They really need to nerf protect in this game. and haste too.

I know that theres a wierd kind of devision between hardcore anime fans who are pissed off at idiot naruto fans who think their japanese who cry about holier than thou cocks who think that if you like anime your some kind of gaywad.

so in the same way that its cool to laugh at idiot emo kids, theres a strong trend in the gaming world to look cool bashing the next generic final fantasty game.

well fuck them. I dont know shit about anime past that I like ghost in the shell. I dont think anime is for kids... but god damnit I love final fantasy games.

Final fantasy VII was the the game that made me a gamer. I had played many games from the NES up, but it was Final Fantasy VII that defined me as a gamer. Ive gone back and played I through VI, I love advent children, IX is my close favorie. I love this stuff.


How can you not admire an epic scene of beauty like this? ...wtf is that anyway...

and YES. I know that the lead characters an effeminate guy with a sword thats clearly compensating for something. I know that pre rendered FMVs do not make a game. I know that the story will be the cheesiest love story/save the world saga you could imagine. but will still buy and love this game.

trying to convince me otherwise is like trying to dissuade someone from their religion. dont try it. I dont care if you dont like it, just dont bother me about it.

and thats my convoluted bash at people that bash final fantasy games or something. Some times its just fun to be a fanboy. even if you look like an idiot. :)

I'm surprised no one has got to this yet, and its probably a sign of how unappreciated EVE Online is. Well last Wednesday the much anticipated trinity update was released to pod pilots everywhere, and believe me when I say this – It looks like sex in space.

EVE Online has always been a beautiful looking game. Even by today's standards its pretty hard to take a screenshot of eve that doesn't look like the cover of some space opera novel so dark cold and epic that it drips dark matter.

Trinity update takes the just about dated graphics engine, (finally) moves it over to your computers GPU, and adds all the next gen loveliness we've come to expect in games. Bump maps specular maps, and a massive increase in texture size cements EVE's place as the best looking MMO on the market.


Me, lookin fine in my noob boat.

To me the biggest advantage of these textures is the sense of scale they bring back to eve. The first thing that blows people away about eve is its scale. Looking at the star map can be a daunting experience for a newbie. Even after months of playing, moving back the camera to show my insignificant speck of a ship, that is so small it has to be represented by a single pixel or it would be invisible to the naked eye, dwarfed by a city sized space station like a flea to a skyscraper.

However this sense of insignificance can easily be lost when distances of kilometres are a few hundred pixels wide and your frigate is represented by so few polys. The Trinity update makes sure you never forget your place in the universe when a hulking battleship rumbles past your measly destroyer, showing tiny windows spread across thousands of metres of complex machinery.

However the patch didn't exactly go off without a hitch – for a few hours the users that downloaded the patch would have their boot.ini file deleted. Effectively meaning that if they restarted their computers or turned them off, windows would fail to boot. Thankfully after fucking over a few hundred Windows xp users, CCP noticed their mistake. booting up EVE not brings up a giant message of: DO NOT REBOOT! classy.

Ok, so the majority of you smack talking 360 console goers (and a few naïve PS3 owners) have been waking up with a sore neck for weeks now after heavy sessions of head banging and general moshery to Activision's Guitar Hero 3.

But did you know its also out on PC now? Albeit late? Well your all gamers so some of you might, but most of you probably wont, most of you includes the patrons of my local GAME store who weren't even sure which guitar hero game I was talking about. But after walking that bit further to a good old small scale, independent-but-has-a-shop-in-another-town franchise 'playtime' there it was, adorning the shelf above the counter, guitar Hero 3, PC edition.



Obviously its pretty much the same game as on other systems, and in the case of the 360, its exactly the same game, but minus a few things. More on that later. The game comes with: the game (I feel the need to add this because the box says 'game included!' rather excitedly), A 360 Gibson Explored controller (USB) and of course, stickers, yay.

The game comes with all the 360 songs and characters and there's nothing exclusive to the PC, but this is more a port than a standard release so what do you expect. Now here comes the bone I have to pick with Microsoft. Their complete fear of having PC users enter their special closed network of xbox live. Time and time again PC users are unable to show console goers the true might of a keyboard and mouse. That wouldn't be so much of a problem here except no ones bloody bought the PC version and so far I've met two people online, and one of them dropped off before the song had even started. This is a kind of double edged sword. On the one hand, there's little competition for a good player to beat and if you've got the skills, you could easily see yourself up in the leader boards. But on the other hand, to beat people, you need someone to play against. Another way PC users have been buggered a little harder is the fact that the guitar hero website just isn't for us. What are we lepers? I'd like to find the 6 other people who bought this game please!



A final footnote to the rant would be the fact that if for any reason your disconnected from the internet for a moment while playing the game in the fucking single player everything will freeze for a few seconds, think for a bit and then thoughtfully tell you: 'bit of a problem connecting here boss...' or something to that effect – while the song notes and all goes on without hesitation, breaking you bazillion and six combo or missing just enough seconds of notes to fail through fire and the flames outright. Its annoying glitch which means I never connect to the online service unless I really want to go online. Which is rarely.

So why would I buy this disabled twin brother of the 360? because of the controller. Its all for the controller. Your looking confused so let me elaborate.



Frets on Fire is a freeware open source game that's not so much a clone of guitar hero as inspired by it. It requires you hold the keyboard in a way that seems daft but is both fun, effective and absolutely awesome when your doing a solo. What it lacks in any sort of online play it easily overachieves in four way multiplayer, skins, mods and every song you could ever want to play. every guitar hero song has been converted, every fan made song pack for guitar hero has been converted and so so many more. I wont like to the extensive song list because its in that light grey area of morals no one gives two shits about. But Google is your friend. Having a guitar hero controller for this makes the game a lot more fun and opens up the multiplayer mods.

The other reason is a lot more geeky but also kind of more cool. With a USB guitar hero controller, its pretty easy to just plug it in, download some programs and turn your explorer into a synth. Its got so much potential here that you could learn it as a real instrument. Which I'm doing. However with no musical knowledge, slowly plucking 'smoke on the water' is the most I can manage at the moment.

So why would you buy this game? Well either:

a) you don't have a console.
b) your a geek.
me) all of the above :)

8/10

Sure they may be the evil empire of the casual games industry, but that doesnt mean their employees are all that bad. Anthony Coleman of Popcap games has probably the best gaming related costume you will see this halloween, made of 85sq feet of 1/2 inch foam board.



Yup, its our lovable Weighted Companion Cube! Got to give the man credit for this one, not only an awesome Idea but it can't be comfortable to walk in! More photos below.

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/
And yeah, I put portal in the title to make you read this :)


What the hell are they spending all that money on? ICE CREAM???

This video is clearly a stroke of genius. It is both evil and hilarious. I dont want to say any more other than this is probably the best spy kill I have ever seen in Team Fortress 2...



The Guy plays under the name 'Meta' and his 'FYI, I'm a Spy' spray can be found here.

Everyone read the news and figured out what that sexy red box is on your front page? good, then I can begin.

Observe the wonders:



note the dates, these are the latest forum posts. This means where as previously, there where but a few posts a month, with days, DAYS between posts, suddenly forum activity has returned. thanks to Rank Whoring, people have returned to the forums to up their count!

This is a good thing!

When I saw the rank box, I thought two things: 'geeze I should blog something...', and 'man I havn't been on the forum in aaages'.
Two forum posts later, I noticed this!

Thankyou Niero, and GET YO ASS TO TEH FORUMS PEOPLE.