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eets. Hunger. It's Emotional. Review

GideonB — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:45:09 GMT

Eets is an indie game featured on Steam for $10 or with the Best of the Underground Pack $20. I picked this up with that pack which inclues Geometry Wars, Gumboy and Rag Doll Kung Fu. This is the game that really stands out due to its plain cuteness (in video when the emotion shows its really really cute) and my idea of fun.
The game has 2D graphics which look really modern/retro kind of feel. The animation is slick (as seen from the youtube video above) and the sound effects are excellcent. The game feels finished and even with the patches probably given to it, the game feels finished regardless. It has a puzzle maker which will probably make anyone who likes created content happy because its mad for content. You can upload your levels to the web. There is a 360 version, but the created levels aren't uploaded to the web. Instead they get an exclusive mini-game and downloadble content which are priced at 200 points each. But what does this lemmings like game set apart from the crowd. It's unique, its fun and it just has so much charm. I can give this game a recommendation to anyone who has a 360 or PC. For �5 its a great game. So you might be thinking does this game get my retarded seal of approval? Yes, yes it does.

EA's �20000 Mercenaries giveaway

Granite — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:13:26 GMT

...as long as you're using it to buy petrol.

This is just plain awesome:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7599639.stm

In short, EA brings parts of London to a standstill by takign over a pertol station and giving away �20000 worth of petrol to promote Mercenaries 2. That'll get them some attention!

For our American friends, to give you some idea, we pay about �40 to fill a small car with petrol, and as you'd expect the price (and the tax levied on it) is a hell of a political hot potato. EA have shown some great brains and flare by tapping in to a nationwide news story and using it to promote a game, without referencing a killing spree on "Ban this sick filth". Nice work guys.

Though I'm sure if he's still around, JT will probably manage to twist it somehow. Probably it's encouraging kids to drive recklessly, or make molotov cocktails or something....

Spore Review (Pt 2)

