Starcraft II? Me either. However one of my favorite features, the option to LAN a game, won’t be supported. Blizzard tells IncGamers that “we will not support it.” Joystiq got a bit more of an explination from Blizzard PR man Bob Colayco.

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Phil Doherty "Philbart999"
June 30th, 2009 No Comments »

WiiWare’s shmupified,
Shootsy platformer is cute,
But misses the mark.

Erik "Nerdfit"
June 30th, 2009 6 Comments »

It’s been a while kids, but I have returned from a long hiatus of griefing second life tards and yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

This week’s TAoG is going old old school to tabletop pen and paper. Why? Well for a serious answer; pen and paper games set the world for the video game RPGs we play today. So how can you grief a pen and paper game?

I rerolled as a wookie, tore off some interns arms and dual weilded spinal cords before hacking my way out of the prison. That entire session was basically me greifing the new GM, he spent the entire time with his head in his hands.

It’s a blast.

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John "wardrox"
June 29th, 2009 11 Comments »

This place is awesome. What started less than a year ago as a place for me to vent my anger and frustration has turned not just into a widely read video-game blog, but also a sign that all is not lost. The past few years has seen the decline in quality journalism, timely, but not rushed, reporting and press/industry relationships that work for the benefit of the reader. Whilst this place is near insignificant in the face of the opposition, it acts a sign that at least some people are a bit pissed off.

This site has seen huge growth in just the last few months and in the more recent weeks you will likely have noticed several new faces appear. To help introduce them, as well as remind you of the more established ones, here is a full run down of the current NG staff. So sexy.

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Matthew "MJP"
June 29th, 2009 8 Comments »

Prototype is an open world action game, there seems to be a lot of that going around lately. You play as generic white American male, Alex Mercer, who gets infected with a virus that gives him all kinds of awesome powers (which is just how viruses work in real life). Mercer is essentially a best-of compilation of various Marvel superheroes; Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, Mystique and probably a few others that someone with more comic book knowledge would recognise.

As Mercer, you want revenge against whoever gave you all these powers, because for some reason you aren’t happy about it. Vengeance means killing things and killing things means progressing through a bunch of linear story missions and side activities that are sprinkled over your map of open world Manhattan.

If you’ve played any other open world action games, especially those with superheroes, then you know what to expect. It’s standard open world design. You run around the city, do story missions, upgrade your abilities, kill people, and participate in side activities for extra experience points. The only somewhat unique aspect comes from controlling Mercer himself but everything else plays out just like any other open world game. It’s uninspiring to say the least.

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