Console Memories II: SEGA MegaDrive

Posted on 17/08/2011 by galianmidge

Chronicle II: SEGA MegaDrive

Next up; SEGA’s 16-bit goliath (at the time) not to be confused with the SEGA Genesis (Model 1) in the UK which was on the market at a similar point in time and was not as good in my opinion. However, it was known as the Genesis in N.America… just thrown in there to confuse things. The MegaDrive was the second console I experienced and was what Nintendo answered to with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). In the early 90′s SEGA wanted a slice of Nintendo’s pie and entered the console market. For a long time SEGA and Nintendo were the dominant forces in console gaming. This was before CDs became widely used and monst Sony products were tape-players or early versions of the Walkman. Now… if you were unfortunate to be born in the mid-90′s then you have likely missed out on one of the most memorable gaming eras of all time! But fear not! As alot of the MegaDrive’s games have been released in various compilations on the XBox/PS/Wii.

The console model I owned was the PAL MegaDrive 16-Bit, original version. This was later replaced (5 years later I think) by the model 2 – which SEGA had a bit of a tradition doing, similar to how Sony shrink their consoles after a couple of years. The controller was notorious for causing thumb-blisters, show me a Street Fighter player on  the MegaDrive who never got a blister, and I’ll show you a liar! I remember looking at the console and thinking when the reset button and even sliding headphone volume adjuster were ever going to be used… well they proved me wrong as I found myself with headphones in so to not disturb my grandparents – and pressing reset alot… yep, the SEGA being cartridge based suffered the same afflictions as the NES. However! Now I have massive lungs… so… bonus! There weren’t alot of peripherals for the SEGA, there were a few Turbo controllers, which never came in handy. You could get a “sega CD” add-on something like 8 years later – probably SEGAs attempt to battle the PlayStation before submitting to the release of the SEGA Saturn.

I have countless memories of the games that I played on the SEGA, way too many to cram into this chronicle, but I’ll start with the obvious – you guessed it – Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, I don’t know what it was at the time… but a super fast blue hedgehog seemed perfectly acceptable. Imagine if they released it these days, people would scoff and the majority of gamers would likely avoid it. The thing about Sonic that worked so wonderfully was its ability to produce an eye-orgasm, overload on information at high speed, with the landscape tearing by, amazing. The gameplay design works extremely well too – 2-3 acts followed by a boss. This was the pinnacle of boss fights, that dasteredly Dr. Robotnik (Dr. Kintobor originally – not eggman, don’t ever give me “eggman”) never learnt. Sonic provided the right about of pure fun, followed by a few thought provoking moments, especially when underwater (COUNTDOWN) followed by a showdown boss fight. Talking of bosses, the final bosses were almost impossible when I was a youngster. Metal Sonic in Sonic 2 and Robotnik’s giant robot suit – solid!!! Ofcourse, Sonic 2 and 3 and even Sonic & Knuckles deserves a mention, but I won’t indulge here.

The next game I’m going to talk about has to be one of my favourite games of ALL TIME – GOLDEN AXE II, my God, I absolutely loved playing this game to death. I actually played Golden Axe 2 before 1, so 1 for me, was a major let-down. Everything about GA2 I loved – swords, axes, magic, dragons, monsters and ofcoure; Tyrus Flare… my oh my! Other  games that instantly spring to mind are; Road Rash – fast paced motorcycle racing, but with chains and planks of wood with a nail through ahaha. Then there is Desert/Jungle Strike, a helicoptor simulator of sorts, which involved you taking out militants in a combat chopper. Alot of fun, alot of tricky missions. Ofcourse, this chapter could not be completed without mentioning the excellence that is Street Fighter II – now, unlike many of my friends, I didn’t have this on the SNES but ofcourse, on the MegaDrive. Which in my opinion, is alot better. It felt alot smoother and the Turbo/Hyper modes out performed the SNES.

Some other gems hidden amongst the dust covered cartridges include; E-S.W.A.T., Dynamite Heady and Thunderforce IV. All great, albeit rare, MegaDrive titles.

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Console Memories I: NES

Posted on 17/08/2011 by galianmidge

Console Memories

I was thinking recently how good it would be to chronicle my gaming memories, a reflection on how my taste has changed and developed over the past 22 years but also it is a way to see just how far the gaming industry has come since the 80’s – have games really gotten any better? Are they as exhilarating to play? And what impact has modern technology had on the gaming industry? This memoire (if you will) will aim to answer these questions and then some, as well as acting as a personal record of gaming. It will also be great to relate to others’ and how they differ across a similar time period. Of course, I am aware that there are generations who do not know what a Commodore 64, BBC or what an Atari is. Really those of us whom have recently turned 20-25 really have had the benefit of experiencing the whole field of gaming, from its birth to its current form.