Granite — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:24:30 GMT

Civilisation Stage

After conquering \ assimilating all the other tribes, you found your first city. This is definitely the point at which you feel your options starting to expand. You're now in control of your city, and can design buildings and vehicles in their own creators. Placing homes, factories and entertainment within the city carefully ensures a prosperous and happy city. You're mobile units seek out other civilisations and capture natural resources in the form of spice geysers, bringing you more money.
Initially you'll only have one way of interacting with other civilisations (in my case it was military conquest, again) but once you've captured their city and added their biological and technological distinctiveness to our own, you'll open up the trade and religious conquest options. Religion didn't seem to work very well for me (my handily designed religious aircraft, equipped with harpsichords of brainwashing, fly over enemy cities playing soothing music, and promptly get blown to shreds without any notable effect), but trade is wonderfully easy. Establish reasonable relations with a city (bribe if you need to), then propose a trade route, and get your trade cars, boats or planes scooting back and forth with trade items. You'll make money on every trade, and after a little while the other city will be so in debt to you can buy it and add it to your empire! You can even use trade craft to bribe workers at spice geysers to transfer them to your side.
Combat could be better though. You just get one military craft of each type (land, sea and air), and attach the most powerful weapon in the creation screen. They don't seem to have any downside, so I'm not sure why you'd bother with the weaker ones, other than aesthetics. Land, sea and air units at least do have a difference in price and durability though. For the most part, combat is just building a load of units and throw them at the enemy. Whoever has more wins, as you can't customise much.
As a note, for some reason while in every stage (except cell) you can see what your adversaries think of you, this is the only stage at which you can see why they think that. Oddly, it's removed at the Space Stage, at least so far.
Space Stage
Conquer the whole planet, design your spaceship and bang, you�re off to the Space Stage. Ok, this is where things really expand. I fully admit I haven't finished this section yet. I haven't even got more than a few parsecs from home. The space stage is very much the meat of the game. It plays like an odd combination of Master of Orion and Elite. A lot of things carry over from the Civilisation stage, such as diplomacy with other empires, and establishing trade routes. Once you make a few friends you can even add their ships to your fleet in a call back to the pack function on the Creature stage. But now you can really start messing around with things. You can establish colonies, terraform planets to make them more habitable (and therefore more profitable), trade spice with your neighbors, buy upgrades for your ship, customise your colonies, attack other empires, fight of pirates, defend your enemies, abduct plants, animals and people, uplift primitives, and probably more I haven't seen yet.
Having got here, it now feels like the rest of the game was a warm up. While with those sections I had most of it figured out on 5-10 minutes, I've been at the Space Stage for three hours and have a tiny fraction of the equipment available. I've got a couple of allies, but there's a hell of a lot of galaxy to see yet. Flying the spaceship itself is a lot of fun, and picking on the creatures that used to bully you with your orbital laser of doom is great fun. You can also suck them up in to the air and then drop them (or if you're particularly sadistic, zipping over to an airless volcanic world and beaming them out of the cargo bay to watch them explode). If there's one problem with this stage, it's that both your people and your allies appear to be totally inept. You can ask them for a mission, which you accept or reject on your own terms. This improves your relations, and nets you some cash, great. On the other hand, once your friends, you appear to be on permanent speed dial for any little problem from all of your allies. Planet under attack? Call Granite. Infected creatures destablising your ecosystem? Call Granite. Lost your car keys down the back of the couch? Call Granite. The real kicker is that these involuntary missions all have a time limit, or Bad Stuff will happen, and you don't even get paid when you save their civilisation from certain collapse. Whenever one comes up, you've got to drop what you're doing and head over; otherwise they'll get pissed with you. The other annoyance is that, while it seems other empires will expand by themselves, yours wont' do anything without your direct intervention, which considering the buggers charge you more for damn near everything than your allies just cements my opinion of them as total idiots.
In General:
It sounds like I'm pretty down on the game above, but that's not true. I'm enjoying it immensely; I just thought I'd cover the negatives that haven't been mentioned in the hype. The key thing is that every stage short of the Space Stage is very simplistic, taken individually. What breaking it down by sections doesn't do however, is convey the wonderful sense of persistence in the game, and the joy of seeing familiar things at all stages. Defend one of your planets at the Space stage, for instance, and the aircraft you built in the Civilisation stages swarm out of your colony to help you. When you hit the tribal stage, you'll notice that the members of your pack from the creature stage are now running around your village as pets. Running around as a creature, a massive spaceship looms overhead and begins abducting creatures. Later on in the game, you realise that it was one of the ships of your friendly religious neighbors, the Time Flies. The sense of every part of the game being connected is great, even if the individual sections are quite a bit below par. You also get to create a race that at least looks distinctly yours in every way, even if the abilities are quite generic. As the early release of the creature creator proved, the custom design features are a big draw, and people can make damned near anything using it (though getting my arse handed to me by a race of Pokemon was slightly embarrassing).
All in all, the best recommendation is this. I played the game 'till 3AM. I'm at work writing about it. I'm thinking about going home to play it in my lunch hour. Simplistic it may be, but it's thoroughly captivating.

Spore Review (Pt1)

Granite — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:24:03 GMT

Well, thanks to GAME delivering my copy early, I got to play Spore most of yesterday evening (apart from one brief interlude where the wife insisted I play Ratchet can Clank. Married life is such a chore). So, lets give a quick run down of the stages:

Cell Stage

Quite fun, but very short. You'll be through it in 20 minutes tops. It's a good introduction to the game and the concepts, but after a reply, you begin to notice how limited it is. While theoretically you can customise your creature anyway you like, there are very few options at this level. Initially you pick herbivore or carnivore, and then seek out your chosen food source, to gain DNA, to get bigger and evolve more parts. However in order to get those parts, you need to either attack other creatures (or potentially swoop in after someone else does), or break open meteor fragments. In three playthroughs of this section, I've only seen one meteor fragment. As result, even as a herbivore you end up attacking other creature purely to get upgrades.

On top of this, there are a very limited number of parts. You can either bite (if you've got a carnivore mouth) Stab (if you've got a spike), or spit acid (which never worked for me at all). There's also electrocution, but that only works defensively, and you can't kill anything defensively as everything runs when it gets low on health. So "combat" in this stage generally involves ramming the enemy where it doesn't have spikes. Fun to start with, and the changes in scale when you evolve are very cool. Stuff in the background that earlier ignored you as too small suddenly comes in to focus and regards you as a decent snack. All in all, it's well done, but its very simple and you'll exhaust all the options quickly, but it is the shortest part of the game.

