The 5 Biggest Announcements of E3 2011 (So Far!!!)

As i type this the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is taking place in Los Angeles and as all 3 major console manufacturers have now had their respective press conferences its time to go over what i believe to be the 5 biggest announcements made so far.

5) Halo HD AND Halo 4

Ok so we've seen 3 halo games already on 360 (4 if you count halo wars) so why is this announcement so special, well not only have Microsoft finally confirmed that they are remaking the original (and best) Halo with online multiplayer (the original predates Xbox Live and therefore didn't feature online multiplayer), they also announced Halo 4 an ACTUAL numbered Halo game, not ODST or Reach 2 but Halo 4! The return of the series main protagonist Master Chief for the first time since Halo 3 and the first Halo game developed not by Bungie but by new studio 343 Studios. The trailer also looked very impressive and the game is scheduled for release late 2012.



4) Sonys PSP successor is called Playstation Vita

NGP was never going to be the long term name for Sonys next handheld but Vita has certainly divided the internet on whether its a great name or not. In my opinion the name is not important if the console has great games, I mean how many people thought Xbox, Gamecube, Wii or even Playstation were great console names but hey we soon got used to them. Vita looks the business when it comes to cutting edge handheld tech with wifi and 3G support, touch screen, next gen graphics etc and the games are looking fantastic with Uncharted, Little Big Planet and even a new Bioshock being developed exclusively for Vita.


3) Legend Of Zelda 25th Anniversary Tour

Not much to say on this one, anyone who loves Zelda and watched the opening of Nintendo's press conference will have gotten goosebumps from the live orchestra playing music from the Legend Of Zelda series. Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto then announced that the orchestra would be partaking in a world tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Zelda franchise along with the release of 4 Zelda games this year, Links awakening DX coming to 3DS virtual console, The Ocarina of time 3D remake for 3DS, a downloadable version of Four Swords for Dsi and Skyward sword coming late this year. I only wish a 3D Link To The Past remake had been announced but theres always next year!


2)PS3 gets exclusive Eve Online shooter Dust 514

Dust 514 is a first person shooter offshoot of popular PC MMO Eve Online. The major talking point of this game is that it will connect directly with the PC game causing consequence in the game world on PC depending on how you conduct yourself on the PS3. it is certainly an ambitious project and if successful could forge a very exciting relationship for online gaming between the PS3 and PC platforms. Watch this space.


1) Nintendo show new console Wii U for the first time

It was fairly obvious what everyone was waiting to see this year. Would Nintendo be returning to core gaming or sticking with the casual market. Could their new console compete with the big boys in terms of graphical power. What was it going to be called. Well Nintendo have just answered all those question with the unveiling of the Wii U (and you thought Vita was a stupid name) however once again don't let the name fool you this looks like an extremely impressive piece of kit. To answer the questions yes Nintendo are returning to core gaming AND sticking with the casual market, while the normal Wii fare like Wii fit, Wii Sports etc were shown some seriously hardcore games like Batman Arkham City and Assassins Creed were also revealed for the new console and interviews with leading developers such as Ken Levine of Bioshock fame and Warren Spector the creator of Deus Ex hinted at more to come. Head of EA John Ricotello came onstage to lend EA's sizable support to Wii U even hinting that Battlefield 3 will be coming to Wii U in turn hinting that Wii U's online infrastructure may actually work this time. I have learned over the years to be cautiously optimistic of Nintendo but i have to admit i am super excited about this new console and the controller is the icing on the cake. It features a full 6" touchscreen that will take the game off the tv and onto the controller, can you imagine how cool this will be when your better half wants to watch Hollyoaks or whatever and you want to continue your game and you can simply transfer it to the controller and carry on. How ironic that while Microsoft are trying their best to ditch controllers Nintendo have given us a new way to play using innovcation in controllers again. Check and mate to Nintendo.

Is phone gaming the future?

