Cyber Monday xbla deals

What the hell is this 'cyber monday' all about anyway?

Well, whatever, there are a few (very few) good deals on xbla. These four are on majornelsons page, and I would buy three out of the four. 'Dungeons & Dragons Anything' doesn't interest me. These are today only, although probably today only by US time, so don't dally.

Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection was 800 now 400.
Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale was 1200 now 600
Beyond Good & Evil was 800 now 240 to be this good takes ages must buy!
Risk Factions was 800 now 200

I already own Risk Factions (pretty decent, 4 players on one console or on live, a good Risk incarnation and the 'factions' mode and goal games are interesting). I just bought Beyond Good & Evil (thanks for making it so easy for me to spend money, xbox.com!) because it's the most talked up game I've never played. Mortal Kombat is enticing, depends on my ms points balance.

Which probably means I won't get it. I'm mighty pissed that I missed Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for 320 points on Friday. But then I probably wouldn't have bought BGAE which I'm sure will be more fulfilling.

Enjoy, xboxers. I don't know about any offers for the psn network, I don't really care. Sorry x

Ben Whishaw to play Q in new Bond

Normally I wouldn't really consider this sort of thing blogworthy, but Ben Whishaw is Pingu from Nathan Barley! That's great! I can see it now, James Bond skulks into the lab with a camcorder and sneaks up behind him, then shocks his testicles with his Omega Seamaster and uploads it straight to trashbat.co.ck



Perhaps not, in which case just congratulations to the lad I suppose.

news.bbc.co.uk // nathan barley (you must watch this!)

No time to explain

This game is mental. And awesome. Actually I have plenty of time to explain (huhu) but I just don't know how to. You jump about whilst firing off a ridiculous jetpack stroke raygun thingy, and fly around the screen like a loon whilst trying to dispatch baddies and impale on the ceiling or wall.

Watch some clips on youtube to get a feel for the game since there's no demo before you splash out the 10 bucks, but I'd say it's worth it. Plus you get the sequel for free when it comes out, which I have to imagine being a more polished and yet more insane version of this one which can only be a good thing.

(ten)

It's fun. Review here @ gamingdaily.co.uk
Buy it with this link and I get some baked beans money. I wouldn't steer you wrong, you know it.

Gamesalad adds Android publishing

Gamesalad, the quickly-create-mostly-naff-but-occasionally-quite-good-games tool, has expanded it's reach from just fruity devices to android based ones too. If you've never heard of it, it's a mac only affair and uses drag and drop graphics combined with simple (although capable of reasonably complex) if/and/or type statements to create games. Previously these could be exported to flash or published to iOS devices, and now Android users can 'benefit' from the output too.

If you have a mac, it's certainly a bit of fun. Don't think it'll be easy though, once you get settled in you will soon realise that to make anything half decent is going to be a lot of work.

I must recommend you give SPACE PANDA a try. It's so amazingly shit, it's amazing. And I mean that in a good way, in case you're the person who wrote it. Strawb'riiiiiiiiiiiies!

space panda @ gamesalad.com

Good Old Games, most deserved name ever?

So I may be years behind, but I finally signed up to Good Old Games and what can I say. The name is no misnomer, the site is jam packed with good, mostly old, games. Better yet, as soon as you sign up you get five titles for nowt...
Lure of the Temptress - good.
Tyrian 2000 - amazing.
Beneath a Steel Sky - awesome (but I never finished it!)
Teen Agent - um no idea sorry.
Ultima IV - never played any of these (for shame!)
Dragonsphere - *shrug*.

So anyway I signed up in order to purchase Commandos, a game I remember spending many an hour struggling with. For $6 (about £4, give or take) I couldn't justify pirating it. Not that I ever would. I'm lying.

So yeah. Thought I'd share that nugget of useless information in the hope it might not be useless and might entice you to check out their catalogue. There's some gold in there, such as Beyond Good and Evil, a game which almost perpetually topped the chart of 'games you must play' in the sadly defunct PCZone magazine, a suggestion I have always meant to follow. I think it's $10, so I might have to save up my pocket money...

Oh PS they just signed up EA, so hopefully some epic games to come. Bioforge anyone?

(lol at their Polish-ness)

Gigabyte MA785GMT - UD2h vs. OCZ obsidian RAM

Geeky post today. Today? As if the posts are usually about my sophisticated exploits at celebrity parties.

I stole this from the internet, hope the owner doesn't mind.

