For gamers, the new year usually begins after mid-November and this year’s no different; pretty much all major console exclusives have been released.
So, this is the first time that we can actually look back at 2008 and see which console had the best exclusives for the year - the PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii.
To do this, I decided to tally up the Metascore ratings (as of 11/20) for what are arguably the top ten exclusives for each console. Games that are available on PC and only one console are on the list as well (World of Goo and Left 4 Dead are two examples). So let’s dive right in to those potentially forum-rioting numbers:
Nintendo Wii: 1. No More Heroes - 83%
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 94%
3. Mario Kart Wii - 82%
4. Wii Fit - 80%
5. Wario Land: Shake it! - 78%
6. Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility - 64%
7. World of Goo - 95%
8. Wii Music - 63%
9. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the N... More »
Fable II explores what happens when a game does away with most forms of punishment, and does nothing but reward its players from start to finish. The results are astonishing.
It's worth stepping away from the tried and tested Pavlovian mechanics that games have inherited from the coin-crunching arcades to consider what Lionhead is proposing. Almost every game ever made has reinforced its rules with penalties: if you fight and lose, you're killed; if you go off and explore, you get lost; if you're spotted when you're meant to be hiding, you're deported back to the start.
It's a strategy that undoubtedly works - many of gaming's finer moments are often interlinked with its harshest challenges - but there's also no escaping the fact that when it all goes wrong you're often treated like a lab monkey undergoing a rather cruel experiment: you may really want that banana, but the chances are you're going to get a lot of electric shocks first.
It’s just something that I have noticed occurring behind the scenes over the last year that I think is worthy of bringing up, as it indicates a growing faith in the PlayStation 3 console from developers and publishers across the globe. It does not mean that the Xbox 360 is any less important, just that the PS3 is definitely starting to get equal-footing on multi-format games.
Go back six months and more, almost every game that was multi-format was given to journalists on Xbox 360. Code came in for Xbox 360 debuggers (the devices on which we play unfinished games), promo copies were for the Xbox 360 and almost always games were demoed to us on Microsoft’s console when out at junkets across the world. It’s just the way it was.
Obviously being a multi-format publication, we actively chased PS3 versions of these games but they were rarely forthcoming, and if they did make it in, it could be months later. I sit alongside both the editor of Australian 360 Mag... More »
Well this week we have some exciting news that we hinted about last week.
First, a small technical explanation. We were not able to modify any data on the PS3's flash chips due to the ECC. The ECC is a checksum basically, that ensures whatever data is in the block is not changed or corrupted, and if it is it errors.
So, the problem was since when we tried to alter data, the ECC would then in turn be invalid, causing errors, making the system not boot.
We did develop a way around this, however, it was time consuming and quite slow. We used the PS3 to write data to the flash, then dump it, with its proper ECC, then rewrite to where we needed it. This would take hours on end! We were not able to regenerate the ECC since we did not know the proper algorithm.
But now, we can!!
After multiple tests done by NDT to see what the ECC... More »
March 23rd 2007. This was the date that many Europeans had been anxiously awaiting, counting down to the day that they would get their shiny piece of the future. Expecting to find graphics that blew away the competition, and features that left all before it in the dust, many early adopters fired up the latest iteration of the Playstation only to be met with a system that lacked support, and had only a handful of exclusive features.
It is true that on launch day the PS3 did not seem to be the powerhouse, or gamer’s choice machine that it promised to be. Despite having great launch titles such as Motorstorm and Resistance, the PS3 was a victim of its own hype, delivering nothing more than a standard console launch with only a handful of killer titles. This was to continue, as time went on the entry 20GB system was axed, leaving the 60GB as the only option for those who wanted to enter the next gen... More »
What better way to celebrate your PS3 turning 1 year old than to open up the console, see what approximately 4000 hours of potential dust looks like, and then give it a clean! pumba512 did just that on the official PS boards (linked above).
To quote: So, my PS3 turned 1 not long ago.. so.. I decided to see what 1 year (about 4,000 hrs) of dust looks like in it, and to give it a clean.
This is a Aus 60gig, always been horizontal. (I have vacuumed the vents every week (give or take), and dust it off with a microfibre cloth almost religiously.. Never used compressed air on it)
It's home for starters (carpet floor).. So after that I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought. But there was a lot of fine dust in it, and only a little bit of a clump under the fan on the cpu/gpu heatsink part, nothing but fine dust on the heatsink fins.
Bottom casing was very dusty (also found little bugs a mosquito..and a hair... yeah I dunno..) top o... More »
Fair warning right now, there will be general Metal Gear game spoilers in this article. If you have not finished Metal Gear Solid 4 at very least, go do so and then come back and read. The other games in the series may also have spoilers, but odds are you had that ruined or you played with the database too much already. Ok you’ve been warned.
I recently completed Metal Gear Solid 4 and what a ride it was. Great game start to finish, however there are some things I would have liked to have seen added. Calm down fanboys, I’m not knocking the game in ANY way, here are just my suggestions to give us a little more time in the Metal Gear World. Before I continue, I’ll say it again, there are going to be some spoilers in here! Read on at your own risk!
Add #1: Playable Raiden I know it’s a little crazy, but why not let us do some Raiden chapters to see what he’s been up to before he jumps in to hack and slash some Gekko up? The Metal Gear Serie... More »
Lets face, E3 is only a short while away, 2 weeks today actually it kicks off with Microsoft's press conference. But what can we expect before E3 with the pre-E3 conferences.
First off, there are some pretty big changes. While Reggie Fils-Aime is still at Nintendo, Phil Harrison and Peter Moore have now bitten the dust from Sony and Microsoft and are now at EA Sports and Atari which means no fun with them this year (Especially Peter).
But what can Sony pull out of the bag for their conference this year? Well, we tell you all here what could possibly happen at that conference on July 15th.
Hardware: This will most likely be the PlayStation 2's final appearence at E3 after the short time they had on it last year. There could be one final swansong game for the PS2 unveiled at E3 to send the console off to Videogaming heaven but that is very doubtful sadly.
As for the PSP, it needs a shunt in the back-side. Not since... More »
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