Chronicle I : NES

To kick start this off I’m going to start with the Nintendo Entertainment System (or the NES for short; pronounced ‘neh-ess’ / ‘ness’ like the character from the Earthbound series). Nintendo didn’t really dabble in video games until the early eighties, before then they focused on sports cards and until the launch of Game & Watch handhelds, home entertainment systems were almost unheard of (short of the commodore 64). In Japan, its birthplace, it was known as a famikon (Famicon). Any student of the Japanese language will know, this is a shortening of the katakana phonetics for the foreign words; family (fa-mi-ri) and computer (ko-n-pu-ta-).

When I first played the NES, I could grasp the concept easily; it had two-action-buttons (A & B), a start button, a select button and a D-Pad. Simple. This made games hugely accessible even to a wee-nipper like my young self. The first game I got my grubby little mitts on was Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt combination. Mario is a classic and is still played to this day, everyone knows about it so I won’t go into huge detail – except that World 8 – 3 (was it 4?) or somewhere around there was such a pain in the arse, I lost many a Mario life on that stage, but what was so amazingly fantastical was that it had two-players! You had to take it in turns of course and that caused problems… being younger than my brother, he would take a lot longer to die than I would, and thus, I would hardly get the chance to play. Then there was Duck Hunt, which you used along with the NES Super laser blaster gun peripheral! I remember seeing in the video stores than you could buy a massive blaster shotgun “super-Scope” type thingy which lit up the whole screen – arguably would make duck hunt incredibly boring. The clay pigeon shooting was also a fun add-on, but couldn’t top the satisfaction that was gained from watching those ducks drop.

Other note worthy games that I played include: Batman, Gremlins 2, Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers and Super Mario 2. Thinking back to Batman… I never did get very far; it had a huge difficultly curve and was a very unforgiving game. Gremlins too, was a challenging experience, with every level consisting of traps and trickery.  I fondly recall the co-operative game-play in Chip ‘n’ Dale, this was a fantastic game to play with a friend (or brother), if you could get them to stop picking you up and throwing you. Now Chip ‘n’ Dale was a game we could complete, time and time again. It was the right amount of challenging without being balls-breaking difficult. Time and time again I picked up Super Mario 2 and attempted to complete it. The thing about Mario 2 was that it took everything you knew about Mario and twisted it into a completely different gaming experience. This was nothing like Super Mario Bros. and the addition of 3 extra characters (Luigi, Peach, Toad) with the intention that each character could have a certain advantage on a certain level or could access certain hidden areas, the whole notion was ridiculous. It was, however, complete-able and that is by-and-large why I remember it so.

Wasn’t large fruit a general theme in classic gaming?!?!

I was never able to experience, “R.O.B.” or the Power-Gauntlet, which were hyped peripherals at the time, reflecting on this… it probably wasn’t so much of a bad thing! So here is the NES, my first console memory and my first frustrating experience with gaming. Although one thing the NES benefitted was probably my lung-capacity – blowing air into those cartridges every time was no mean feat.

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How To: Resolve XFX ATi Radeon HD 5870 Flashing Pixel Issue

Posted on 16/07/2011 by galianmidge

Disclaimer: The author of this guide is in no way responsible for any unforeseen damage to the product. Use this guide at your own risk. In the unlikely event that the product is damaged or fails, the author of this guide holds no responsibility. Responsibility is purely your own.

This is a quick and easy solution to the Radeon HD series graphics cards with the flashing pixel fault. If you have read on numerous forums that the card is “bricked” and will “fail shortly” do not try to RMD it straight away and start demanding refunds from the retailer just yet… there is a common problem with this series of graphics cards that is related to the type of motherboard you have installed and the settings that go along with them.

____________________________________________________
Video Guide

XFX ATi Radeon HD 5870 Flashing Pixel Solution

Written Guide

When I first purchased and received my XFX Radeon Graphics card I was over the moon – I had a state of the art graphics card and got it at a bargain price!