Like many of you I own a smartphone which is capable of vastly superior gaming experiences than were available a few years ago. Back in the day the best you could hope for on a mobile device was Snake and even that wasn't a given that it would A) be preloaded on your phone or B) Your phone was even capable of handling any kind of gaming in the first place. So why did we have these phones in the first place was it for this:

Or was it to do this:

Yes exactly, you bought your phone, you topped up your credits for talk time and text messages and you went on your merry way only ever getting the phone out to use it for PHONE based activities and showing off your annoying as hell ringtones that by the way sounded nothing like the song they were so poorly imitating.
But then the winds of change rolled in and with it bought ever more core style gaming experiences to the mobile masses, the internet (in a very basic form) was now available on a large number of handsets and games publishers were seeing the very real benefits of putting micro versions of there top franchises on mobile platforms so everything from Call Of Duty to Tomb Raider had a shite mobile version available for around £3 for the world to be duped by. Nokia even tried there hand at manufacturing a game specific mobile phone called the N-gage this is what it looked like.

Looks ok i guess maybe the screen looks a little small and the buttons look a bit busy but hey its a games console right? It looks like a fully functional handheld gaming device yes? But wait its still a phone yeah? so how would someone looking to buy one now (they aren't available anymore FYO) make a PHONE CALL on this thing? Here's how:

Now bear in mind this picture is obviously a joke (the person in the picture Christian Nutt is actually a well respected US games journalist who coined the phrase 'Sidetalking') but you get the idea, this device was not built with phone users in mind but to merely make a quick buck off the growing trend of mobile phone gaming. The NGage was a failure both critically and commercially and it wasn't long before Gamestation etc were selling them new for around £40 to quickly and quietly get rid of stock, Nokia meanwhile have never fully recovered from this misstep and have gone from the leading phone manufacturer to an also ran in the mobile arms race.
It had become clear to everyone that mobile gaming was a joke and a fad that was soon to die out...... then this happened.

Ok so Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone wasn't the kick up the arse that pushed mobile gaming forward as much as every apple fanboy would love you to believe but like it or not it is the most popular smartphone on the market for a reason and mobile gaming would not be where it is now without it. lets just say then that the smartphone explosion is what has kickstarted this dying niche of gaming and sent it into orbit. App store and Android marketplace are full of games from every genre, with graphics that would make the nokia snake eat itself out of shame, and full game experiences. Never did I think as a 10 year old that I would have a magic device in my pocket that is not only a phone but will play Monkey Island with better graphics and I can use it wherever I like, make me a time machine so I can blow my own mind!
I guess the answer to the question I asked at the beginning 'Is phone gaming the future?' is maybe. Maybe because while its a fantastic way to get into gaming I don't see it ever replacing the core experience of the home consoles I guess we could say phone gaming is 'shaping' the future.

The BEST game on every platform i've owned!! Part 4 Super Nintendo

I'll start this entry by admitting that the Super Nintendo is my absolute favourite console of all time. I received the SNES for my 13th birthday and fell instantly in love, sure games had been great before but this was different, this was an epiphony, the SNES was and still is the greatest games console i have ever owned.
The big problem i have here is deciding what could possibly be the greatest game created on the greatest console, a problem i have spent much time deliberating and i have come the conclusion that the greatest game on SNES (in my opinion) is The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past.

If there is one piece of music that reminds me of my misspent youth its the opening music to Link To The Past. The first game i downloaded on Virtual Console for Wii was Link To The Past. The only game I played for almost a year on my SNES was yes you guessed it Link To The Past. This game was open world exploration before anybody had even thought about adventure games in that way. Link was the perfect protagonist, the graphics were so well stylised that the game is still playable today, try saying that about Ocarina on N64. This game signified for me the gaping chasm of quality between Nintendo and Sega. While Megadrive owners were making do with Phantasy Star and other god awful convoluted RPG's that were badly animated, poorly written and instantly forgettable, SNES owners were playing what is still revered today as the finest adventure game of the 16bit era.
The story of LTTP was as epic as it was well written and featured a dark and light world as well as the obligatory battle with Ganon, You took control of the series established hero Link on a quest to find Princess Zelda which leads to a bigger story that leads to Link tasked with saving his home kingdon of Hyrule. Its a game that will easily last you a good 30 hours if your a real completist.
If you have never played this fantastic game i urge you to give it a try, it is available to download on Wii's virtual console service and was also released as a Gameboy advance game which is playable on the DS and DS lite (not DSi,XL and 3DS).