Creature Stage

This is essentially what you've been working on if you've been playing with the creature creator. At this stage you�re an animal on land, and your goal is to evolve your brain. You do this by either making friends with other creatures, or making them extinct. Each time you do either, you get more DNA to evolve your creature and a new part. You can also find new parts by searching corpses and eggs that are dotted about the landscape. This is where the creator starts to shine, as there are far more options to play with. As you evolve you can also add members to your pack, who will follow you around and assist you. This is the point where I got a bit stumped, even on the easy difficulty. The game misses two important basic points here during the tutorial. One is that it never makes it clear that you can recruit your own creatures in to your pack; it only talks about allied creatures. If you came out of the tide pool as a carnivore you've got very poor social skills so you may not have any allies. It also never mentions that in addition to helping you fight, members of your pack help you socialise. Not knowing these facts, it felt like the whole socialising aspect was locked off.

Another problem is that for a game all about choice, the game seems to start forcing you down a certain path at this point. On my first play, I came out as a carnivore. As a result, the game kept giving me parts suitable for a carnivore, bigger teeth, more spikes, better armour etc. Now part allocation is random to an extent, but it certainly seems to equip you based on your past behavior, which means it's very difficult to change tack. This proceeds through the rest of the game, as you get special abilities at the start of each stage depending on what you were doing previously, and to make use of them you have to take a certain path. If you find yourself on an aggressive path, it's difficulty to change course (though I did manage it eventually).

Another limitation is actually the creature creator itself. Annoyingly all the parts have ratings for speed, jump, bite, sing etc. and if you want to be successful, you need the parts that are most effective. This means that you're limited to a couple of parts at each level. The other thing is that these ratings are not cumulative, even though you pay for each part. Say for example you've got legs with a speed of 2, and you attach three pairs of them to your creature, paying separately for each pair. You speed still remains at 2, even though you paid three times as much as if you'd created a biped. Again, the mechanics artificially limit the choices available.

Tribal Stage

At this point you've evolved to sentience and control a tribe in an RTS style, which grows as you progress. Much like the previous stage, you have to either make competing tribes extinct, or ally with them. This is arguably the prettiest part of the game (your close enough to the action that you can see everything in detail, but you have full camera control and can view things at your leisure). Unfortunately, it's also the most annoying to play, in my opinion. You tribe of up to 12 members can't do anything by itself except feed themselves, and even then only if the food has already been acquired. Otherwise they'll just stand around. As food is the main currency that allows you to buy upgrades and extra tribe members on this level, it means that you'll spend a lot of time tending your tribe members, individually, to go and slaughter an animal, then telling them again to take the meat from the corpse back to the village. It gets old very fast, especially as it's only in this stage that your currency that actually decreases over time (with your tribe eating it). The ability to set a couple of your tribe to either hunt or gather continuously would really improve this stage (but might make it too easy). I enjoyed this stage a lot more after I killed a massive epic monster, which netted me enough food that I didn't have to worry about it any more.

Fighting and socialising is pretty much a carbon copy of the creature stage, with new body parts replaced with weapons and musical instruments, all of which are taken from conquered/allied tribes. There are also items of clothing that affect your tribes performance, but ironically compared to the creature stage, these are allocated by costume points, which you have more of than you'll ever need, so you can fit out the creature with max stats, and then add whatever else you like. There are a few things in this stage that I just don't get though, such as fishing rods. They apparently improve your tribe�s ability to fish, but I've never seen any of them fish, and again, no guidance is given on the subject. You can also domesticate the local wild animals for the cost of some food, but these seems to give no benefit except that the animal occasionally defends its territory. I'll admit I enjoyed watching my pet Moozilla beat up some bandits trying to raid my food supplies, but I'd have preferred a bit more variety, especially when this function seemed to happen at random.

Continued in Part 2!

Unfaithful to sarcastic gamer

grigger — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:55:17 GMT

Im sorry everyone but this past summer i was unfaithful to sarcastic gamer. i didnt even listen to a single podcast. i just shoulda made room for sarcastic gamer even with work, parents, and the ladies always telling me to do stuff.

but im back wit full force and the pax hype and the pax podcast were amazing

P.S. PMPB does have a PS3

SOCOM Bluetooth Headset Packs A Punch, And A Possibly Shocking Revolution...

codinthepocket — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:13:09 GMT

Here at Cod Central, I look around the world of gaming, searching for rumors and interesting things that I thin that you guys here at SG will want to know about.