The next day after installing it, I started to notice strange flashing pixels appearing all over my monitor’s screen. I thought at first it was just a couple of dead monitor pixels, but on closer inspection, I realised that they constantly moved and appeared randomly – thus I knew it was not dead pixels. One thing puzzled me… during and after playing video games, the pixels would vanish.

Before I move on, I want to run through a check-list of all the options you should cover, just to be sure that it is the graphics card that is faulty:

  • Check the monitor – try the monitor on a different computer/try a different monitor on your computer with the XFX 5870 card installed. I tried my HDTV and HDMI cable.
  • Ensure your DVI cable is not faulty – if you are using a HD monitor, do not worry about this step. Alot of people have reported the “green sparkle” effect from faulty DVI cables – however, these green pixels tend to appear all over the screen.
  • Check the graphics card is properly installed/screwed onto the tower chasis tightly. Try re-seating the graphics card also.
  • Install the latest version of Catalyst Control Centre (CCC) and the latest graphics card driver.

 

Okay, if you have done all of the above and still have the flashing pixel problem, do not worry, there is a final solution to your problems and one that will most likely work. The problem is caused by the graphic cards’ 2D display option – hence why Windows 7′s Aero theme causes havoc and appears to amplify the problem. This also explains why the pixels do not appear in 3D video games.

There is another reason however, especially with the new range of “power saving” GigaByte motherboards, in simple terms the computer runs at too low of a temperature that the graphics card does not function correctly. A quick test of this will be to simply run the Auto-Tune option in CCC under  the “performance” menu. Typically the pixels will appear and get worse if the card temperature drops below 30 degrees celsius or so (a bit of a problem for me as my tower has 4 fans inside it). When the card is active and the temperature goes to between 35 – 45 degrees celsius the pixels will vanish completely.

In order to resolve the problem in less than no time at all; open up CCC

Next, under the “Performance” menu, select “AMD Overdrive”

  • Check the “enable overdrive” option, (A)
  • Next, increase the  GPU and memory clocks (B) - be careful at this stage, the last thing you want to do is overheat your graphics card. By testing the custom clocks (C) you can gauge how well your system can cope. If you notice the clocks at the bottom (D), they will show your current system settings. The flashing pixels typically appear because these clocks are running an insufficient MHz (as displayed in (D).
  • Pay close attention to the Temperature and Fan Speed readings (E), if your temperature is still too low, you can try reducing the fan speed – do this at your own risk!!!
  • Check the activity reading (F) - if at 0% your resting temp. is around 38-40 degrees Celsius, you should be fine. Make sure you check it again during high activity situations (playing video games/editing movies etc.) to check you are not overheating your graphics card!

The next thing to do is to create a new profile on CCC and save these settings, now everytime you want to activate them you can select your profile under the “Presets” menu.

Hopefully this guide will save you the hours of frustration I went through to get rid of those flashing pixels. I spent hours looking over forum posts to try and discover a solution and it just seemed nobody had an answer. Thankfully I discovered it myself and couldn’t be happier with my XFX ATi Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, Don’t lose faith in ATi just yet (!)

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Entertainment Review: Nintendo’s E3 Conference

Posted on 08/06/2011 by galianmidge

Nintendo E3 Conference – Running Review (June 2011)

2:00
So Nintendo kicked off this year’s E3 conference with a full-blown orchestra playing some of the classic soundtracks of the Zelda series, in celebration of Link’s 25 years at Nintendo. I must say, the presentation so far is excellent and I’m sure the audience are in awe. Clips from Nintendo’s recent re-hash of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS seems to be taking the majority of screen time, and boy, does it look great!

3:45
Shortly after, as could be easily predicted, we are being treated to a few never-before seen screens of the new Zelda game – The Skyward Sword, it looks refreshing, I see they have decided to shift away from the dark textures and realism used in Twilight Princess and have decided to meet the fans half-way between TP and The Wind Waker. Looks more Cel-shaded than previous clips I’ve seen.

4:30
Shigeru Miyamoto makes his enterance onto the stage, you know something is gonna go wrong or at least he’ll slip a few funnies into his presentation. He always makes me smile, just has that look about him! Hahah, he is already remanising about the old Zelda games he made and pretending to be Link, I thought for a moment he would do the whole spiel in English, but looks like he has called
a translator to do the talking. I wish the translator would take some time before talking, but I guess they only have an alotted time to present. They have decided to get the orchestra to play the classic sounds from the game. Shigeru loves it. To be fair this is really highlighting how amazing the soundtrack is… ooo a near slip up there, orchestra recovered well.

