Donkey Kong Country Glitch

Kong humps Kong...

Xbox 360 Slowing Down GTA IV Development?

Rockstar's creative VP Dan Houser said in an interview with the official Playstation magazine (UK) that lack of Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and built-in HDD was hindering the development of GTA IV on the Xbox 360.

Well if this holds true then umm... yikes, the 360's life is going to be short indeed. It is interesting though, since the only ever seen playable demo of the game was actually running on an Xbox 360, this could well be a PR move to reassure the Playstation 3 owners that their beloved console still has its advantages.

Then again, could be the beginning of the end for the 360, perhaps 'future proofing' the Playstation 3 was a smart move after all.


VIA IGN

Burnout 5 - 'Burnout Paradise' Officially Announced!

Head over to Criterion games and find this loverly press release, a trailer and a bunch of screenshots have also been released.

Bioshock Water

Bioshock's water effects have not only met peoples expectations but have left behind any game that would like to claim to have the best looking water in the dust.







It makes Half-Life 2's water look like pre-Quake 2 era.

Playstation 3 - Medal of Honor, Black Exlcusivity?

EA's boss Gerhard Florin claims despite the inflated price point the Playstation 3 can only be judged fairly in two years and claims like a Sony rep that EA will 'need' CELL for games like 'Black' and 'Medal of Honor'.

He added more online oriented games will be released on the Xbox 360 but gave no word on Medal of Honor or Black being released on it.

Does this mean no 'Black' or 'Medal of Honor' lov'n for the Xbox 360 in two years time? WHile it is far fetched to believe if you allow yourself to believe Sony's hype machine then it may turn into a reality, of course Gerhard is boss of EA which made the mistake of tying itself down to the Playstation 3 and is now playing 'catch up' with the Wii.


VIA Game Industry

Taiko Drum Master Coming to Nintendo DS

It may turn into the Guitar Hero of the portable market, Namco Bandai have announced Taiko Drum Master for the DS and yes it will let you drum to the Super Mario Bros theme.

Controls are still a secret (we still have our imaginations) and Namco still hasn't revealed any screenshots of the lower screen of the game. The game will feature four player multiplayer with drummer personalization features (you can dress up your drummer).



Current song list:

J-Pop:
Natsumatsuri (Summer Festival)
Won't Be Long
Mata Aimashou (Let's Meet Again)
Dance2 Featuring Soy Sauce [Pocky Chocolate Commercial Song]

Children's/Folk Music:
Mori no O-Kumasan (Bears in the Forest)
Inu no O-mawarisan (Dog and the Policeman)

Game Music:
Super Mario Bros.

Classical:
Beethoven's 7th (partial)
William Tell Overture
Heaven and Hell (Offenbach)
Flight of the Bumblebee (Rimsky-Korsakov)
Classic Medley (Wedding Songs)

Namco Originals:
Kimi ni Touch!
Mojipittan Medley
Kagekiyo
Pachi O-Sensei

VIA Wired

More 'New' GTA IV Details

Game Informer has spilled the beans on (some more) of the neat-o features behind GTA IV the coolest of which is the removal of airplanes and the addition of helicopters.

The reason for removing the airplanes is the fact the game will be centered around one city so the gameplay wouldn't suit an airplane though flying is still a 'very large part of the game'.

Drivable boats may also make an appearance (why the hell wouldn't they with that awesome looking water?) as well as girlfriends - no word on an 'unlockable' hot-coffee mini-game.

Graphically the game is already very impressive though Rockstar is still making improvements here, adding bucket loads of spit and polishing away as hard as possible.

Driving is also apparently going to be revamped a bit, probably for the better, Game Informer says it will be far more like 'Midnight Club' in that the camera will be further up close to the car and give more vision to the player of the surroundings.


VIA IGN

AGEIA PhysX Behind 'Red Steel' Physics

No joke, Ageia PhysX is behind the physics in Ubisoft's first Nintendo Wii game 'Red Steel'.


