14/05/2008
It’s Wednesday, which means a new Zero Punctuation is available for our viewing pleasure. This week Yahtzee is espousing the virtues and deriding the foibles of Rockstar’s most recent installment of the celebrated Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 4, with his usual celerity.
He makes some good points, the game is hillariously fun to mess about in, its lauded “sandbox” world means you can bimble around to your heart’s content without ever really getting anywhere, but still ending up with a sense of achievement.
The game is not without it’s issues however, for me the most notable is the awful save system when you are doing the missions. The main problem is that the missions are often preceeded with a long, drawn out expositionary element, where you have to drive accross the city without attracting the attention of the errant LCPD, sometimes following gang bangers or drug dealers who drive like a senile old grandparent. Once you arrive at your destination, you then usually have to face a fast paced gun battle of some description, which often ends up with you waking up outside a hospital to find some kind doctor has half-hitched a sum of cash that could keep the NHS going for a decade, and a mocking text message asking you if you’d like to repeat the entire experience, exposition and all.
This is probably the single most frustrating gameplay element I’ve encountered this side of the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2. Several times I have contemplated defenestrating my XBox due to this, and it is almost responsible for me giving up on the game entirely. The ability to save when and where you want to would, in my mind, make the game far more eminently playable.
He does take issue with the game’s somewhat subdued colour pallet. But I don’t think it really detracts from it as much as he seems to believe. Like most cities, New York is a dirty, swrawling mass of dull grey buildings, and I feel that this is reflected well.
7/05/2008
iD software today announced that they were working on the 4th sequel in their legendary Doom series, commonly considered to be one of the most influential series of games of all time.
They’re still in the process of hiring developers for it at the moment, so the game itself will still be a long way off. But here’s hoping it’s at least as good as Doom 3 was.
1/05/2008
NaturalMotion’s europhoria seems a fairly funky idea. Kind of like intelligent rag dolls, saving you the need to hire expensive motion capture equipment, or rely on keyframe animation, giving you a slightly different result each time. The demo is pretty fun too.
It’s currently being used in a couple of recent games, including the much hyped GTA IV.
15/04/2008
CentralanUK has been running high quality, yet fun LAN gaming events in the UK Midlands for 6 years, attracting participants from across the UK for its unique blend of fun gaming, touranaments and socialising with fellow gamers.
The next event is from 23rd - 26th May and will be a full on gaming frag fest!
read more | digg story
10/12/2007
It seems the PlayStation 3’s Cell processor really is starting to come into its own. Not as a gaming CPU but rather in all sorts of high usage applications such as Folding and Cryptography. The processor apparently gives performance up to 100 times that of standard PC CPUs, not surprising really when you consider that the Cell was originally destined to be doing the graphics for the PS3 and other GPU based systems seem to be VERY good at this sort of thing too.
PlayStation 3 Password Cracking
1/11/2007
Dr Gonzo interviews the gaming team, Reason
read more | digg story
9/10/2007
Mark Rein talks about the release of the UT3 demo hopefully within the next 2 weeks
read more | digg story
27/07/2007
I’ve been attending the Multiplay i-series for years now, both as a punter and as staff. I’ve seen it go from strength to strength but it looks like i31 will be in a different league entirely. They’ve dedicated an entire floor to exhibitor stands, making it a true festival of gaming. Of course there’s the usual huge BYOC LAN and social activities, but this addition brings back a proper computer expo to the UK, something we’ve lacked since the death of ECTS.
read more | digg story
31/12/2006
I’ve been playing Trackmania United for a few days now, and despite initially being somewhat unimpressed with the game, I’ve quickly come to love it. However, I’ve noticed that the logo for the game doesn’t seem to say United, the blocks have been badly arranged and appear to say Untied instead. Maybe this is some big in-joke amongst Nadeo, or perhaps it’s just something they missed. Either way it seems strange, given the amount that’s spent on marketing games thesedays.
22/11/2006
I’ve moved this into it’s own page now, to avoid it getting lost over time.