Palm-Mac

xbox 360 drivel

I was chuckling to myself the other day as I perused through last months Official Xbox Magazine here in the UK. I always head for the new game reviews first to see if there is anything worthwhile out that has gotten a decent review. Last months new games got shocking reviews. This months batch is barely better, for instance, The Bourne Identity, which they have been drooling over for months has finally appeared and got slated. Great. These guys must get invited to all these corporate jollys to get advance plays of forthcoming games, have a great time and then report back how great it is all shaping up to be. Then, when the game appears it turns out to be pish.

There's been nothing for months that has appealed to me. I was really enjoying Lara Croft Anniversary Edition, as I mentioned before, then about a week ago I got stuck halfway through at some silly "boss" fight against these Centaurs. No problem you'd think, there will be some cheat or something, some way to get eternal health to beat them or a way to skip to the start of the next level. Errrrr...no. No cheats at all, nowt, zip all, zero help so I am basically gubbed. I tried for about 4 nights in a row, each session lasting over an hour without getting anywhere so I have just given up as it has now ceased to be any fun and is just plain irritating. I've spent hours perusing Forums looking for tips/cheats, anything to help me through this bit but nothing.

I have always hated these "boss" fight things, they just seem so 90's and out of place in a game like Lara Croft. If anybody in the UK has done this bit on the 360 ad wishes to kindly help then I will willingly copy my saved game onto a memory unit and ship it to them. That would be a huge help.

Lara Croft on the xbox 360 and the PS3 threat

I bought and played the Lara Croft xbox 360 game that came out a while back and it was okay dokay, a bit short and a bit easy. That put me off buying the next game, Lara Croft Anniversary Edition which is apparantly, a reissue sort of thing of an older game. It's hard to describe how much better this game is over the one set up for the 360. The graphics are a bit basic, more original xbox than 360 and are not as lush as those on the 360 version but the gameplay is far better and more immersive. I've been playing it now for 3 weeks and I'm only about a third of the way through. Parts are difficult, the puzzles are good and require a good bit of thought whereas on the 360 original, you just sort of flew through them as they were quite straightforward and it all felt a bit underwhelming and it left me feeling a bit short-changed.

This game shows how glossy graphics and fancy dan animation do not in themselves make for a great game, much more is required and so few 360 games, for me anyway, have delivered to date.

Anyway, despite coming to market a good while before the PS3 and despite having the lower price advantage for almost all of its life, it seems the xbox 360 is going to be falling behind the PS3 in sales on a regular basis from now on in. There is nothing wrong with the 360 as a console but the HDVD fiasco has done it no favours and now that the PS3 ships with the winning BluRay drives consumers may see it as being more future proof. Add in a distinctly lacklustre and unexciting line up of recent games, compared to the PS3, and you can see that Microsoft needs to do something sooner rather than later, hence more talk of another price cut.

I'm going to stick though with the 360, mainly because I have so many games for it and I kinda like it. The PS3 looks the business and gives the impression it can only get better, hopefully the 360 can rise to the challenges ahead.

xbox360 sales hit 10 million mark in USA

Microsoft have just announced, according to xbox360 fanboy site, that US sales of the 360 console have now reached an amazing 10million with worldwide sales now at 19 million, neither of which is to be sniffed at and outstrips rival PS3 and Wii.
However the PS3 has been out for less time & people are still having trouble finding Wii's at times so too much should not be read into "outsripping" comments. It would be more interesting to see a comparison of figures since the other two were actually launched.

"Microsoft announced today that they have officially sold more than 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States, with over 19 million sold worldwide since the product launched in late 2005. The Xbox 360 is the first console of this generation to reach the 10 million mark in the US, a very significant fact according to Don Mattrick, the VP of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, "History has shown us that the first company to reach ten million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry."

360 and the PS3...GTA4

According to this article twice as many people have bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for the xbox 360 compared to the PS3. I'm not sure if this is hugely significant as it could just mean that 360 owners are a far more blood thirsty, aggressive and anti-social lot, myself excluded anyway (well from the first two anyway) than their PS3 counter-parts.