Complete list of titles currently using Ageia PhysX

Auto Assault	Net Devil
Bet on Soldier: Blackout Saigon	Kylotonn Entertainment
Bet on Soldier: Blood of Sahara	Kylotonn Entertainment
Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport (Patch)	Kylotonn Entertainment
CellFactor: Combat Training	Artificial Studios, Immersion
City of Villains	Cryptic Studios
Dark Physics	The Game Creators
Gears Of War	Epic Games
Infernal	Metropolis Software
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire	BEC
Red Steel	Ubisoft Paris
RoboBlitz	Naked Sky
Stoked Rider: Alaska Alien	Bongfish
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter	GRIN
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (single player mode)	Ubisoft Paris
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas	Ubisoft Montreal
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (multiplayer mode)

Ubisoft seems to be making the most of it, Unreal Engine 3 will be utilizing it in full and since Ubisofts current game engine seems to be a UE2 with some UE3 elements thrown in we have a sure fire bet that Ubisoft Wii titles, at least in part, will be powered by UE3.

The following game engines are/will be using AGEIA PhysX technology,

Engine Name	Developer
Unreal Engine 3	Epic Games
Gamebryo	Emergent Entertainment
Reality Engine	Artificial Studios
Eclipse Engine	Bioware
Saber3D	Saber Interactive
Vision Engine 6.0	Trinigy

What Microsoft Should Have Done

Only a few months ago it looked like it was all over for Sony, going from top dog to underdog in one press conference, one ‘Riiiiiidge Racerrrrr’ and one very large enemy crab.

Microsoft should have taken advantage of this and hit Sony in its weak point for massive damage, or strong points, just to really kick them hard while they were down. Granted it would have been difficult and would have pushed the consoles profitability back a few years it would have dealt Sony such a massive blow the whole company would take a down turn.

What Microsoft should have done after the E3 Press Conference and should have done before,

One SKU Sold From the Start: Forget premium and pro consoles, Microsoft should have just released the premium, made the removable hard drive part of all consoles sold, it might have resulted in slightly less sales initially but in the long run it would be a massive hit against Sony's free market HDD initiative with the Playstation 3.

More, Cheaper Hard Drives: Choice is king, and in response to Sony's open hard drive design the Xbox 360 should right now have a series of reasonably priced add on hard drives with 60 gigabytes, 120 gigabytes and 250 gigabytes on the market right now, why they don't is beyond me and all human reason.

Revamped Premium SKU: A month or two before the Playstaiton 3 launch Microsoft could have released a 'premium 2' Xbox 360 SKU with the 120 or 250 gigabyte hard drive and built in HD-DVD player. Despite fears that Blu-Ray may beat HD-DVD in the format wars if the Xbox 360 had one it would aid in this war considerably and possibly win it. Add to the 'premium 2' SKU wireless and Bluetooth support and you really have something else. On top of that phazing out the Core unit and price dropping the original premium to the price of the Core would, despite initial losses, completely wipe out Sony as a potential competitor, whats to compete with? Of course if the Core actually existed, given I'd rather it didn't.

Free Online Announcement: Come on, right now the Playstation 3 has free online play and like it or not it is quickly catching up to Live's usability. Instead of just pushing Live further down with newer more robust features and more solid online an 'Xbox Live is free from now on' would have on its own stolen Sony's thunder. No doubt the transition for many a paying Live 360 owner would be a rough one, some form of compensation of the owners choosing would probably be the best way to go.

Rare Should Compete with Insomniac, Not Nintendo

Nintendo has carved out an extremely solid market that is now impossible to penetrate, least of all by an ex-second party developer. There is no way Microsoft can steal part of that market from Nintendo with Rare's efforts, the dismal sales of the above average 'Viva Piñata' is more than enough evidence that just like Sony's demographic there is no room for 'E for Everyone'.

Rather than full blown games, titles such as Singstar are the only way to go, that is how Sony is penetrating the generel market. Sony sure isn't throwing key developers at an almost non-existent demographic but rather experimenting with it and making progress (as can be seen).

