Medal of Honor Airborne

First things first, it's a Medal of Honor game. It's spelt wrong, it's probably historically incorrect and the Nazi's only ever have one thing say ; "Ich Habe!". That pretty much sums up the whole series, and Airborne is no exception. Graphically, it's not too bad. It's built on the UT3 engine, unsurprisingly, which gives it that sort of...shiny-but-in-the-wrong-place look. For some reason anything that has highlights will look completely wrong.

Putting that aside, however, Airborne did surprise me a little. The first mission is pretty straight forward. You land in a small Italian town and you kill a load of Nazi's until you win. There is only ever two types of objective, the first is where you blow stuff up, and the second is where you kill Nazi's and then blow stuff up. All in all, pretty simple gameplay. The storyline is your usual Medal of Honor thing. You follow a 'historic' campaign where you blow things up in the hope that you start feeling all patriotic and anti-German again. I swear the US government just forced EA to keep making these games so that they can convert those filthy "Nazi-Lovin' Bastards!" into outstanding citizens. Or maybe people just think its fun to kill Nazi's...

By far the best part of the whole game, after running through a little Italian town, Nijmegen and reliving Operation Varsity , is right at the end where you single handedly blown up the 'Flak Tower'. At each level a new opposing Nazi AI is offered to you as sacrifice, each with his own gun and one liner. Instead of having a mix in each level, EA has opted for a clone army to descend upon you. At the end it just gets silly when you're trampled on by a shit load of elite Nazi's with massive machine guns that chop you to bits. I must admit though, hiding around the corner and killing the lot of them got my heart pumping for a little bit.

There are other perks to game that make it different to most WWII games. Firstly, of course, is the whole jumping out of a plane thing. In a couple of the missions it will go through a whole rigmarole of killing off a few of your buddies and in the last mission the whole plane just explodes. Secondly, whenever you die, you get the jump out of a plane again. This means that you can start the mission in any place that you want. It makes things a little bit more interesting, and according to EA, more difficult for the AI. I just think that's their excuse for coding it in badly. As far as I can see, the AI for MoH Airborne is just as shit as the original.

That said, the game doesn't exactly have a lot of longevity as a single player game. Gone are the days when games like Halo or Fable were released, where you could play for hours everyday and still not get any closer to the absolutely epic ending. Considering that games cost millions to make, you would expect more than a couple of hours of interesting and original game play. So when you buy this from your local shop, don't expect a game that will keep you interested for more than a week.

Final Thought Byte : It's not a bad game, per se, just a bit unoriginal. If you like shooting Nazi's, then you might as well buy it. It wont make you go 'ZOMG WOW!', but it will fill your Nazi killing desires.

Tags : EA, Medal of Honor : Airborne, Nazi's

GRID Revisited

With the arrival of FUEL, Codemasters new racing game, and a possible patch for GRID on the horizon, we offer our thoughts on GRID a year after our first review.

Essentially, the game is the same. Since our last review, however, I have upgraded my rig and can actually play GRID on max settings. Last July I tried my best to emphasize how graphically stunning the game was. Now playing at full resolution and having all the options turned to max, the graphics are still jaw dropping a year on. We shall see how FUEL fairs up to the standard that GRID has set.

In terms of gaming advancement, GRID does not really pull anything new out of the magical top hat. Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2 was the first driving game to look truly realistic, something which GRID has done but something it hasn't really improved on. Don't get me wrong, it looks amazing, but it isn't the first time that we've been amazed at how cool a game looks. When GRID was released, the idea and implimentation of PhysX , artificial real time physics calculated by the GPU, was still fiddly at best. You will still see bits flying off cars, but they might not land correctly or just get stuck in the road pointing straight up. These physics glitches are common, but not something to be worried about when you're driving into things at 200mph.

The gameplay hasn't changed in the last year, obviously because there haven't been any patches. It's a very very simple racing game. You get in your car, you drive, get money and buy new cars. There's no tuning, no tweaking, just simple driving. Which, for most of us, is a recipe for 'kick ass'. For most gamers, GRID will be about relaxing, not having to think and just flowing with the road, choosing the right racing line... and trying not to crash.

The online gameplay, however, has changed quite a bit. A year on, the original people that played the game have gone elsewhere. Suprisingly though, you will still find a dozen games to join. The majority of sessions seem to be the Bridgestone Championship, but sometimes you will find a GT1 race or even a couple Japan Drifts. Unfortunately, I can guarantee that you'll be shouting "Fucking crashers!" at your monitor within 30 seconds. A huge majority of players on GRID these days tend to be from a country you've never heard of and speak a language you can't even begin to understand. That's not so much of a problem, because during races you can't type and there is no voice support, however they do tend to crash into you for fun. Everynow and again, you may find a group of good drivers which will give you a good race, and these can generally be found in smaller sessions. This leads us to the conclusion that huge sessions with 10 or more players is a situation you want to avoid like the plague.

Final Thought Byte : The conclusion is fairly simple. Without a single grain of doubt, GRID is still a good game. If you just want to relax and drive around in a car that looks cool, go down to your nearest shop and pick it up for a few quid. The new patch may bring a few improvements, but I really doubt it.

Tags : FUEL, Codemasters, GRID, GT3

Spiderman 4 - Candidate 37

First little webcomic. Check it out at deviantART

Tags : Spiderman, Apocalyptic, Buttercups, Webcomic

1 V 100 Beta

Tried the 1 V 100 beta last night. It made me lol so hard. It's such a fun game where you all play in a team of 4 and answer general knowledge questions, plus some questions will be based on the games consoles and games. For example:

"What game is NOT in Wii Sports:

X: Tennis A: Golf B: Football"

Some of the questions are simple but some of them do rack your brains. The prizes are microsoft points, for "The Mob" and "The One" only, the crowd does not get anything, apart from the general fun of participation, which is just as good as being the one.