I've found something good.

I've picked up a little bit of information regarding the Bluetooth headset that is to be bundled with SOCOM: Confrontation.

As you may know, the headset is priced at $50, or for us Brits, "a bloody great big underestimate of the UK price", and it is going to be $59.99 with the SOCOM bundle. (Again, UK mosty likely paying more...).

But one interesting feature about this latest Bluetooth Headset, which, might I add, looks absolutely frickin' sweet, is that it features a HQ mode (high-quality) which, according to Sony, will use "advanced wireless technologies and the Headset's dual-microphone design to enable clear and wide-band wireless voice communication with the PS3 system."

Understand what that means, and the shocking revelation that is the reason behind me writing this blog, after the jump.

Whheeeeeeeeeee!

...

Where was I?

Oh yeah.

To decode the Sony statement, they are basically saying that the headset will be quicker/without lag, and the sound quality will be crisper and more "high quality" (Get it?), as well as having multiple microphones within the headset for louder, and more amplified speech.

So yeah. Major improvements on the Warhawk headset, then.

But what is this shocking revelation, I hear you ask?

Well, be prepared to be stunned. Kinda.

Sony have promised to use the new HQ mode with future titles, but what can be classed as a half rumor/half insider info, is that this new HQ mode may enable voice animation, where the in-game character will mimic your speech.

The in-game characters' mouths will move as yours does.

Bearing in mind that this is a fairly big claim coming from Sony. I do hope that it is true.

Imagine the scene.

You are playing Killzone 2. A brand new patch has been released, supporting HQ mode.

You are in the heat of battle in an epic 16 player team deathmatch. You have your HQ mode headset on, and you can hear, with crisp, incredibly clear quality, your teammates talking to you.

You order two of your teammates to move into cover to avoid enemy snipers.

And, what's this?

Your character said it? Your character's mouth patterns and movement mimic yours, to create a real... realer audio effect.

I'm very much hoping that this is released. This could improve the... well, the realerness of future video gaming voice chat.

It may have been done before.

But has it ever been done with a platform console? Has it ever been done with a Playstation? Has it ever been done with a 1080p display, and a certain game called Resistance 2?

Nah, I'm just joshing. I seriously doubt Resistance 2 will support HQ mode.

But what I can tell you also, is that the HQ mode is a PS3 exclusive. Yep. 360 owners will have to wait for Microsoft's answer to this fantastic "HQ Mode".

Oh, and here's a little tidbit to add on the end.

PS3 Fanboy say, and I quote, "Proximity chat will offer voice playback in full surround sound, to match the sound effects featured in the game."

Now does that just sound frickin' awesome?!

Source: Joystiq

Cheating.

codespace — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:13:04 GMT

I've been playing videogames for about as long as most people, about 22 years now, and I've noticed a fairly recent expansion of a pretty unsettling trend. People, when playing videogames, use the cheapest possible tactics, or outright manipulation of in-game glitches, just to pad their score.

Cases in point: Team Fortress 2 skywalking, Halo2 "going outside the map", the Fable Pub Games gold glitch, et cetera.

When did people lose their sense of self-respect and decide scores were more important than having fun playing videogames? When did people lose their respect for others, for that matter?

Thoughts?

Easy way to make money on Fable 2 Pub Games!

Vrean — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:17:07 GMT

Hey guys

Not sure if this is out there or not but I saw on "another site" a wee tweak to make money in Fable 2 Pub Games and it works!!

So first start a game of Fortune Tower
Set it to minimum bet
Press A then quickly hit LB

This takes the minimum amount from your stake but you get winnings for the maximum.