Rare is a great developer, if allowed, it could make mature games such as 'Conkers Bad Fur Day'. Conker should be for Microsoft what Ratchet and Clank is for Sony, a really solid franchise, not game, franchise. Instead what were getting is high quality titles that aren't selling because there aren't enough people who want to play the game, would a twenty five year old want to sit down and watch 'Sleeping Beauty'? Of course not, does that make 'Sleeping Beauty' a bad movie? Not necessarily, it could be a good movie but not one a twenty five year old wants to watch.

So cut the crap Microsoft, bring Rare into competition with the big one, you know who the big one is, don't you?

Blu-Ray - Genuine Advantages to Gaming?

Sony has been pushing Blu-Ray's storage capacity as the big thing that will make the Playstation 3 'future proof' however has left out performance from the equation. It almost seems like some of Sony's most loyal third party developers are rushing to justify the mandatory Blu-Ray format for all games as if it were not only a good thing but the only way to go.

Insomniac's Brian Hastings recently causing quite a stir defending the Playstation 3, he would too, Insomniac is one of Sony's biggest third party developers. While Hastings claims he isn't biased because Insomniac is a third party developer he neglects to mention that Sony has invested $20 million in Insomniac to develop Resistence: Fall of Man and the technology that would push later games Insomniac will be releasing on the Playstation 3.

Hastings reasons that since storage is vital that in the coming months DVD's will not be able to hold all the data necessary for next generation games. He also mentions that 'Gears of War' looks better than 'Resistance: Fall of Man' because Gears uses texture streaming wherein Fall of Man doesn't. He continues further elaborating that texture streaming will increase the size of games severel folds and is speculating at seeing games where each individual level will be approximately one gigabyte. He implies that given DVD's small storage space textures will be coming at a premium hence texture streaming won't ever be utilized to its fullest.

Of course he neglects to mention one key flaw in his texture streaming theory, that is, the DVD drive in the Xbox 360 has a higher transfer rate than the Blu-Ray drive in the Playstation 3. While the Xbox 360 sports 16x DVD which has a transfer rate of 16mb per second the Playstation 3's Blu-Ray is at 2x which translates to 9mb per second transfer rates.

If textures are to be streamed from the optical media the higher the transfer rate the more efficient the streaming will be, it's as simple as that. The matter of storage is almost null and void, one game can have several DVD's but the Playstation 3's Blu-Ray drive will never be beyond 2x, at least it won't be such that a developer can comfortably develop for anything above that.

While all these are legitimate concerns I think within two years it will be a moot point. Things are moving away from optical media to hard drive storage. I think that eventually Xbox 360 'core' owners are going to be pressured into buying a hard drive to play games. It may sound bad now but in that two years the 20gigabyte Xbox 360 hard drive will probably cost less than a game and run just as well.

Metal Gear Solid 4 Coming to Xbox 360

Konami has issued a press release stating that Metal Gear Solid 4 will be released on the Xbox 360 with exclusive online content.

Konami Corporation (Konami) is happy to announce the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 4:

Guns of the Patriots will release for the Xbox 360 game console in Q1 2008. The game will release for PlayStation 3 game console soon after, pending the conclusion of a limited exclusivity agreement with Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft). Through joint effort with Microsoft, Konami will bring Xbox 360 gamers exclusive online game content and gameplay modes through the Xbox Live service.


Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the follow up to 2004's highly successful Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Gamers will return to the story of Solid Snake in the events following 2001's Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Now an aging and exhausted operative in the middle of a futuristic battlefield, Solid Snake must battle his own declining genetical makeup. In spite of his failing body, Snake is equipped with a crucial new device tentatively known as "OctoCamo," a high-tech suit that dynamically transforms its texture based on Snake's surroundings.

Anyone excited?

April Fools :-)

Three (3)

There are three gaming communities built around three companies, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It is interesting how there are distinct similarities yet striking differences between the ways these communities form and interact with itself and others.

The Nintendo communities I have seen are, as a matter of fact, populated by kids, mostly below the age of sixteen. I know I'll be copping some negative flack for this but this is how it seems to be in the majority of cases. Consequently I could say that the Nintendo communities is the most immature, ironically it extends beyond just members of a public web forum and can cause problems in higher levels of said forum, such as moderators and admins not knowing how to deal with such persistent issues of immaturity. With the young age there was also a nice side effect - over optimism, Nintendo fanboys are the most bloody optimistic bunch of all three fanboy groups, this optimism did on occasions become too optimistic to digest, 'HD for Wii!11!11!1!!!!!1'.