This is odd as twice this year already, PS3 console sales have been greater than those of the 360. Perhaps, now that Blu-ray has won the day this is encouraging people to go for the PS3 and they will have a future-ish proof DVD player built in. Were some folk holding out buying a console until the HD DVD issue was resolved one way or another?

This guy has an opinion on it too...

I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero.

Console Wars...PS3 on the up..and we're all Doomed

Despite being widely dismissed by all those connected with the Microsoft xbox360, in much the same way that xbox mags laughed at the perceived threat of Blu-Ray against their beloved leaders choice of HDVD, sales of the PS3 have been rising and rising and narrowing the deficit against comparable 360 sales. Indeed, with one or two PS3 exclusives launched over the past 6 months, it has in fact outsold the 360 on several occassions. Here is the view of the Sony President as told to the BBC:

Speaking to BBC News, Kaz Hirai said the machine would overhaul rivals Nintendo and Microsoft within its 10-year lifecycle.

PlayStation 3 sales have outstripped those of Microsoft Xbox 360 in Europe but it lags behind in North America.

Nintendo's Wii console is the number one next-generation machine globally.

Mr Hirai said Sony was engaged in a "marathon" race with Nintendo and Microsoft.

More than 10.5 million PlayStation 3s were sold worldwide by the end of 2007. To date, in Europe more than five million PS3s have been sold.

I think 360 has to wake up a little, after the flurry of top class games at the end of last year, with the exception of GTA IV, content has been decidely lacklustre since then. I find myself looking at the PS3 more and more these days, particularly as it has a Blu-ray player built in.

On the subject of Grand Theft Auto, I tried to pick up a copy over the Holiday weekend with no joy...all sold out here in Edinburgh which is the first time I can recall a game suffering the same fate. These stats from xbox360 Fanboy suggest a staggering $500 million worldwide was taken in sales in the first week, whapping the pants off Halo3 sales and an amazing 926 000 copies sold in the UK, of which about 40% were for the PS3.

Last and certainly not least comes the great news, for me anyway, that Doom 4 is now in production...yahoo. Unfortunately, it sounds like it has JUST started production and thus it will a long while before we see it on the 360 which is surprising as it now nearly 4 years since the last instalment.

Good and bad news...and Forza 2 Motorsport.

Oh the joy but yet at the same time the sheer agony. BioShock 2, I suppose unsurprisingly, has been announced but we are going to have to wait until Q4.....nope not 2008 but 2009!! How the heck can it take that long to come out...oh the sheer pain.
I seem to be having a real waiting thing going on at the moment...waiting for 3rd party iphone apps, waiting for the next palm o/s and now a truly mind bending year plus wait for the sequel to the best ever xbox game.

I've been struggling to find something decent to play on the 360 of late and have resorted to pinching my sons' Forza 2 Motorsport game. It's quite good and is set up along the lines of the great PlayStation 1 game, was it  GTA or GTR it was called?

I've started off in Career mode and you basically have to win races with modest cars to win money to buy and upgrade new cars an so on. One odd thing is that the more cash you win the more levels you move through but there are still great swathes of cars that remain unlocked and race tournaments that are out of reach. I've had to re-do the same limited range of tournaments again and again which gets a bit repetitive yet I still can't seem to gain entry to other  tourneys. The game sort of forces you into buying cars that you have no interest in just to enter certain types of races whereas with the original PlayStation game you bought, specced up and raced wherever you wanted.

Also rather annoying is that if you start off with a car in some series and find out quickly, which happens a lot, that your car is under-powered and thus decide to upgrade the power and handling or whatever then you can often find yourself chucked out of that race series if you over do it and are thus stuck with a great car and no races to enter it into. You have to check out the opponents in a race series first and then buy and spec up your car accordingly to be competitive without going over the "limits".

Nevertheless the racing is fun and your car is fully customisable if that is your "bag". I think the game is set up to offer realistic as opposed to arcade handling although the latter is certainly available through...ahem...arcade mode. The gap between levels as you progress through career mode does increase quite a bit and you do need to keep winning and piling up the cash so in that sense, it gets more difficult but this is a nicely paced feature.

One thing I like about it is the "test drive" feature which allows you to race by yourself on a huge variety of tracks including the wonderful Nurburgring which will take you around 10 minutes to complete a lap in a modestly powered car. That is certainly a recommended track to drive around.