I was in shit loads of debt until I found this little nugget. :lipssealed:

Podcast Self Indulgence

Bucho the Great — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:58:01 GMT

It seems lately, starting a couple weeks back with GamerTag Radio episode 157 that popular podcasters and community managers are contracting a huge case of the Lono's! ;P

Seriously though, there seems to be this increasing self importance that has been threatened to the point that they have been communicating their concerns to their listeners as some strange outward soul searching. Don't get me wrong. I love GTR, all three podcasts here, and subscribe to many others. I just think that in their reduced access to publishers and media lately they seem to have forgotten what they are doing...being part of a community. I want to give a big tip to those worried if they are journalists or community managers...YOUR F^(KING COMMUNITY MANAGERS! If you want to be paid as a journalist then go do that and get your paycheck. But until then people like myself who frequent video game community sites will not do so for all the latest news and insight on the latest Team Ico screenshot, but to discuss it with others in the community. The news is great...but it is such a small part of why at least I visit this site and others like it.

Individuals read the news, but communities discuss, analyze, satire, and flesh out the news. I'm pretty new to this site but I felt compelled to voice this opinion through this site's blog because of Doc's comments in the podcast discussion he took part in at PAX. He (to me) seemed to be the only one genuinely happy to be the voice of a community and not some sweaty journalist seeking the latest exclusive interview or info. There seems to be this idea that people want to hear what (the proverbial "I") has to say about things and therefore "I" need to start getting more and more journalist type of access so I can give my opinion more and in a better informed way.

Well guess what. There are hundreds of places to get gaming news but only a few places to actually be entertained and spoken to as just another gamer having a blast playing games with friends. And I'm happy to say Sarcastic Gamer is one of those podcasts. And with the soon to be published member podcasts Sarcastic Gamer will be flooding the podcast world with even more people to listen to, mucking things up even more for those looking to shrink and focus the gaming podcast community "for the good of us all". :lol: Take that! And although GTR, Uncle Gamer, etc. still fit the bill for me I want them to know that all I want is to hear them having fun, interacting, and sharing their game experiences. Just being one of the guys (or girls) is all it takes. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

WHY THE WII SUCKS IF YOUR NOT A CaSuAl GaMeR

mikeyb003 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:24:17 GMT

this really sucks i spend over 1,000 $$$ on my wii and nintendo is doing shit with it. first of all after coming of the gamecube which wasnt meant for the CaSuAl GaMeR they get me all excited for the wii remote and all of its abilities but after 6 months i began to realize the potenitial for the wii it wasnt the system for me but i still bought stuff for it like smash bros and galaxy GH3 boom blox which were all pretty good games but it just didnt feel like i was playing a game it felt too easy and kiddish then when all my friends got XBOX 360s and were talking about playing online together i missed that and felt left out. Then i thought my problem was fixed when smash bros came out i thought i would get the online expirence through that but it ended up being even more painful because of not being able to find any body and finally when the miracle did happen the whole game was lag lag lag. So i decided i would get an xbox 360 so to make a long story short i did and i still do have my wii in a box in my basement i play my xbox 360 frequently and my wii not so much and the online is great only one RROD which i practically expected. The wii still blows if youre like me because no good shooters, online content and the whole wii is for the casual gamer it really sucks it does but im used to crap from nintendo. NOT from microsoft:lol: if you begg to differ comment and we will speak

My Guess Of What Halo Mythic Is

Arbiter1337 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:13:25 GMT

Halo Mythic has been a hot topic across the blogosphere. No one seems to know what Halo Mythic is and Bungie isn�t talking. I think there have been plenty of clues as to what Halo Mythic is. First Microsoft announces that you can play games from your hard drive while the game has to be in the drive its only for copy right purposes. Second, why rerelease Halo on 360 without the campaign at retail it would just lead to confusion as to what each product was. Third, Microsoft has been pushing digital distribution more and more. I think that Halo Mythic could be Microsoft flagship title for full 360 downloadable games.

With Microsoft not announcing any blu-ray add-ons, it would seem if Microsoft planned to do it this generation they would have done it by now. They want to push that digital downloads are the future not blu-ray. Adding 360 games to digital download would be a good step in Microsoft�s push for digital distribution.The reason they would have Halo be one of the launch titles for the service would be that they know it will sell well. The same reason why DVDs are cheaper the first week available, so they can tout sale numbers. It would be a smart move on Microsoft�s part. I don�t believe Mythic purely made for PAX it wouldn�t make since for a number of reasons, one being it wouldn�t be worth the time invested. They can just as easily play the new map on a regular version of Halo 3.