This is the tale of my annoying experience with a Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard (rev 3.3) and some 'cheap' OCZ ddr3 memory. The machine would repeatedly crash to BSOD (blue screen of death) with various reasons suggested by the system. Having spent many an hour checking for software conflicts, memory leaks, virii, spyware etc my research indicated that many motherboards default to a ddr3 voltage of 1.5V. A brief look at the OCZ ram showed a running voltage of 1.65V (greedy little sods).

Changing the voltage in the BIOS is a pretty easy affair (in the M.I.T. menu under memory voltage) and the results seem conclusive - it hasn't crashed after several 3dmark run throughs (to stress the system).

Happy days. Hope this might help someone out.

Newsflash: gaming in the future takes effort

This chap may have foreseen the future with his jury-rigged wiimote/kinect setup. Yes it's pretty impressive but it's not too far from the realms of possibility so I suspect it's on the level.



Very nice. It's just such a shame that games are becoming so bloody tiring to play - the next thing to add is clearly running on the spot like a lemon to make your in game character run (ever see the weird treadmill - world of warcraft experiment? Look it up...) The whole joy of gaming is sinking into the sofa while you deftly shoot the faces off hundreds of enemies with nothing more than the push of a few buttons.

demize2010 @ youtube.com

Total War: Shogun II minimum specs announced!

Yes Total War: Shogun II, the sequel to Shogun: Total War (what happened there?), is coming soon!



Is that frakking gorgeous or what?
This is the computer you need to play it:

Minimum Specs (Required for playing Total War: Shogun 2):
- 2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor / 2.6 GHz Intel Single Core processor , or AMD equivalent (with SSE2)
- 1GB RAM (XP), 2GB RAM (Vista / Windows7)
- 256 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card (shader model 3)
- 1024x768 minimum screen resolution
- 20GB free hard disk space

Recommended Specs (Recommended for optimum game play of Total War: Shogun 2):
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™i5 processor (or greater), or AMD equivalent
- 2GB RAM (XP), 4GB RAM (Vista / Windows7)
- AMD Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series graphics cards or equivalent DirectX 11 compatible graphics card
- 1280x1024 minimum screen resolution
- 20GB free hard disk space

Ouch.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 pushes forward the hugely successful Total War series by perfecting the features from previous games such as full 3D land and naval battles and a detailed campaign map, whilst adding an exciting new multiplayer experience. Total War: SHOGUN 2 releases in March 2011.

Hm. As we all know, minimum specs don't work and recommended specs get you a just about playable experience, so I'm thinking save up for an i7 peeps.



Interestingly these are the specs you needed (or indeed need) to play Total War: Shogun. The first one.

MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS
Pentium MMX or AMD K6-2 233MHz Processor
64MB RAM
4X CD-ROM Drive
650MB Hard Disk Space
8MB Video Card
Sound Card
DirectX 8.0

RECOMMENDED
Pentium II 300MHz Processor
128MB RAM
8X CD-ROM Drive
1.65 GB Hard Disk Space
32MB Direct3D compatible 3D Accelerated Video Card
3D ACCELERATED MODE
16MB 3D Accelerated Video Card
Compatible Cards: nVidia GeForce 2, nVidia GeForce 256, nVidia Riva TNT2, nVidia Riva TNT, ATI Radeon, 3Dfx Voodoo5, Voodoo3, Voodoo Banshee, Matrox MGA-G450, Matrox MGA-G400

MULTIPLAYER SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
33.6Kbps Modem
TCP/IP compliant Network

I doubt I'm the only person who has thrown away computers five times as good as that. What a waste. You can buy the game for about £3, it's still an AMAZING game and it might even work under Windows 7 if you're very lucky.

Ah Voodoo Banshee's, TNT2s... those were the days!

sega.co.uk
allgame.com

Big upcoming games of 2011

This happy fun time looking site has amassed what it believes to be a list of the 20 most anticipated games of 2011 and presented them on a convenient single page for your perusal. Thank's guys!

For example:
1. BRINK
6. DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION
11. TDU 2
16. MAX PAYNE 3

Certainly some big games in the list.

Mortal Kombat 9 should provide some much needed ridiculous violence.

Can't help but notice the lack of a little independent title from a small games developer called Epic; I believe it's the third in their largely overlooked but cult classic 'Gears of War' series...

gamesreviews2010.com

Console showdown 2010... and the winner is...

Wow on that first page I thought they had declared the Wii the winner...

Err, not that they might not do that on the last page!
(Yeah... they don't).

Welcome to IGN's Console Showdown for 2010. What's it all about? Well, each year we pit the games available for each system in a battle royale to determine which system had the best line-up for the year. It's not about hardware or services, it's about games and games alone. And guess what? On that basis, the PlayStation 3 has won the last two years. Can it pick up three Console Showdown titles in a row?

uk.xbox360.ign.com