Wii: Bridging The Gap

The year is 1987 and a 6 year old me is playing Super Mario Bros on the NES for the very first time, in fact playing an NES for the very first time. I had never experienced anything like this before, sure i had a Spectrum but the games on that were in the majority boring, took a lifetime to load and looked like ass. This was a totally different story though. The NES took seconds to load, the games looked great, they had sound!!! and Super Mario Bros was fun...actual fun!!! Not i kind of guess this is fun but i don't want to EVER stop playing this fun.
Fast forward to 2011 and right now i'm sat next to my 4 year old son watching him play Super Mario Bros Wii. His eyes will light up when he finds a Yoshi, he knows where all the hidden items are, which pipes to go down to find secret areas. He will tell me about how Bowser has 'stolen' the Princess and Mario has to find her and all this with the same excitement i held for what is essentially the same game all those years ago, and its not just Super Mario Bros we will play Sonic, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong etc. If i were to put on the PS3 i don't think my son would relate to any of the games on there except maybe Little Big Planet and even then he would probably find the controls to floaty to enjoy it. My point here is that no matter how much Nintendo seems to have dumped on the core gamer this generation the Wii and also DS have been instrumental in bringing a new generation into gaming. Its brought parents who may have grown up playing Mario back into gaming and at the same time introduced there children to it. These are the same kids who will go on to play games in the future, make games in the future and even write about games in the future. Nothing stands still forever so to those people who say with the Wii Nintendo have forgotten there roots and core audience i say look at your kids playing these games and tell me there not getting just as much enjoyment out of gaming as you did...all those years ago!

The Top 5 best downloadable games on PSN and XBLA.

Ever looked at the online store of your favourite games console but not known where to start, hopefully this list of 5 games will be a good starting point for you but remember this is merely my opinion and there is an abundance of fantastic games available online nowadays.


5) Braid: Metacritic Average 93

Braid, released on Xbox Live and Playstation Network is a puzzle platformer with an emphasis on time manipulation. It takes many cues from classic platformers of old including stomping on 'enemies' like in Super Mario Bros. The game involves increasingly challenging puzzles that are solved by rewinding time to change aspects of the landscape to make things easy to reach like pullies or platforms. It is a game that should be seen to be believed and the ending twist is a real shocker.

4) Monkey Island 2 LeChucks Revenge Special Edition: Metacritic Average 87

Monkey Island follows the continuing adventures of Guybrush Threepwood and his pirate activities around the tri-island area in the carribean. This is a remake of the original LeChucks revenge released in the early 90's and features voice acting and greatly improved graphics. The point and click adventure genre may seem outdated nowadays but the humour and writing is as fresh today as it was upon its first release all those years ago and Guybrush is probably the most endearing gaming protagonist ever created.

3) Bejeweled 2 Metacritic average 74

I don't think much needs sayin about Bejeweled 2 suffice to say its Metacritic average does not reflect its popularity. Bejeweled for those who don't know is a puzzle game that involves matching 3 colours. Sound simple, well yeah thats because it is and thats ultimately its biggest charm. Bejeweled can be played by anyone, its simple intuitive fun that everyone whether hardcore gamer or casual toe dipper should have played.

2) Joe Danger: Metacritic Average 86

Joe Danger is a motorbike stunt game that is weirdly enough a cross between ExciteBike on NES and Sonic The Hedgehog. Its simple gameplay and quirky charm are what make it such a fantastic example of downloadable gaming. It controls wonderfully and is just enough of a challenge to be enjoyable without being frustrating.