I also don�t think this is an expansion for the original Halo 3 either. For one thing 750 points of new achievements goes over the limit of 1250 points per game. 1000 on the disc and 250 for dlc. Of course with it being Halo Microsoft may be willing to bend their rules. With the main menu showing no campaign that also lessens the chance of this being an expansion. An expansion wouldn�t remove or hide part of the game. I doubt Bungie has time to create a multiplayer version of Halo just for just for competitions, and if it was why include achievements. Bungie also wouldn�t be hiding it if it was just for competitions. The 1.2 makes since to , the best way to think of it is the iPod touch and the IPhone. Both receive firmware updates that are the same number but the iPod touch updates don�t have the phone related updates. So the 1.2 is probably what it is equivalent to the original Halo 3 multiplayer. It contains the updates that have already been applied that way it won�t lead to confusion when Bungie discusses updates. Saying 1.1 for Mythic and 1.3 for the original ,which would make it look like Mythic was behind even though they are equal. It will be interesting to see when Bungie announces it. It would make since this was their E3 announcement. With it being used at PAX I�d expect this to be one of their projects close to release and to see it before next E3 it will either be announced at CES or its own separate event.

It will be interesting to see when Microsoft announces it and what the game truly is. If Microsoft releases it as a digital download it will have more hype going towards it then it would if released at retail. Microsoft needs to prove that digital distribution is better than blu-ray and it can be successful. They need a popular title to draw attention to downloading games. Hopefully Microsoft and Bungie will announced it before its leaked out completely. Of course there's always a chance this has been blown way out of proportion, should be interesting to see how this is finally is revealed.

Can PC Games Be Played On My Xbox 360?

Fearless987 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:35:05 GMT

Well the other day I was looking at someone's Gamer Tag and I clicked on compare games he had like Gears Of War with PC wrote beside it and Halo 2 also with PC wrote on it and he had Gamer Score for all of them.So does that mean you can play PC games on your 360?

Blog!

Shiekshreek — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:41:15 GMT

Please be aware that whilst reading this you may want to gouge out your own eyes with a spoon, if that situation does occur I recommend going to a doctor and not being so stupid in the future. Thank you and enjoy my first blog and probably the only one because I can not imagine anyone reading this unless they are homeless or clinically insane, and if you are homeless I recommend not spending all of your change on 5 minutes in an dirty internet caf�. Please sit back and enjoy the blog.

Whilst racking my mind for a subject for a blog I quickly found that the subject found me� fanboys, and whilst thinking up some crap to say about this subject I came to the stunning realization�. I used to be one. But I�m fine now, and I have been reformed. Yes I do know that arguing about consoles is just like debating about which blender can make the most juicy, creamy, lovely mango smoothies, but now it appears I have gone off topic so please wait a second whilst I drag myself back to the reason I am creating this blog in the first place.

So fanboys, they are annoying, stupid, smelly, etc, etc� but did you know that most fanboys do not know the simple fact that they are acting ridiculous. Or maybe you did know that fact, but please stick with me and this sad excuse for a blog. But if you don�t like it you are free to spam my comments section but before you do let me first remind you that no one forced you to read this, you didn�t pay to read it, so essentially you have lost out on nothing. So before you type insulting words into my inbox, please sit down on your floor and die. Now I realize I have said more about writing a blog then the subject of the blog itself so here I go�.

Mostly fanboys (and they are always boys because girls would never be so stupid) are young and so they have not learned the joys of getting a job and earning money for themselves. Now some of them do have jobs but they pay only about �15 or $15 if you�re American (Curse you!). So what they do is beg their parents or guardians for a console. But these guardians do not want to buy to consoles so; the kids are usually stuck with one. So the situation begs the question�. What happened if the console you got was a gamecube? Or a sega saturn? But even though these consoles were great, they didn�t exactly get all the greatest games ever made in the history of gaming ever (except for smash bros).

Now I was little when I got my gamecube so I was angry when other people got better games so being the tiny twat I was, I started to obsess over it and never admit I was wrong. Sigh�. But I grow out of it, and so will the fanboys of today. I soon learned that arguing about a piece of entertainment is useless and stupid. I was idiotic; I was more annoying then Mr. Freeze in �Batman and Robin.� So that�s it, that was my useless blog thingy that you will probably never read, but if you would like more torturous words from me please say good things about it. Any way thank you for reading and I hope everyone who did read this and not just spammed the comments section for no apparent reason lives a happy life with no major illness. Thank you for injuring.