10:00
Nice to see lots of new features in the 3DS for veteran and new players alike. Suprise annoucement; Nintendo are letting their fans download The Four Swords game for free onto their 3DS/DSi. Gold remote released with Skyward Sword. 25th Anniversary concerts to be held around the World – fantastic, may be worth a look-in! Lots of free-content announced, giveaways all across the Zelda board.

20:00
Nintendo 3DS is showing it’s content – Mario Kart, StarFox, Super Mario, Kid Icarus… and OMG… Luigi’s Mansion 2! I must say at this point how much of a great job Nintendo are doing presentation wise so far. Oh Reggie… my least favourite Nintendo respresentive, he has like zero charisma, he reminds me of one of the contestants from The Apprentice.

36:52
Pokémon announcement, about 3D and what sounds like Augmented Reality, the big thing with handhelds at the moment. Oh it is just Pokédex 3D – a kind of Invisimals/AR Code hunting game, it’s a fun little add-on, but I can’t help but feel that it is just a pointless expansion to keep fans happy, thankfully it is free though!
Gosh, Nintendo love giving away things. Good point about the Wii, it is truely fun when playing as “WE” it never performed well as a single player console. New console announced: The WII-U… sounds strange, not sure how I feel about the name…

40:50
We finally get a glimpse at the Wii-U controller… looks like a bulky iPad/Game Gear hybrid, again, not sure how I feel. So basically it is a console, that you can just play on the controller. oh! A nice art program and Go! game included. Actually, woa now, there is too much flying at me all at once here! It actually looks incredible! Controller interacting with the TV. Too be honest, what I’m seeing here is actually an Add-On/Expansion to the Wii, Nintendo’s way
of competing with the iPad/Tablet Generation. Skype/Video call support announced. Excellent. WiFi and BlueTooth? Flick the image to the screen. It is great in the way it allows you to have the HUD on the controller instead of the main screen, alot like the DS. I see the angle they are coming at now. Clear the TV screen of messy HUDs and allow yourself to switch the game to the controller, like a pocket TV. This is great news, I can carry on playing Zelda, even when I need to take a dump! Brilliant! It looks a bit retro, like TV-Boy or whatever it was called, but my god, the amount of gadgetry added is a lot. Apparently no latency issues at all… HD support – FINALLY! Touchscreen and again the iPad element comes in for board games etc. Screen to screen interaction in the form of golf/ninja star throwing etc., seems quite cool. Web browsing support included, hope to God it isn’t Opera.

50:00
Miyamoto is back to promote the Wii-U. Graphical demo at 54:30 looks brilliant, good to see Nintendo stepping up their Hardware.
One of the points made was that if you have the new Wii-U controller, you have a “gaming advantage” as you can set the controller to different view points, e.g. bird’s eye or rear view in racing games and such.

57:30
LEGO City Stories annoucement made, for those of you who don’t know it is basically a LEGO kid-friendly version of Grand Theft Auto. “Swiss-Army Knife of controllers”… seems that way. Thinking about this, it could be fanatastic for tournament based gameplay, several matches off of the same console, at the same time.
Woa woa woa – Assassin’s Creed, Batman Arkham City, Darksiders 2! Announced for launch titles! Woa, this is massive news for Nintendo, they’ve never been able to support these high-res games. The games looks just as good on the new nintendo console as they do on PS3/XBox 360. Alien: Colonial Marines, Ghost Recon, Metro: Last Light, Tekken!, Ninja-bloody-Gaiden!,

1:05:00
What can I say… WELCOME BACK TO THE BIG LEAGUE, NINTENDO!

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How To: PS3 HDD – Remove & Replace

Posted on 21/05/2011 by galianmidge

How to Replace your PS3′s HDD

An easy step-by-step guide to replacing your PS3′s Hard disk, for either updating memory capacity or replacing damaged HDDs.

What you need:

  • Flat-bed screwdriver
  • Phillips-cross screwdriver – quite a small one needs to be used, can be found in any laptop maintanence kit or even from standard tool sets.
  • New SATA 2.5 Inch 5400rpm hard disk
  • Confidence – there is minimal risk of damaging your PS3 – as long as you don’t purposefully swipe your HDD with a magnet or scratch the hell out of the circuit boards with your screwdriver.

Photobucket

Step 1)
Safely remove the panel located on the base of the PS3 – use a flat bed screwdriver or any thin tool, unless you have really long finger nails!

