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Hot Topic: EA Sports… It’s Not In The Game

Martin — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:12:36 +0000

UFC Undisputed 2010 came out this week, so plenty of ardent UFC lovers spent their weekends practicing arm bars, leg locks and guillotine holds – and in the game, too! Resident X360A reviewer, Lee Abrahams, gave the game an 86 and declared it to be “a fine addition to the blossoming franchise”.

The only problem with Yuke’s latest brawler seems to be if you rent it or buy it second-hand and decide you want to play it across the information superhighway, as each new copy of the game comes with a single-use code to enable online play. Those without this code will need to cough up 400 MSP. Are THQ right for doing this? And is this going to become standard practice across the industry?

Signs certainly point to yes for the latter. Alongside THQ’s online entitlement scheme, EA (who coined the scheme last year as ‘Project Ten Dollar’) has extended free online for new copies to their Sports products, but we’re yet to see the extent of that. Ubisoft has said they’re considering it, too.

Continue reading @ Xbox360Achievements

The art of modern video game war in 15 easy steps

Martin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:02:02 +0000

TEN-SHUN! Listen up, MAGGOT! This knowledge might just save your life one day. The first rule of WAR is to KNOW YOUR ENEMY, and your enemy comes in MANY FORMS: terrorist, nazi, zombie, alien and zombie nazi. That’s FIVE FORMS, private.

I know what you’re THINKING, and that’s which one of your PUNY WEAPONS can you use to fight the GOOD FIGHT for the forces of all that is GOOD? Good news, cadet – you can use ALL OF THEM! One time I even tore a monster to death with my BARE HANDS. But you probably won’t get a chance to do that, soldier: if you’re in a recent game you’re stuck with TWO weapons at a time. Single player? Multiplayer? It makes NO DIFFERENCE.

What I’m TRYING to say is that there are RULES, private; rules that will help you keep your HEAD attached to your SHOULDERS by way of your NECK.

Continue Reading @ GamesRadar

Gaming’s 9 Most Important Crates

Martin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:12:00 +0000

Back in the 90s, the Crate used to be the most powerful force in gaming. It was actually impossible to find a title which didn’t involve trekking through some warehouse, factory or, in a perfect universe, a Crate research facility. And it didn’t matter if you were exploring an alien world because even despotic extraterrestrial races needed cubic storage devices to transport their ammo and health supplies. It was a golden age for Crates.

Continue reading @ GamesRadar

Fallout: A Retrospective

Martin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:33:28 +0000

“Up yours and have a bullet breakfast, asshole!” barks a kidnapper with irate gusto. Fallout’s inhabitants rarely converse in ways considered reasonable, but that’s probably because they’re living in a world where nuclear war has devastated the entire planet and the remaining guns are of such impossibly high calibre a few shots can reduce a torso to mush. While Fallout 1 and 2 are two of the few games in the world where it’s possible to be diplomatic without a weapon, the NPC’s you’ll encounter along the way are all too ready to reach for their arsenal.

Continue reading @ play.tm

Duke Nukem 3D: A Retrospective

Martin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:25:03 +0000

For a brief moment, forget Duke Nukem Forever and the trials, tribulations and false starts of 3D Realms’ presumed-doomed twelve year project. Cast aside the ever-populist morbid fascination with Duke’s disappointments and hark back to 1996, the year Take That went their separate ways and Michael Bay’s action opus The Rock was released. It was a glorious age, one where it was excessively cool to suffix games with ’3D’; a little trick the movie industry has recently rediscovered over a decade later. And whilst Quake would arrive six months down the line and revolutionise the aesthetics of my childhood, Duke Nukem 3D’s brash antics, flamboyant design and overtly gratuitous destruction would capture my heart.