Wilshere and Rooney on FIFA 12 cover

Please don't steal my hair Wayne

A rather worried looking Jakc Wilshere will share the cover of this year’s FIFA offering with Shrek Wayne Rooney, no doubt that is the source of his slight look of fear.

For those  of you who might not be aware  when Rooney isn’t having hair sewn into his scalp or sleeping with geriatric prozzies he can occasionally be seen scoring goals for Manchester Utd.  

FIFA 12 is out in September and fans of the game can look  forward to the collision engine and  improved online gaming. The new features which will allow online players to choose between Chelsea, Barca, Man City and Real Madrid and will now make it easier to fake losing your internet connection 1 minute before you would otherwise have lost.

WoW is racist….

This was sent through to me and I just had to share…

Have LotRO will travel…

American  performance artist Jordan Long plans to ship himself across the US in a crate with only  Lord of the Rings Online as company.

Avid Lord of the Rings Online player and performance artist; Jordan Long is taking his theories about in-game communities and their benefits for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to new levels.

Long has shipped himself from his home in Bald Knob, Arkansas to a final destination in Oregon locked in a crate with nothing but his computer and his LOTRO companions along for the ride. 

According to Long, the purpose of his most recent “art” project is to study “trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and claims that he has found that many who are confined to their homes due to such trauma tend to find their escape in the form of online games such as LotRO where they can ‘enter and exit whenever they choose, be whoever they want to be and feel like functioning members of society again.’”

Good thing he isn’t playing WOW or people would want to know the gear score of his crate….

Mum blames Microsoft for son’s spending spree

An  U.K. mother is blaming Microsoft for the fact that her 11-year-old son rang up a £1000 bill on her debit card over a six-month stretch on Xbox Live.

Would you entrust an online account to your young child, probably not?

When 11-year-old Brendan Jordan was let loose on Xbox Live, the youngster went on a spending spree that ultimately landed a bill of £1082 ($1739) on his mother’s debit card. But his mother, Dawn, doesn’t blame her son for the hefty charges. She blames Microsoft.

“When I put my card details in 18 months ago I thought it was just for his membership to play online with his friends,” she said. “I work two jobs just to look after my family and pay the bills so I cannot afford all these extortionate charges. A thousand pounds isn’t that much to people like Bill Gates, but for a single mum it is a lot of money that I don’t have.”

“I haven’t punished him because he feels bad enough and I know he won’t do it again,” she added. “It is ridiculous to allow someone of his age to make payments without any checks being done.”

She states that the youngster started to cry when she explained to him how much money he’d blown through, after which he unplugged his Xbox and said he didn’t want it anymore. She also said she wants her experience to serve as a warning to other parents.

“When he is in gaming mode he can’t be thinking about the money. You can’t put all that responsibility on a young boy,” she added. “It is impossible to monitor everything your children do. These companies should take some responsibility. They take advantage of vulnerable people.”

Now let me just stop things here and possibly call shenanigans on this tale of online woe. Most banks send out these useless papery things called statements, typically once a month or so.

Would you not notice the recurring charges going through to Microsoft and start to put two and two together, especially if you were a struggling single mother who needs every penny she can get.

In a statement to the Daily Mail a company rep made the following statement “Microsoft’s goal is to provide parents and caregivers with tools and resources to manage their children’s gaming and entertainment experiences so that they can play in ways that are safer, healthy and more balanced. “

“To accomplish this, we’ve built-in parental controls in every Xbox 360, work closely with retailers and recently launched the Play Smart, Play Safe website as an online resource for families. It should also be noted that LIVE accounts registered for children’s use have online activity automatically defaulted to off, these can be enabled by the parent should they wish in the Family Settings section.”

So what we really seem to have is a Mum who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what her young soon was doing online, with her card details no less. Neither could she be bothered to keep an eye on her finances until he had managed to spend over a grand.

Seems to me like someone is on the look out for a nice cash payment to settle little Brendan’s gaming bill and to keep paying that wonderful virtual nanny that has been raising him on her behalf.

Retro RPGs

baldurs gate

I love RPGs, always have really, since the first time I ever sat round a table and played my first game of D&D through to the present day.

Recently I have been a little underwhelmed though; the current crop of RPGs for the PC, Xbox 360 etc are pretty good but they just seem to lack something.

It isn’t that they are bad games, far from it but somewhere amidst the amazing graphics, cinematic sound, famous voice actors etc  they seem to have lost some of that traditional RPG element that I love.