Step 2)
Unscrew the blue-coloured screw using a phillips-cross screwdriver. Place the screw safely to one side.

Step 3)
Flip up the metal handle and slide the HDD out, firstly sideways then outward. This is your PS3′s hard disk in casing.

Step 4)
Unscrew the four screws holding the HDD to the case-grill. Place the screws safely to one side.

Step 5) Slide your replacement HDD into the case-grill you just removed from the old one, screw in the four screws.

Step 6)
Slot your new HDD into the base of the PS3, slide into the connectors – press firmly to ensure everything is connected up. Re-screw in the blue screw and attach the panel. And there you have it, easy as that.

For a video guide, check out DIY PS3 HDD replacement video on YouTube (original image source) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B1mQ21XXLE&feature=related

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Movie Review: Onechanbara Beauty（お姉チャンバラ）(2008)

Posted on 21/05/2011 by galianmidge

Onechanbara Beauty （お姉チャンバラ）(2008)

The first in the Onechanbara triology, Onechanbara Beauty is exactly what a live-action movie based on a video game/manga should be!
I’m really not sure what to say about this movie, as I know nothing about the onechanbara series or video games, apparently the video games currently available in Europe are: Onechanbara – Bikini Samurai Squad on the X-Box 360 and a “simple series” style game; Onechanbara – Zombie Slayers on the Nintendo Wii.

Now the premise is rather simple, Aya, the heroine is looking for her younger sister, Saki during a zombie apocalypse. Zombies seem so popular now-a-days, but seeing as this is influenced by Resident Evil and was originally created 10 or so years ago, you shouldn’t automatically place this movie into the same zombie craze that seems to sweeping Hollywood right now. The zombies for a start are excellent fighters and cause utter mayhem, plus they vapourise after being killed… how cool!

A few major characters remain throughout the story and it doesn’t dawdle at all, the movie kicks off with plenty of action and maintains the excitement throughout – if not accelerating it. Okay, yes the battles invloving samurai swords with special powers is very cheesey, but don’t forget this is a Japanese movie and based on what is effectively a comic
book video game and maintains the fun found there. The CG effects are very simple, and can easily be forgiven as the budget for this movie was clearly quite low compared to other Japanese cult block-busters, this keeps it true to video gaming though.

The low-down here is that Aya and Saki are from a cursed clan of samurai warriors whom have the ability to enter a type of “rage” mode where they glow red/blue respectively and gain super-speed – this makes for a fun and amusing final show down between Aya and Saki. Big shout out the the evil scientist who caused the zombie hoarde to be, his actor (Tarô Suwa) plays him manically and with vigour.

I wouldn’t advise anyone to sit-down and watch this movie seriously. As you could probably gather from this website, I don’t tend to review mainstream Hollywood movies, but I do like to pick out those weird and wonderful creations that lurk around the back of the room – so to speak. This movie was probably one that should of been made into a anime feature-length movie as opposed to live-action. Unfortuantely alot of the effects let it down, and even the main character’s tattoos are clearly fake transfers. On a side-note, there is a sawn-off-shotgun that appears to have unlimited ammo without reloading.
All in all this movie is very silly but can be very fun and entertaining (depends on the audience viewing!), likely a fan of anime or manga or even Japanese video game titles, may like this movie alot more than a serious cinema-goer!

I’ll give this a 6/10, I did enjoy it, but a bikini-clad samurai girl has that effect on me.

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Entertainment Review: We Will Rock You – The Musical

Posted on 04/04/2011 by galianmidge

It has certainly been a while, but I’m kicking off this next batch of reviews with something a little different. That something is a musical, none other than We Will Rock You – The Musical by Queen and Ben Elton. First thing’s first, if you love/like/enjoy Queen songs then you’ll love this musical. If you are not a fan of Queen’s hits then perhaps Ben Elton could entice you into seeing this. I’d recommend giving it a go regardless, personally I am a big Queen fan and also enjoy Ben Elton’s novels, so this was a sure-fire hit from the get-go.

Now, We Will Rock You is by no means a brand-new musical. It has been a London West-End hit for several years but it has only just managed to reach Wales and Cardiff’s Millennium Centre, bringing with it an entirely different cast and a fresh take on the whole show. Having done a little bit of research here and there it was evident that the Cardiff stage-team are slightly better than the London based team, in performance, singing capability and even looks. Now, I’m not saying the London team don’t have these qualities, or I may be being biased, but the Cardiff team were a pleasure to watch. One particular singer, Rhydian, was instantly recognisable as the operatically trained contestant from reality television talent show; The X-Factor, playing an evil commander, Rhydian was an excellent addition to the cast, holding a strong resemblance to Resident Evil’s villain, Albert Wesker (and therefore made him very cool).