Extra Life: Mass Effect Marathon

SamFtw — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:11:50 GMT

If you've listened to the PAX podcast, you will know about the new Sarcastic Gamer charity programme Extra Life. This encourages gamers to play there favourite games for 24 hours and be sponsored for each hour that passes.

On October 18th I'll be organising a group Mass Effect playthrough this means not only the main storyline but going on side quests, exploring planets and yes, we will be having virtual sex for charity. So I'm looking for charitable SGC members who would like to play through the game with me, I'll be setting up a chat room with video feeds for in game talk and for the community to check up on us if they wish. I'm particuraly looking for British SGC members as character creation will start at 00:00 GMT on October 18th, but gamers all over the world are invited as long as they can start at the right time.

As for sponsorship I'd recommend you ask for 25/50p for each hour you play. Because if you last the whole 24 hours I'd doubt you'd be asking everyone for �24 each.

Please put your name down below if you wish to take part.

My Attempt at an SG avatar

TheMeggaMan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:35:12 GMT

So I just made an avatar with Doc's super huge one and GIMP and about 20 min of spare time, it's not as easy as it looks :shocked:

Mad props to MightyMutt:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Gears Of Redemption

Wrath99 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:47:29 GMT

I've made no effort in the past to hide my dislike of games such as Halo 3 and Gears Of War in the past and have been rather vocal about it on numerous occasions. but, as of today i feel it is only right that i repent so to say for my unkind words against Gears Of War.

So long story short my first experiences with GOW was doing multiplayer on Live having never played the story mode nor having any idea how to play the game and basiclly getting my ass handed to me multiple times(this was around the launch of the game). Well today i went to my local game store and picked up a used copy of it decideing to give it a second chance after all this time and was plesantly surprised when i got home and started up the campaign mode.

Needless to say i have changed my veiws on the game and now am one of the many GOW supporters.

The Daily Fail - 3/9/08 - Online Gamers

Cliff 10 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:36:26 GMT

Today's Fail Online ****tards, yeah you know who you are.

Early ( or should I say late? ) post today for issue 2, but its a brief one about online gamers. So lets get right to it.

Online Gamers

Now I have alot of experience in this field just like I am sure we all do, because lets face it, today your not getting a quater of what you could be getting outta your console if your not online. During my time online, I have found that there are generally only a few types of gamer:

The Sensible Gamer

This is a nice way of saying the non-dickhead. This guy is in it for the enjoyment of the game, wont piss you off, wont brag about it and target you if hes alot better than you, and is generally a nice guy you could see yourself going for a beer with IRL. You know, he wont engage in the practice of "teabagging" or " raepage" unless its in the spirit of the game, and will still NEVER overuse it. They tend to only have people they know IRL on thier friends list.

I consider myself to be one of these gamers, because I never victimise, and I am the first person to offer up co-op strategys when playing in team games suck as Gears, Kane and Lynch, and in the rare case Halo!

The Not-so Sensible Gamer

The complete opposite to what has been described above. Usually under the age of 14, yet to hit puberty and, although I am sure they would say the same of European gamers, Americans. Now by no means am I calling out all Americans here. I have played with a load of them who are generally good guys. But regardless of age, squeakyness of voice or nationality, you see these ****ers a mile off, and they can turn even the most sensible gamer into a raging, controller hurling mess at times. These guys suck, participate in activitys such as teabagging and active whoring and unfortunatley take up 99.9999999999999999% of the Online gaming community.

Sad, but true.

The Female Gamer

This rare and fascinating breed of gamer falls into neither of the above catagories, and take characteristics from both to form thier own class all together.

Personally, I know a few female gamers, and they are all excellent gamers, not inferior to thier male counter parts, and are productive members of any game. However, they can also be used as weapons by idiot gamers and for this, they are given a negative image to alot of the online community.

The Point of This Article

There are a few actually. Firstly, if you belong in the sensible gamer catagory, please add your name to the list and meet fellow sensible gamers to get rid of online filth from your gaming! Secondly, female gamers are treated with caution by many, which is bullshit, treat them with the same respect you would a sensible male gamer, because you dont want it hanging over your head in the post game chats tha you got owned by that girl you were talking shit to. Finally, DONT BE THAT GUY! If your being baited in an online game, dont stoop to thier level, leave all the "non-sensible" online gamers to thier own devices, it will only make them mader, and oh the more sweeter when you own thier n00b ass at thier favourite game.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the read, and if your a 360 gamer, you should definatly check out 31/8/08's Daily Fail

Untill next time guys, much thanks if you've read.