That is why I have gone back to playing classic RPGs that whilst nowhere near as polished as the current crop of games just seem to be a little nearer the mark.

In particular I have been playing the ever so awesome Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Baldur’s Gate 1 &2 and the original Fallout.

For me these 5  games encompass pretty much everything that I want in a RPG.

I love the sheer immersion that takes place when playing one of these older story driven RPGs sure I enjoy having a massive sandbox world to track around (the map in Oblivion is 16 square miles!) but nothing beats a riveting story that drives you to continue and keeps you focused.

I sometimes think that with some of the current sandbox games that it is too easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of different things you can run off and do and that the main campaigns/storylines can get overlooked.

I also miss the fully turn based combat systems like you saw in Fallout, it is reminiscent of my hours spent with pen, paper and dice and just has a charm about it that is sometimes lacking these days.

Maybe I am just getting old and turning into one of those people who goes on about how everything was better back in the day but as much as I really enjoy modern games -trust me I do- the old classics just seem to be more fun somehow.

neverwinter nights 1 &2 /baldurs gate

rattle on about how these feel more dungeon and dragonesque then the current big rpgs where you trot around by yourself for days at a time

The Hardest Game In The World…

Recently I have noticed that my brother is swearing more than usual; I’m not just talking a little f word here or there I am talking a full on torrent of verbal abuse.

The target of all this swearing a video game, but  not just any video game this is the hardest game in the world…

The game in question is called “I wanna be the guy” and it is hard.

 I’m not talking “wow wasn’t that a tough game of Halo” or “man taking down the Lich King was hard” I am talking gouge your own eyes out in frustration hard.

There is no learning curve in this game, none - if you suck you die tough luck.

Boy will you die; you know how sometimes you are reading a book and the author will say that death was the protagonists only companion?  Well gues what you get to experience that first hand! Death will need to take a holiday when he has finished with you.

So what is IWBTG about? Well it is fiendishly simple the game itself is a throwback to the halcyon days of the 8 bit platformer… think Mario, but with the difficulty on steroids and possibly PCP.

You run, you jump, you dive from platform to platform etc etc but something is missing, oh yes the parts where you die… a lot.

There are different difficulty settings on IWBTG but they don’t make the game easier in the conventional sense, nope that would be too kind, all the lesser difficulty levels do is increase the frequency of save points.

When I told one of my co-workers about this I was asked why I would choose to play a game that is so mind rendingly difficult?

My answer to him?

IT IS FUN!!!

Sure you die, a lot.  Sure it is hard, almost too hard in places, sure some of the obstacles made me want to ram pencils up my nose and bang my head on the desk but it is FUN.

I loved just playing a platformer without any bells and whistles; it took me back to the innocence of my childhood back when all I looked for in a game was the ability to jump from group of blocky pixels to group of blocky pixels.

I can’t recommend this game enough, particularly if you like a challenge, an impossible, maddening challenge

http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/index.php

Enjoy

Heavy Rain

I don’t normally review games and you will be pleased to hear that I haven’t deviated from that.

Luckily I have found a review that sums up exactly how I felt about Heavy Rain; unsurprisingly it is from a fellow countryman of mine the estimable, vitriolic Ben “Yatzhee” Crenshaw the angsty gentleman behind Zero Punctuation.

Here it is, enjoy:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1528-Heavy-Rain

It’s coming…

There is still a goodly amount of time to go until Cataclysm hits
the World of Warcraft but already the rumblings of it’s arrival can be felt…

Patch 4.0.1 is going live today allowing players to experience the start of the changes which will be fully realised on December 7th when Cataclysm is released upon an unsuspecting Azeroth.

The update will add the new Cataclysm Launcher, which allows you to download new content while you play, reducing the time it takes to download, install and patch World of Warcraft, this is great news as it will hopefully bring an end to the agonizing wait whilst you get your hands on the latest 800 megs or so of content that Blizzard do enjoy spewing at us on a regular basis.

It is rather ironic though that an upgrade which is designed to allow you to maximise your playing time is going to result in a full 24 hours of maintenance :S

It is also adding Reforging NPCs who will allow you to modify the stats on your items so as to help with the for the forthcoming changes which are going to see a lot of stats being combined, tweaked or just plain removed.

Every class are going to get major overhauls to their talents, spells and abilities. This is always both the most enjoyable and also the most controversial of the changes that Blizz make.