Upon ordering the tickets I must admit that I thought a musical by Queen would be based on the band’s rise to fame and glory. However, much to my surprise, the whole thing is a fictitious story set in the future, where individuality and statement through music is outlawed and illegal. This was ultimately a brilliant way to incorporate Queen’s songs and Ben Elton’s storyline, whilst keeping satire and jokes aimed at present day music artists on a high. The story follows Gallileo Figero, a young man detained for free-speech and delusional fantasies following his High School graduation. Another unnamed free-thinker, a girl, later named Scaramoosh (you get where all these names are coming from) is also detained, and the two meet in a correction facility. Later, they escape and manage to join a resistant group called, “The Bohemians” a group that go against everything the “Killer Queen” (the leader of GlobalSoft, the company that control the world – and its music) stands for. We follow Gallileo and Scaramoosh in their endeavours against the Killer Queen and their encounters with the rather funnily named Bohemians.

The placement of the Queen songs is expertly done throughout, turning this musical into a drama through good singing and acting. A few of the songs included will not be as well known as; “Don’t Stop Me Now” or “Fat-Bottomed Girls” (to name a few), but regardless of whether you know the songs or not, We Will Rock You is a pleasantly paced, joyful experience for Queen fans or lovers of Rock music alike.

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Game Review: Red Dead Redemption – Undead Nightmare

Posted on 25/01/2011 by galianmidge

Red Dead Redemption - Undead Nightmare (PS3/XBox 360)

I was given RDR:UN for Christmas from a family friend – a lá [PROTOTYPE] last year. I wasn’t expecting the same boring drivel with Undead Nightmare though as I have heard excellent things regarding it, and having seen Red Dead Redemption played first hand, my hopes were high.

I booted up the game, one update taking seconds to install, okay good, I must admit I was confused at first… could my friend of possibly bought the full game with game pack expansion? No, ofcourse not, he isn’t made of money, but that is the impression I got when I earnt my first achievement/trophy for helping out a random man being attacked at his camp site by a gang of “Zed-heads” – it turns out the entire trophy data is installed and you can earn a few Red Dead Redemption trophies for racking up gun kills and such. Anyway, after wasting all my ammunition on protecting him and getting to grips with the game, I proceeded to receive my well deserved reward of… wait.. what?! 6 lousy revolver bullets?! My God…
I was pretty riled at this guy’s minimalistic approach to me saving his life so I went on to lasso him, hogtie that sucker and steal the contents of his storage chest – 3 rifle rounds… brilliant(!) This is the first real point I will raise concerning Undead Nightmare; the beginning of the game is by far the most difficult part, as you swan into Blackwater Town to find out what is going on you are ambushed by hordes of zombies.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried taking out 20+ zombies with 6 revolver bullets but I employed the old retreat from town, pick off a few, retreat again, loot their corpses and pray for ammo. It was after about 10 minutes of keeping up this facade that I realised that they were respawning, and rapdily. No choice but to jump on the ol’ steed and leg-it over to the next mission marker. Point two; navigation, particularly around alley ways and trying to find the save bed in a three storey house has got to be one of the most frustrating things this game can throw at you. Having found the save point in and around a few different towns, I noticed the difficulty curve steadily flattening out, killing zombies and stock piling ammunition has suddenly become easier and Dead-Eye makes killing a group of 6+ too easy.
Undead Nightmare doesn’t like you to get comfortable though, if you save like an obsessed lunatic (like I did after every town I saved), you’ll soon find out that each “save/sleep” takes around 6 in-game hours or so, and after 3 in-game days you get notifications that towns you have already saved have come under attack. This keeps you on your feet and delays you finishing the game if anything. Ofcourse, you don’t have to save a town, but it it becomes overrun and all the survivors die, the town will drop like hot-cakes in the future (Keep a watchful eye on Thieves’ Landing, Armadillo and Blackwater – as these were the only towns that ever got re-infected, albeit at an extraordinarily fast rate).

Various advantages to saving towns include quick travel access and ammunition boxes, you need all you can get in the early game. This is an interesting feature, although at the start I got incredibly bored, incredibly quickly – this was when my opinion of the game decreased significantly. I was struggling to continue to play any longer than 20 minutes at a time. Eventually the game came into its own and I found I was playing for a bit longer each time I started the session.