For instance on one forum that was pretending to be even across all three consoles had a very heavy Nintendo bias, very heavy. The demographic consisted of mostly below sixteen year olds, Sony bashing was extremely rife to the point (above sixteen year old) moderators had given up trying to quell the Sony bashing, I am almost convinced the mods actually like it but never took part in the behavior the younger members did. Either that or they are incompetent.

This didn't extend to all web communities centering around Nintendo, however the general 'feel' of a Nintendo biased community was very much exaggerated on the aforementioned forum. Granted there were a few adult Nintendo fanboys and these adults were far more mature than most fanboys from Sony and Microsoft they were few in far in between, mostly they were people brought up as Nintendo fanboys from a young age. These older people also tended to own multiple systems, Wii60 being the most popular combination of all but I did find the occasional Playstation 3/Wii combination.

Point By Point, Nintendo Fanboy Communities:

• Are the most immature, most of the core fanboys are below 16 and have the maturity of kids half their age (wouldn't be surprised if they get bullied in the real world)
  
• Have the most flaming/trolling
• Have some of the most mature members but are few and far inbetween, these members also tend to own multiple systems
• Can sometimes admit to faults in their systems

Arrogance is something that extends beyond Sony's PR and goes all the way to the communities, I literally laughed out loud when a Sony fanboy repeated Kaz Hirai like some lapdog on how Blu-Ray would give developers more 'freedom' despite the extra cost (and the fact most developers might not want the extra 'freedom'). Other wonderful comments these fanboys like to spout out include 'Blu-Ray is the future' and 'CELL is the future'. Justifying the heavy price of the Playstation 3 is something these folks have nailed down to a science, 'it has a built in Blu-Ray player on its own hence it's worth it and CELL will guarantee it has a future beyond 2 years and Killzone 2 will be the Halo killer and OMGWTF!? SIXAXIS ROX!' was the general consensus. Everything bad about the Playstation 3 and Sony in general was spun to make it look good, everything good about the Playstation 3 was used as an argumentative point against the competition (i.e. Microsoft and Nintendo).

Justification is key in the Sony forums, unlike other fanboy communities they justify everything, including what cannot be justified about the Playstation 3, from SIXAXIS to Blu-Ray, if you say anything slightly, remotely negative about the Playstation 3 you'll be beat down for it for blasphemy, even something simple like 'I'd prefer the Wii-Mote to SIXAXIS' was enough to really start the fires.

This arrogance they hold seems to precede everything else, even games themselves, seems like they don't care how they play their games or watch their movies so long as they do it on the Playstation 3, when the GTA 4 trailer was finally released one of the first topics on note was how the trailer was 'obviously' running on the Playstation 3 and the game would also (rather 'obviously') look like crap on the Xbox 360.

The difference between Sony fanboys and Microsoft fanboys is arrogance, literally. I'm sure not all Sony fanboys can be described as above but by god most of them can be, Sony fanboys just love to spin the negatives of the Playstation 3 and bash the competition with the cool features the Playstation 3 has, it's like the only reason they want the Playstation 3 to do well is so they can rub it in other (non-Sony fanboy) peoples faces.

It's a pity that Sony fanboys can't keep to themselves, I've seen them troll like crazy on Nintendo and Microsoft biased forums. On Nintendo forums the reaction was often anger and flaming that lead to more flamewars while on the Microsoft forums things were a lot cooler.