1) Grand Theft Auto 4-The Ballad Of Gay Tony: Metacritic Average 89

While almost everyone enjoyed GTA 4 one of the few criticisms aimed at the game was that it lacked the fun factor of previous titles, particularly San Andreas. This was rectified in the second downloadable episode for the game 'The Ballad Of Gay Tony' which follows the story of Luiz Lopez, the right hand man of the afformentioned 'Gay Tony' the nightclub king of Liberty City, that is until debt collectors and other unsavoury characters come knocking on Tonys door. This is where Lopez comes in using ever more lavish ways to keep the wolves from the door, including invading a luxury yacht and gunning down the owners and his henchmen from a helicopter to skydiving, base jumping, car chasing and dancing (yes dancing!!!). It really is a nice change from the dark and melancholic story in GTA 4 and remains the best thing you can download from the 2 major consoles online stores.

The BEST game on every platform i've owned!! Part 3 PS3

Ok as much as I love retro gaming it is not my intention to create a retro blog therefore I am jumping forward to the current gen to give you my favourite game on Sony's PlayStation 3 console.I will be returning to the consoles of old but felt an overwhelming urge to wax lyrical about my favourite PS3 experience so far which has been with the truly epic Fallout 3 from Bethesda.

Fallout 3 is (fairly obviously) a sequel to the original two Fallout games previously released on the PC. The story starts with the birth of your character and quickly flashes forward through the more important parts of your childhood taking in first steps, your 10th birthday party and your G.O.A.T exam all of which are ways of disguising character creation and stat building. All of this is taking place in Vault 101, an underground vault built to protect american citizens in the wake of a nuclear war. The main story begins when your father escapes the vault and you leave the vault to find him and find out why, and its from the first moment you step out into the vast open wasteland of post apocalyptic Washington D.C that it hits you how bloody big this game is going to be.
I won't go into great plot details but suffice to say this game is HUGE. If you don't have much to spend on gaming and need something to sink some time into, Fallout 3 is it. The main quest is not particularly lengthy, probably around 9 hours if you were to burn straight through it. But that would defeat the point, Fallout 3 is much more than the sum of its parts, aside from the main quest there are an abundance of side quests to do that will take you all over the map. Theres also so much looting to be done and weapons to construct and locations to find that you could literally only play this game for a year and still find new things to do and see.
The original game has been extended by DLC packs that extend the life of the game even more, each adding new storylines. If you were to download any I would recommend The Pitt, Broken Steel and Point Lookout but if you don't yet own a copy of Fallout 3 I suggest picking up the game of the year edition which includes all available downloadable content on the disc.
In summary Fallout 3 is in my opinion one of if not the best game I have played this generation. It far surpasses anything i have played in previous years and is still superior (but only just) to its sequel Fallout: New Vegas. If you have a PS3 (or 360) and haven't played this yet and an RPG with almost endless questing sounds like fun, I urge you to give it a try.

The BEST game on every platform i've owned!! Part 2 Atari ST

In the grand computer war of the late 80's/early 90's there were two competitors that fought a fierce battle. Commodore with their Amiga and Atari with the ST. Now i will be the first to admit that despite owning an ST i secretly longed for an Amiga but the ST was not without its charm and was home to loads of great games a lot of which were Amiga ports and vice versa.

The game i have picked as my favourite for the ST is Carrier Command.

THRILLING yeah!!!!


For those who have not heard of this game it was a sort of flight sim crossed with a real time strategy game using 3d vector graphics to create an (at the time) realistic game world. The game started on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean and at your disposal you had aircraft (MANTA's) and seacraft (WALRUS) and the basic idea was to take over the islands in the game world although there was an action mode that took care of the island takeovers for you and let you fly into action (hence action mode!!) without worrying too much about strategy. The game was critically acclaimed, receiving 90% plus reviews and a sequel is in the works for release on ps3/360 although the website is very vague so i wouldn't hold your breath.
The main reason i have chosen this as the finest the ST had to offer is simply the time i invested in this game. It was in a way a precursor to the open world genre we all love so much now. I also used to play this as a pure flight sim pretending the aircraft were charter planes and i was taking passengers to exotic islands, albeit islands that shot charter planes down on sight (sad i know!!!). All in all Carrier Command is a fantastic example of old school gaming that pushed things forward to give us the gaming landscape we enjoy today.