Let us talk about the storyline next, the suprisingly good thing about Undead Nightmare was that you didn’t actually know what was going on until the very end of the game. In some games this would become tiresome but in Undead Nightmare it is one of the major driving forces in the game. There were speculations by various NPCs and characters from Red Dead Redemption appear once more to aid John Marston (or hinder). The game kicks off with you trying to find the cause and cure of the dead rising from their graves and terrorising the wild West. Marston’s family is attacked by their Uncle, whom they believe is crazy drunk, leaving Marston with his zombified wife and son tied up in their home. Marston embarks on his quest to discover the source of this plague. All the “missions” tie in nicely to the main storyline and some characters finally get their just desserts. The inclusion of side-quests can take you away from the storyline long enough to keep it fresh, however, Undead Nightmare is an expansion pack, and therefore is not very long. You’ll be done with it between 6 – 8 hours of game time. Ofcourse, if you wanted to 100% the game be prepared to play for twice as long as alot of the challenges can be quite tricky.

Undead Nightmare is not just a single player expansion pack for Red Dead Redemption, it actually builds upon the multiplayer gameplay. The game pack features the full online mode, so if you purchased the undead nightmare disc then the only thing you are missing is Red dead redemption’s single player story (which is quite a big part of the game) but if, like me, you are more interested in the ‘shooting undead in the face’ part of the game, then you’ve made a good decision. Multiplayer adds several new game modes including poker, dice games, land grab and hold-out. The addition of co-op missions and undead survival are fantastic. Rockstar did well with the multiplayer additions, unfortunately the game is not as captivating as many other online ventures and so interest dwindles and not an awful lot of people are available to play. chances are most will be preoccupied in their free roam session to bother playing games with you. Undead nightmare allows you to play the multiplayer games from the original game with players who only have the original game – a good feature. On the topic of multiplayer we see many more avatar choices. Included the infamous cast of the original Red Dead Revolver game. I was a bit disappointed to find that the customisation in multiplayer and single player is minimal, I really wanted to dress Marston up in a big, white cowboy hat with a red neck bandana and thick framed, blue, round glasses and yell, “The Milky Bars are on me!” before throwing Boom bait (undead bait stuffed full o’ dynamite), oh well, another dream for another game!

I’ll quickly cover some problems I had with this game; number 1 – it is incredibly unstable, I’m not talking Call of Duty: Black Ops unstable, but the old, “play-for-hours-then-the-game-crashes-without-saving-unstable.” Infuriating. Number 2 -Marston  controls like a blimp and the horse adds another dimension of clumsy to the whole thing.

Summary
Gameplay – 7/10 the game is great fun, but gets tiresome quickly, ideal for short bursts of gaming at a time. The multiplayer is a big step up from Red Dead Redemption and does the game justice – if you can find anyone to play with that is.
Audio – 7/10 nothing great here, the voice acting is fantastic, that is, if you can stand Southern American accents for long periods of time.
Visual – 6/10 again, nothing spectacular here, everything is brown-washed and gritty. zombie models arn’t great and the animal models are even worse. Cutscenes are okay, but you’ll probably find yourself skipping the majority as they are long, drawn-out and ultimately incredibly boring.
Longetivity – 4/10 I highly doubt you’ll pick this up again anytime soon after completing it. You may want to go back through the post-game sometime in the future. Chances are you’ll be so glad that you don’t have to play it, that you simply forget about it
until it becomes refreshing again.
Overall – Not a brilliant expansion, despite what critics may say (all too often I’ve seen it being given 10/10), I disagree, the game will be far too easy to complete, frustrating when your character model gets stuck, tiring when you can’t locate the save room and all together disengaging.

NRGDrink Review Score: 6/10


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Game Review: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I

Posted on 02/11/2010 by galianmidge

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I (PS3/XBox 360/Wii)

In a desperate attempt to revive Sonic’s popularity, Sega have returned to what can be described as “the essential roots” of the series. They’ve decided enough is enough and done away with the Sonic Adventure style games and such titles as “…and the Black Knight,” “…Unleashed,” which featured Sega’s mascot wielding a sword or changing into a monster respectively, they all seemed very un-Sonic like and played terribly. Sega agrees! Sega have decided to release Sonic 4, picking up where Sonic & Knuckles left off.