As soon as everyone is back online the whole debate of who is now the most over powered class will rear it’s ugly head (not that it ever really goes away…) Skipping merrily hand in hand with the OP discussion will be the good old argument as to which class fell out of the nerf tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Surprise surprise there are changes to the currency system with all emblems of Frost and Emblems of Triumph being converted into Justice Points for all the new shinies that you are just going to have to have.

Oh and Paladins are getting a new resource bar

Help Needed…

My name is Tom and I am a gameaholic…

Unfortunately there isn’t really a 12 step program out there for video game addicts and even if there was I don’t think that I would be admitting to myself that I have a problem so thats step one buggered before we even start!

I do think it is possible that I do spend a bit too much time playing games though which is a start I guess. I came to this startling realisation yesterday although those who know me well will be chortling to themselves saying some realisation that is.

I realised that I spent my lunch break yesterday animatedly talking with a colleague and fellow addict about my strategy for championship manager; for those of you not familiar with champ man it is a variety of online crack that lets you pretend that you are the manager of a football team (I refuse to ever call football soccer)

That’s right it’s a game that lets you pretend you are involved in a game, but I love it! I have since I first laid eyes on it back in the heady days of Championship Manager 2 which I struggled to get going on my mighty 486.

Since then I have owned every version of the game that has been released even though by my own admission they are more or less exactly the same, but thats not the point, I need the up to date information and the realistic transfer prices etc etc.

I love championship manager so much that I have been working on my current file for 147 hours. That is just a few hours shy of two whole premiership seasons!!! The kicker is it’s not my only file I have another file with 50 odd hours.

Where have I found the time to play nearly 200 hours of a football management simulator since the new season began??

It doesn’t stop there either, if I was addicted to just one game it would be bad enough but it’s every game, well except the shit ones obviously! During my 200 hour footballing marathon I have also completed Halo Wars, replayed my way through half of GTA IV and clocked up about 20 hours on Soul Calibre.

I could understand if I was unemployed, single or worked as a games reviewer but I am none of those things. I have a girlfriend and work a 40 hour+ week as some form of emarketing bitch (even I can’t really quantify what I do)

It’s not solely video games either, my girlfriend will readily atest to the fact that when I’m not playing video games I want to play other games; scrabble, backgammon, cribbage, monopoly, risk, warhammer or d&d. It quite literally does not matter what it happens to be I am addicted to playing games.

I still don’t think I have a problem though

The Project pt. 2

I mentioned in my last Wathammer based post that I had decided to collect Lizardmen and to use Ebay as my prime method of getting my hands on the scaly little buggers.

Well no sooner had I decided on this then I found myself in our local “premium” hobby centre located in Other Realms in Cork City.

Well I really can’t see what is premium about it, sure there is a permanent gaming table set up and a display case with a nice enough collection of minis in it but the stock is frankly rubbish.

There is less then two shelves dedicated to fantasy Warhammer and maybe 2/3 times as much for 40k but even what there was for 40k was all fairly standard, you certainly wouldnt be able to pick up anything interesting or out of the ordinary.

But anyhow I was there nonetheless and despite my promise to collect Lizardmen and to do it in a second hand fashion I ended up leaving the store with a pack of Empire Battle Wizards, saying nothing of the set of Citadel ink washes and a tub of flock.

Even though there is/was no way I was ever going to even consider playing Empire I do like the battle wizard models and thought that they would make nice accolytes for my Necromancer – pictures will be following I promise!!

So I knocked up my two wizards in short order and was fairly pleased with how they came out, problem was that at this point in time I was collecting a Lizardmen army and had precisely 0 by way of Lizardmen minis.

So paypal account in hand I set out to the online flea market that was Ebay and started buying.

Here is what I have so far for my little lizzies

1 x Slann Mage Priest (Old style with the temple guard bearers)
1 x Old Blood lord
1 x Skink Priest
32 x Saurus
80 x Skinks

So all in all not too bad as a start…or so I thought.

When the models turned up I was actually pretty damn pleased, they were all in good condition, in fact far better than I had expected them to be!

The only problem was that out of 80 Skinks there were 68 with short bows, the other 12 having blow pipes.

Now I didn’t realise straight away what this implied.

Skinks with short bows aren’t a legal army choice anymore unless you are running a Southlands army list which isn’t really what I had been planning on.

So now I have a choice, do I use them as proxies for skinsk with blow pipes or javelins, or do I start converting 60+ skinks to make it look like they have something legal in their hands?

I was thinking if I heated the bows a tiny little bit I might be able to straighten them out to something a bit more javelin like and add on a point with a little bit of green stuff cunningly applied.

Let me know what you think dear readers