"Reaver!"

Yours truly had a week off from work recently and spent that week tucked up in bed reading nothing but E-Books (electronic or digital books), which PR has recently got me addicted to.

The folks at Ereader.com have a superb bit of software available for all mobile platforms that could read/manage your purchased books as well as browse their website, containing thousands of books ready for download. I was immediately hooked! I downloaded the free software for my iPhone as well as my Windows Netbook and began purchasing books.

My first purchase was Karen Traviss’s Gears of War – Aspho Fields. Fans of the colossal selling Gears of War video game series will get a close up personal look at Delta Squad’s rag tag soldiers Marcus Fenix, Dominic and Carlos Santiago, as well as C-Company’s Cole Train, and Baird. Hoffman and Anya are also present.

After introducing us to Marcus, Carlos and Dom during their childhood and both families two very separate upbringings, the book then bounces back and forth between two pivotal events.

Firstly the battle at Aspho Fields before Emergence Day, in which Marcus and Dom’s older brother Carlos fight insurmountable odds at an enemy base. What transpired on this day would change Marcus’s life forever.

Secondly we look beyond the events of Emergence Day and the effects of the Lightmass Bomb on the Locust Hollow. As a human run farming site prepares for an onslaught from the Locust Horde, the soldiers carry out a well planned evacuation attempt. However a ghost from the past has returned to haunt Marcus and Dom. For Marcus, this ghost carries the burden of his past and a secret that he has sworn to keep against all odds.

I have to say that this was a brilliant read on all accounts. It is a go-between for those that have played the first Gears of War and then it’s sequel. We learn a huge amount about all the key characters, even Anya. We also learn about Marcus’s father Adam Fenix. Dom’s wife Maria is also featured.

If you have finished both Gears of War titles and then want to learn about the characters, there is no better place to start then Aspho Fields. The very last section of the book is a set up for Gears of War 2 -I do want to say more, but then that would be wrong wouldn’t it

Tuesday April 29th March 2008

It is quite rare for me to claim that a certain title is the best I have ever played. That award goes to a single game from 2002 – Mafia. Through the years I’ve seen titles come and go, in which I have claimed to be superb and whilst they have been just that, the replayability wasn’t there – Condemned and Bioshock for instance.

The Grand Theft Auto series since GTA: Vice City has always had a place in my heart. It’s sucessor San Andreas was equally as good featuring a huge land mass, in which you could do virtually anything you wanted to. It quickly became my favourite game of the series. Well move over San Andreas, GTA IV just became my favourite GTA but also  my second favourite game of all time. Since it’s release Grand Theft Auto IV has ranked up some of the highest review marks I have seen since Gears of War on the 360. Although I do think the marking for IV was a little over the top in quite a few areas it is without doubt an outstanding accomplishment from Rockstar.

Liberty City, is based on New York City of course, in which we see Niko Bellic (a war veteran from Bosnia) arriving in search of the American Dream. Does he find it though? Buggered if I could find out since I encountered a nasty broken mission bug, which saw me not receiving a key phone call from some lawyers so I ended up restarting the game. Suffice to say it’s been a rather long Bank Holiday weekend making up for all that lost time but I have had a blast, which didn’t please my girlfriend…

Is the title any good? Well short of actually reviewing it I will state that "Yes it is outstanding, in many, many ways but that doesn’t mean it has no faults". It’s graphics are very controversial right now and I say this because the game is using a blur filter that makes commenting on the graphics rather hard. In some places the game looks incredible, whilst in other areas it looks completely poor as distant objects are blurred and dithered to an extent. The game features a lighting system that I rate as the best I have ever seen. I kid you not  – driving through Liberty City is an experience to behold mainly because the lighting is so perfect that everything looks just right and I won’t mention the dynamic shadows moving in relation to the sun…

Rockstar have created a living, breathing city in ways that cannot really be described. Even my mother who was watching me play earlier today stated that the city looked so real as I casually drove past all the neon-lit buildings amongst hundreds of yellow cabs.

I am still going through the game and I’m just 30% through it but I can see heaps of things to do afterwards and with the extra downloadable content arriving later in the year I just hope that extends the gameplay a bit more. Who knows? All I know is that I am hooked!

See what the NY Times had to say about GTA IV
Rockstar’s Dan Houser speaks about GTA IV
Think I’m excited? Check Oz gal Kitteh out!

So on Friday 7th December I celebrated the birthday of my launch day Xbox 360. While his fellow brothers have fallen all around him, this launch day machine soldiers on bravely. November 2005 was his true birth date truth be told, however he arrived on the 7th December 2005 via a rather annoyed looking delivery man. For those who can recall that crazy month, Xbox 360′s were impossible to find anywhere. Stores were sold out, and Ebay was where most were being sold for ludicrous prices.