Overall, this is a nice game which is fun to dip into now and again for the odd race although having said that, I have been playing it quite frenetically for about 2 weeks solid now so it can be quite addictive...I suppose that is a sign of a good game.

Gamepedia

Link: Apple - Downloads - Home & Learning - Gamepedia.

I think I have been looking for something like this, mind you I've also been looking for a decent game to play of late full stop. These guys do similar apps for stuff like Books and DVD's.

About Gamepedia
Lets you search every Amazon site - US, UK, Germany, Canada, France, and Japan - for information about your games. It also lets you add links to reviews, walk-throughs and screenshots from any other site.

You can keep a wish list for those games you don’t own yet and a borrowed list for those you want back. To get even more organized, create smart collections that update themselves automatically whenever a new entry is added to the program.

Display your collections in a table view, browse only the covers with the cover view or use the info view for a more personalized look. Share your collections with friends, using the customizable HTML export templates or one of the other three export formats.

HD DVD....cheerio

It just continues to get worse for HD DVD, which is a shame, as Wal Mart stop selling HD DVD stuff and Toshiba announce they are also pulling away from the format. It's not often that Microsoft gets it big fat corporate bottom spanked but it has well and truly happened here and that is not exactly a bad thing. What with it trying to snaffle up Yahoo on its path to taking over the world and anyone else who has an innovative product to peddle (why not try innovating yourself?) this news has to be welcomed.

Amongst the many financial losers who had nailed their corporate dollar to the HD DVD mast were of course Microsoft who have now left Xbox 360 owners with standalone players and what might turn out to be an ever shrinking source of content to watch on them. Rumours abound the various gaming sites that Microsoft are already working on a Blu Ray player for the console.

I remember when the big debate started a few years ago, Blu Ray or HD DVD, that the UK based OXM (Official Xbox Magazine) were particularly smug about the prospects of the Microsoft backed format prevailing...in fact they could see no other outcome and were very very dismissive about the chances of Blu Ray becoming the foremost option. That was all based around the premise of the all conquering and all powerful Microsoft pulling the corporate strings and ensuring that HD DVD would succeed. It is rather astonishing (and nice) that the mighty 'Soft has been so comprehensively beaten From the BBC....

Well, it doesn't look now like it will.

The next-generation DVD format war is over, and the future is Blu-ray.

Ever since the two rival high definition DVD systems were launched in 2006 - Sony's Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD - there could only be one winner.

In a re-run of the VHS and Betamax video cassette battle of the early 1980s, each raced to win over both the home consumer and the big Hollywood film studios.

Toshiba's announcement that it is to stop production of HD DVD players leaves the way clear for Blu-ray to become the industry standard.

TimeShift...excellent xbox game

I finished playing Timeshift recently and must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It got better and better with each passing level, some of the later levels were stupendously good with fab scenery & were pretty adventurous. I loved it. It reminded me graphically and game play wise of bits of Doom, Half Life 2 and a bit of Halo thrown in.

It's strange because I wasn't expecting much as the game got generally lukewarm reviews on release and was quickly lowered in price. It starts off a bit humdrum but soon speeds up & gets into its stride. What surprised me was not so much the variety of gameplay as that is undeniably a bit samey but rather the variety of the actual levels themselves. You never know where you are going next or where you will be dumped at the start of the next level. And of course it includes what every game should have...the ability to save it when YOU want and not when the developer thinks you should be saving.

Your powers consist as usual of a selection of weapons of which the two sniper type ones are the most fun to use. There is no hand to hand combat at all but you do have, as the name suggests, the ability to alter time by stopping it, reversing it or going forward. Stopping time in a fight with the bad guys is so  much fun as you can use the sniper to pick them off from afar or run up to them and grab their weapons and use them to blast them. Very satisfying.

It is basically a shooter but is a jolly good romp. The scale of some of the levels visually is amazing, there's a heck of a lot of thought gone into this game to make it look good with it's slightly futuristic, metallic like and grey-ey settings. It also lasts a long time too unlike some game I have played of late (Halo 3) and although you can say with justification that in bits it is a bit repetitive combat-wise, nonetheless it is a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

Highly recommended.