Point By Point, Sony Fanboy Communities:

• Are by and far the most arrogant
• Is the only community that will not at all ever admit to any fault in the Playstation 3 or PSP at all and would rather justify said faults and spin them as best they can
• Have the highest rate of trolling and flaming
• Care more about owning a Playstation 3 for the sake of a Playstation 3, games, services and all that take second place
• Love to bash other systems and seem to only own a Playstation 3 for the sake of bashing other 'inferior' systems. Truly if the Playstation 3 had no games five million fanboys would buy it to bash its competition
  

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) the Microsoft biased community was overwhelmingly the most mature and level headed. I never would have thought I'd see the day were a moderator on an Xbox 360 fanboy site would openly scorn Xbox fanboys from bashing Sony for no real reason, or even Nintendo for that matter (granted anti-Nintendo tripe was far less common).

I guess what Microsoft fanboys want most is to see their console improve, they don't justify failings of the 360 or try to spin it (unlike Sony fanboys), for instance since the announcement of the Elite 360 there has been a massive uproar for severel reasons, including price, lack of built in HD-DVD drive and HDMI 1.2 amongst other things. I'm not saying all those complaints are justified but I for one am bloody well surprised of all three communities the Microsoft one happened to be the most open and self critical of all.

When the GTA 4 trailer was released the Sony biased forums I visited were in uproar about how cool it was and how the trailer must be running on a Playstation 3 and not an Xbox 360 because obviously only the Playstation 3 can make graphics like that. I was shocked that all three Sony biased forums had this general push behind them, of all things, they were excited about the trailer not because it was GTA 4 but because they had convinced themselves it was running on the Playstation 3 and that it would look worse on the 360, at least that was their main driving point. None of the Microsoft biased communities had such a reaction, all of them were happy about the trailer and excited about the game, discussing what they saw in the trailer, the closest they came to touching the ps3 VS 360 flamewar was looking at the graphics and debating whether or not they were good without really bringing either console into the discussion.

Point By Point, Microsoft Fanboy Communities:

• Are the most level headed
• Have the least amount of flaming and trolling
• Are the only ones who were open about every failing of their beloved console, be it justified or not
• Don't hate the competition with a passion
  

Just for kicks I played Mr. Troll on Microsoft biased and Sony biased forums intending on receiving a large reception of come backs to see just how the communities differed.

On the Sony biased forum I put up a post about how much better Gears of War looked than Resistance: Fall of Man. The response was mostly flaming with the funniest comment of all 'you're a Nintendo fanboy, you don't know what good graphics are' (sic). He probably was right but what seemed to be getting most of them pissed off was the fact the Playstation 3 could have inferior hardware to the 360, that was what was making them most angry and thats why I was being flamed with the typical 'you don't know shit'. I even went out of my way to emphasize that just because Gears of War looks better doesn't mean the Playstation 3 has weaker hardware, but that didn't really help, once on a roll I guess...

I decided to put up a post on the Microsoft biased board about how Forza 2 was a graphical disappointment and how GT: HD looked really good and was light years ahead of Forza 2. I also compared Motorstorm to DiRT reasoning that DiRT looked better and was a multiplatform title.

Damn, was I in for a shock, unlike the Sony boards were I was flamed here I recieved a rational response for my first comparison, something along the lines of GT: HD just being a tech demo with only one car on a race track at anytime, and that the race tracks were static. Basically I got this response that I shouldn't compare the two because GT: HD wasn't really a game so much so it was a tech demo, I disagreed with that but no one cared to respond. The comparisons for Motorstorm and DiRT got an interesting response, just like comparing Forza 2 and GT: HD, that I shouldn't compare them because they are different types of games and despite a few similarities are still too different to do so, this despite my comparison favoring DiRT.

In conclusion Wii60 owners are probably the luckiest buggers in terms of finding a nice online community and having the best gaming experience, outside the core gaming at least.

The Real Life Actor From The GTA 4 Trailer

Starring in such great movies as 'Okhota na Piranyu' and 'Sirota kazanskaya' Vladimir Mashkov caught Rockstars eye when they modeled the Russian guy from the first GTA 4 teaser trailer.




Thanks to D23 for pointing that out

Colin McRae DiRT In-Game Trailer

I'll wait until the HD trailer before I make the call of whether or not the in-game footage reached the target render, but I can say for sure it is darn close, if a bit better, or a bit worse. The best thing about DiRT is that it obviously is a next gen game, you know for sure it's next gen when the driver has all five fingers.