I myself pre-ordered a 360 from approx 13 different online stores with the hopes that I may get one. A day after launch day on the 360 I got that elusive email from Comet stating that was one on the way. I kept it a secret from my mates for a good week before I revealed that I had one. I wanted to play with her on my own! Anyway, the celebrations didn’t go too well with me accidentally setting fire to a remote control, which then set off the fire alarms, which then stank up my room somewhat rotten. However it worked out quite well! As you can see, the 360 was rather pleased!

Assassins Creed and Mass Effect

Whilst I’ve been fighting off the Flu I’ve been barely physically well enough to play two of the console’s most recent and hugely hyped titles. Assassins Creed from Ubisoft, and Mass Effect from RPG giants Bioware. Assassin’s Creed is the result of years of hard work from the development team lead by the gorgeous Jade Raymond, and Mass Effect is a colossal Sci-Fi RPG set in the future. Both titles have been hugely hyped, and yours truly couldn’t wait for them.

Assassin’s Creed arrived with quite a mixed reception. A lot of early reviews gave it average ratings, much to everyones surprise citing it was too repetitive. When it arrived I was blown away. Gorgeous visuals and gameplay, with some slightly repetitive moments I do agree. Well they would be repetitive if gamers went about performing every mission in the same manner, I had no problem with this and took on every mission in a random manner. As a result I completely love the game. Killing people with such randomness has never been more fun!

Gears of War remains my No.1 360 title despite the fact that I’ve only played it’s single player campaign a handful of times. The superb storyline and history make the game a winner, and then come the terrific musical score and visuals. Well move over Gears, Mass Effect just blew you aside! Mass Effect has to be the most enjoyable RPG I have ever come across. In every department the title just excels and there is only small drawback to it, and that isn’t even the game’s fault.

I’ve spent most of this weekend playing Mass Effect and I’ve had an utter blast. I’m not even in to Sci-Fi RPG’s, I prefer Fantasy ones but those are just overdone. Sadly I feel that I am close to the it’s end now having put in 27 hours, although a lot of side missions remain. The storyline, whilst not original is extremely well realised and to back the game up the in-game Codex fills you in on the history of almost everything down to your weapons. As for the characters, well I’ve become really fond of one of them – as sad as it may seem.

Lastly, a lot of readers are probably wondering why I don’t do game reviews anymore. To tell the truth I just no longer have that spare time to do them. I have 3 partially unfinished reviews dating back to approx 9 months ago! Test Drive Unlimited, Ghost Recon 1 and Oblivion all lie unfinished. Life has just become too busy with my career and other things. However with the Xmas holidays coming up I’ll try and finish off a rather huge backlog of reviews.

I shall be reviewing Mass Effect and Assassins Creed asap this week though, well as soon as I discover what Tali has hidden under that suit…!

Red ring ‘o’ death…as if Xbox 360′s weren’t bad enough

It’s no secret that I truly love the startling detail and features that the next generation optical formats give us. It’s also no secret that I have opted for the HD-DVD format rather then Sony’s Blu-Ray. I have done this mainly because all the classics that I truly love are all on HD-DVD, whilst the action popcorn flicks tend to be on Blu-Ray. I also like the fact that the standalone HD-DVD players are coming down price wise at a startling rate, whilst Blu-Ray players remain at a slightly more expensive price.

Given that I already own the Xbox 360′s HD-DVD player, I always wanted a standalone player the moment prices became affordable. Lately the price of the second generation Toshiba HD-E1 player has crashed, most probably due to Toshiba’s recent announcement that their third generation players are on the way. This morning I took delivery of the player, and will detail my experiences with it for the next two days. You can check out my review here.

Giiiit miiii rings!

I’m annoyed and ecstatic at the same time right now. Just yesterday, Microsoft caused shocks around the internet community by announcing, and I quote "Microsoft is extending the terms of its Xbox 360 warranty to three years for certain general hardware failures which are indicated by three flashing red lights on the console". Now this is tremendous news for Xbox 360 owners who have been plagued by hardware failures left, right and centre since purchasing their console. I am extremely happy to state that my launch day 360 is still running fine despite the fact that I treat it like dirt, and use it for 3hrs a day or so.

What angers me is that these hardware failures should never have happened in the first place. I hear users on the web stating that their Sega Megadrives or N64′s never broke, and that is true. It’s also a hugely unfair comparison as those machines never relied on kenetic parts, let alone a custom cooling solution. At the end of the day, the way I see it is that MS balls up massively when they designed the 360. For a long time I have realised that EVERY 360 is going to suffer at some point or another because of the poor cooling solution within the console. Was the 360 rushed back in December 2005? In my opinion yes, but for a good reason, and you can see that now with the console having a firm foothold in the console market, whilst Sony suffers.