Three Positions:

The Crowd: Exactly what it says on the tin, except the one MAY ask for your help.

The Mob: The Mob is the "100" that is in the title of "1 V 100". You play against the one, trying to answer questions and knock him out. If the One fails, you split microsoft ponts between all of the remaining 100 left.

The One: the main contestant. Your aim is to knock out all the 100 players in "The Mob" and win the grand prize of 10,000 microsoft points, thats right 10,000.

One of the cool features is the ability to make your character dance, like one of my team mates was doing, by just pressing the "Y" button and the directional buttons. The only flaw is that you cannot hear the host speaking, but then again it is a beta so what can we expect?

Final Thought Byte : Overall 8/10 because it is a beta, but I like these kind of games. It gets everyone off of the normal xbox games and you can play as a group, and use your own xbox live avatars which is amazing. I am looking forward to the other xbox live avatar participation game!

Tags : XBOX live, 1, V, 100, games, funny, novel, book, Harry Potter, Halo ODST, Halo Reach, Bioshock 2, Crackdown 2, Gears of War 3.

Google Chrome OS..... hmm

The rumours have finally been confirmed on Google's blog. Google will be releasing their very own Operating System in 2010.

Sounds great, right? Well not really. My first major issue with Chrome OS is that it's open source and that Google is using the same business ethic with Google Wave. Generally speaking, an open source product with huge developer support works well if it doesn't give people the tools to plant viruses. By making the whole operating system open source, Google is practically inviting people to send viruses to everyone.

Putting that major flaw aside, however, leaves us with an interesting prospect. Google will probably release Chrome OS to manufacturers first, just like Microsoft. They will probably target netbooks which means by 2010 we should be able to buy a fully working netbook for about £150. At least, that would be the logical place for Chrome OS. It is essentially a pretty version of Linux with Google's Logo on it, it wasn't built from the ground up. Google Chrome itself wasn't even built from the ground up by Google, it was built using WebKit, an existing browser format.

So, who should Google be aiming for? Well they definitely shouldn't be aiming for me. I play lots of games and use lots of different applications, therefore I am not going to risk huge compatability and performance issues until Chrome OS is fully established. The same goes with Windows 7 really, until that has its first inevitable service pack, I'm not touching it with a barge pole.

Final Thought Byte : Google is starting to play a very dangerous game. It will never take the market away from Microsoft, which has decades of experience and decades of being a fully established and trusted brand. Google is still a search engine to many people, not a software development company. Until Google Chrome and Google Wave make it big, Chrome OS will be a huge mistake.

Tags : Google, Chrome, Windows 7, Microsoft, WebKit, Linux

How can Spotify be legal?

For those of you who don't already know, Spotify is a UK based company which provides people with the means to listen to any song ever made...legally.

Now lets put aside the obvious legal issues that this may have and move straight onto a quick review of the application itself. After signing up to the free service, where you don't even have to give your name, which we assume is to protect potential customers in the possible event that Spotify is sued, you get greeted by a very sleek looking application. The first thing you will notice is that Spotify looks like a darker version of iTunes. In terms of usability, it fairs well against all the other major media players and easily outshines Windows Media Player.

After using it for about ten minutes, I am very impressed. It is very easy to search for your favourite artist and to make a playlist of your favourite songs. Of course, nothing in life is ever truly free. The only drawback to this 'free' service is an ad every once in a while, but only one advert. Considering that Sky channels, which we pay in excess of £30 a month, has adverts every 15 minutes, it's not bad. The quality of the music is also very good, I can't actually tell the difference between my own Linkin Park Meteora CD and the songs streaming over the net from Spotify.

So lets talk legalities. First things first, how can a company let people stream any song for free and only have a few ads. Conventional radio stations play a few select songs, play lots of ads and are practically crippled with having to pay for royalties. So what the hell is Spotify? Is it regarded as an internet radio station or does it pay a lump sum every year to the record companies? I would be inclined to go for the latter option, simply because it explains why adverts are minimal and the premium subscription is tiny.

Is it too good to be true? Probably.

Final Thought Byte : IF you haven't rushed off the sign up to Spotify, click on the link and do it now! All we need now is a version for the iPod Touch.

Tags : Spotify, Internet, Streaming

Gears of War 2

I have to say, what an epic storyline. It kept me gripped all the way through, with the fire fights, new enemies and a very emotional storyline.

The loss of some characters make you get emotionally attached to "Marcus Fenix" the main character in Gears of War. Although these guys act all tough, you learn that this is, in fact, a hard outer shell. What I liked the most has definitely got to be the storyline, the cut scenes that lead through the game are really worth watching...unlike metal gear solid 4's hour long cut scenes ¬.¬

If you were to ask me do I recommend this game my answer would be a definite yes. There are some things that put it down, for example the game practically gives you the path all the way through and practically points out every switch you need to push. But apart from that I would give Gears of War 2 a good 9.5/10 as there are a few elements missing but they can soon be ignored because of the awesomeness of the characters and the storyline.

Final Thought Byte : Gears of War 2 is a good game if you like constant action. If you don't, but wanted to try Gears of War 2 anyway, my advice is do it, try it out because you never know if you're going to like it or not.

Tags : Game Reviews, Gears, Of, War, 2