Cliff 10

MY top 5 games im excited about

mikeyb003 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:26:03 GMT

my top 5 games im looking forward to are:
Fable 2 : Maybe im just an RPG Guy but im still excited
Gears of War 2 : because of the first game and the footage shown at E3 2008
Fallout 3 : another RPG but it looks like a awesome game with awesome graphics and i htink everyone should experience this game
Rockband 2 : the first game was awesome with all the DLC and all of it will be compatible for the second game compatibility with the GH series guitars:grin::grin::heart::w00t:
COD5 : I want to see if treyarch can do better than infinity ward did with their incredible game in the series:cool2:

No more, In A World...

VinDali — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:06:44 GMT

Any one who has played on Live with me for any amount of time knows that I like to do impressions and impressions of impressionists and would love to do voice overs full time. One impressionist/comedian who I really like is Pablo Francisco, who does an impression of the Movie Trailer Guy. It's one of his funniest bits and he does his voice so well.

Many of you probably don't know who that Voice Over Actor was, maybe some of you do thanks to a Geico commercial a few years ago. The man who is basically one of five voice over actors who do all the movie trailers from Hollywood was Don LaFontaine.

Don LaFontaine, the voice of movie trailers, dies at 68
Posted: September 02, 2008, 7:35 AM by Mark Medley
Movies, news
You may not recognize the name Don LaFontaine but you definitely know the voice.

LaFontaine, who passed away Monday at the age of 68, was THE voice of movie trailers for almost 30 years.

The Minnesota-born LaFontaine reportedly voiced over 5,000 trailers and almost 350,000 commercials. He's responsible for the ubiquitous trailer-opening phrase "In a world..."

From his website:
Over the past 25 years, LaFontaine cemented his position as the "King of Voice-overs." Aside from his continuing work in the trailer industry, he has also been the voice of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. By conservative estimates, he has voiced hundreds of thousands of television and radio spots, including commercials for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Coke, and many other corporate sponsors. At last count, he has worked on nearly 5000 films, including appearances as the in-show announcer for the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards. Based on contracts signed, he has the distinction of being perhaps the single busiest actor in the history of SAG.

Goodbye Don, you will be missed.

Why video game movies and movie video games never ever work

Maul — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:26:59 GMT

Video game movies and movie video games never ever work. They are among some of the most despised games and movies that were ever made, although there are some good ones it seems that the two entertainment genres can never really cross.

Particularly good movies like Transformers and Iron man have perfect settings for games; robots, guns, flying people and lasers, what could go wrong? A lot it turns out. The Iron man game was rushed out by Sega, after the phenomenal success of the Iron man movie it was no surprise that we would see a game. However this game is terrible, it came out to universal criticism and has an average score of around 40 on metacritic. The game has terrible visuals, terrible controls and ultimately stains the Iron man franchise. The same applies to the Transformers game; it was rushed and had terrible visuals. These are but two in a long line of movie games, some others include the golden compass and King Kong. Although we did see some good movie games back in the days of the N64 (Goldeneye being the main one), those days are now gone. Overall the main reason is basically to make money. To milk the cash cow of a popular franchises.

However when it goes the other way, with games turning into movies we get more success but we still get some appalling results. Some of the most notably terrible films have been Doom and Silent hill. First off, the reason they both became films was because they have the perfect plots. A horror story, a deserted town and dead people, it sounds like a perfect horror movie. But in games a lot more can be fitted in than in movies. You can explain the story better and can have a longer play through time than in movies, which are usually restricted to 120 minutes. Because a large amount of the content in games is cut out in movies the story seems rushed. The story isn�t wrote from scratch and is instead lifted from the game, meaning that there is no feasible way to portray the game without a stupidly long 6 hour movie, which no one would watch.

All in all it seems the two genres which are perfect matches will never be best of friends. Thanks to a combination of milking the cash cow and ports straight from games to movies the industry is too damaged for them to ever repair their relations.