So what went wrong? They designed the machine in such a way that their cooling setup just cannot handle the sheer heat generated by the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) as well as the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The motherboard flexes from the heat and components slowly work their way loose. Your casual console gamer that is used to old consoles like the PS1, PS2, and N64 will not be used to consoles with active cooling solutions and will no doubt ram the 360 into the nearest TV cabinet, without taking into account how much heat the thing throws out – bad move. Microsoft wanted the 360 to be the centrepiece of one’s living room, and sadly that alone will backfire on them as users begin getting various heat related issues from storing them in poorly ventilated areas. My 360 sits on my desktop and has good cooling, but I still expect it to bite the dust soon, although I’ve been saying that since Xmas 2006…

Since heatsinks by nature collect dust over time, what will you do once the heatsink is crammed full of dirt? On a PC you can simply open your case and use a can of pressurized air to blow the dust out. On a 360 this isn’t possible, as removing the case voids your warranty. Why couldn’t MS come up with a way to allow the end user to remove the internal air-duct so we could easily see the exposed heatsinks for cleaning? Doh.

Microsoft has attempted a quick fix design to get around the issue however that could backfire too. Why couldn’t they fix the problem at hand instead of implementing a work-around? I refer to the fact that on ‘Elite’ 360′s in America and more recently Japan having an additional smaller heatsink literally hanging off the GPU to soak up any additional heat. It’s a nice idea, but completely stinks.

Now while I am pointing out the obvious here, this 3 year warranty is a huge problem for Microsoft, and it’s all because of the way they built the console. The fault still exists in a ALL new consoles, even users of the ‘Elite’ console began reporting failures upon buying them, and MS hasn’t really haven’t done much to address the problem. The warranty may guarantee piece of mind for most 360 users, but if a console fails in a week how will the casual gamer see Microsoft as a console manufacturer? They’ll lose faith right away and turn to the Wii, or PS3. Upon implementing this system MS have now guaranteed that their customer call centres will be rammed full of callers, and that repairs will take even longer as they struggle to cope with an influx of 360′s on a frequent. Lastly, will they reimburse those 360 owners who recently took out 3rd party extended warranties?

Of course over time MS will resolve these problems as the 360 moves to a .65nm CPU SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator) process. The end result will be a cooler 360, emitting less heat and noise too. The ‘Elite’ should have had this but it hasn’t. How long we have to wait for the next proper 360 revision is anyone’s guess.

Personally, this is what I’ll be doing. If this launch day 360 is still running in a couple of months time, I’ll be opening the thing and examining the state of its heatsinks for dust. I’ll post pics of my discovery too, just to show how much dust a 360 accumulates in a bedroom environment over the course of three years. Right, enough ranting, time to get back to Forza!

Warranty FAQ on Xbox.com
Why the ’3RLOD’ exists

I’m hooked!

It’s been quite a while since I reviewed a 360 game and to be honest I’m way behind when it comes to my reviews. Just to show how behind I am, I still have half finished reviews of Test Drive: Unlimited and Ghost Recon (GRAW) dated December 2006!

Forza Motorsports 2 has been occupying most of my time lately since it was released and I’ve had a massive blast playing this game. As a result my review for it was delayed, and then messed up thanks to Notepad ruining the formatting and inserting odd html into my code. The review has been cleaned up as a result but may have odd formatting in places. I’ll look at it tomorrow while I’m at work. Too tired now!

You can find my review up in the reviews section now.

A cheap HD solution for the masses

Woo, been a while since I wrote any solid content for the blog. To be honest I’ve been incredibly busy with settling into my new position at work amonst other things. Spoilt by some of the HD quality film trailers/game trailers on the Xbox Marketplace, DVD’s have started to look poor by comparison. I just cannot watch a DVD anymore without spotting how bad its video quality is in comparison. I have been holding off purchasing the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for quite some time now but have finally purchased the thing.

Not a lot of people know that it can be easily used in Windows, so I decided to write up a quick article on how it could be done. PR has recently reviewed his HD-DVD drive on his blog and likes it too!

Oh bugger…

There goes the rumour mill. It’s now true. After a good month of speculation when pictures of a HDMI 360 was leaked onto the web, it has finally been confirmed after the CES show in Las Vegas. Bill Gates’s keynote speech was something a lot of people waited for, hoping he would speak about the future of the Xbox 360. Instead he talked about Windows Vista, Live Anywhere, and then IPTV on ‘a’ 360 – the way he said this seemed to suggest he was talking about new 360′s rather then our current gen models.

Then just before Bill Gates keynote, Dean Takahashi, an Xbox expert and author of the ‘Uncloaked’ series of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360 leaked some news on a new 360 arriving in 2007. He spoke about the Xbox 360 Revision 2, codenamed Zephyr which would have a larger capacity hard drive 120/160mb, HDMI output, and running cooler with its .65nm CPU. It’ll also be IPTV enabled. In the UK, British Telecom will provide our IPTV service…I can hear the boo’s already.

Paul Thurrot, from Windows SuperSite has mentioned on his podcast that a new 360 is on the way during Q4 of 2007. He hasn’t seen it yet, but it has "IPTV capabilities and a larger hard drive", it WILL definitely feature a CPU on a smaller production process so it’ll require less power, emanate less heat and require less cooling too which means that the new 360 should be a bit more quieter then our current models.