Game-play returns to classic sonic, but with a few extras thrown in. The most obvious is the double-jump homing-dash that makes linking enemy kills to level design overall more integral and gives enemies more of a purpose rather than just simply being there to throw Sonic a curveball in an attempt to steal rings off him. In terms of graphical update, little could be achieved, other than richer textures and 3D-ish character models; Sonic is still essentially 2D but at times looks a bit strange – or as strange as a bipedal walking blue hedgehog can look. The “walk-to-run” animations don’t look as smooth as they did in Sonic 1 – 3 or even in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. As far as boss-battles go, there is nothing new, most the battles and even levels are simply re-hashed versions from the older games, this has a nostalgic element to it but lacks any real challenge, and most of the boss fights against Robotnik (Dr. Eggman) can be finished before they’ve really had a chance to start.

The levels or so to be “SEGA-ly” correct; the Acts themselves are beautifully done, and it is hard to find anything wrong with them aesthetically. They are just like the old games, just looking a little bit more crisp and colourful, and add some nice little game-play features (such as; running around in complete darkness or riding the card bridge to poker land where three of anything is a definite win). Sonic 4 also sees the return of the special stage, although this time it works much like Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, where you control the Sonic 1 style stage and press “X” (A/2/X) to jump – which does absolutely nothing from what I can gather.

I suppose what is good about Sonic 4: Ep. 1 is that it will let newcomers experience the classic game-play that they have been robbed from by being born into the wrong and unfortunate generation, unlike our wise selves whom know what a decent Sonic game is and grew-up with the fore-front of retro-gaming and lived through the rise of a multi-console giant through to the demise into a third-party company endlessly pumping out poor plat-formers featuring a scrawny blue hedgehog and his multi-coloured array of forest animals… or so was the tale of Sega… If you happen to be a Sonic veteran, this game can be finished within a matter of a single evening. It will be interesting to see where Episode 2, 3 and maybe even a 4 can take this. Or is Sega in fact a mastermind genius playing on our nostalgic and naïve minds, slowly milking the sweet-sweet stream of money from our bank accounts as we are hypnotized into believing Sonic really has made a turn around… (oh wait Sonic Riders! >< Doh!) time will tell, but let us hope this time it doesn’t take them 10+ years.

6.5/10

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Movie Review: Go Find A Psychic! (2009)

Posted on 22/10/2010 by galianmidge

Go Find A Psychic! (曲がれ！スプーン！) (2009)

Charming Japanese comedy focusing on an individual’s belief of the paranormal. Master’s Kinesis Café, a home to psychics who want to share their abilities but hide them from the general public and mass media TV mess that is “Are you a Psychic?” a talent show that has taken Japan by storm. Katsuyuki Motohiro directs this quaint masterpiece and he does a brilliant job of conveying comedy, hope, belief and sadness. Makoto Ueda’s original storyline provokes emotion from its audience and is definitely worth watching if you have a spare couple of hours.

“Go Find A Psychic!” starts with a young girl, Yone (Masami Nagasawa), and her ‘quest’ to go find a psychic capable of convincing the audience that super natural powers do exist. Along the way she meets various interesting characters who claim to have witnessed supernatural activity or can perform a feat of magnificence themselves. Despite all the disappointment her journey leads her to the final stop at the oddly named “Kinesis Café” to meet ‘The Thin Man’ whom can squeeze through not so narrow gaps. Unimpressed she must return to the TV studio on Christmas Eve to deliver the disappointing news to her boss. Yone is, however, unaware that she has just stumbled into the café which plays host to a secret psychic club, where all the members have abilities; manipulation of electronic devices, x-ray vision and telekinesis to name a few. These psychics are in hiding, but wish to share their powers with other like-minded folk.

We witness hilarious situational comedy as the group of psychics attempt to hide their abilities whilst making sure their guest is catered for and safe from her previous encounter; “Mr. Invincible’s venomous spiders”. As Yone leaves, Shinna-san is able to read her mind and realises that all the years she spent as a youngster researching strange occurrences has built up her beliefs to this moment, where they have all been utterly shattered and it is time to “Get Real!”… Before Yone departs the psychics take it upon themselves to reignite the flame of hope by giving Yone a small Christmas Miracle.

“Go Find A Psychic!” is an overwhelmingly warm comedy, it is hard to dislike any of the characters and it will have you giggling, it also coins the term, “Voyeur Psychic” ! 9/10!

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