PlayStation Move

Speaking of the devil, the Move has finally been priced and dated which ‘moves’ it out of the vapourware category.  Should be an interesting direction to take the PS3, but who exactly is it aimed at?  If it’s mainly children, then they’ve already got the Wii, and for parents the Wii is a heck of a lot cheaper.  This concerns me.

I’ll qualify the above with a caveat though: the PlayStation has the best tech in this area now.  Way more accurate (1:1 tracking) than anything the Wii can offer with better graphics and sound to boot, and more tactile than the Xbox 360′s Project Natal Kinect product.  I’m sorry, but waving your arms about can be hit and miss whilst gaming whether you’re a seasoned gamer or a casual one.  That’s just the way it is.

Killzone 3

The graphics should be spectacular, and it has support for PlayStation Move.

3D gaming has arrived

This isn’t really a big deal for me, as I don’t buy into the whole 3D spiel just yet.  However I can’t argue with the fact that this is potentially another exciting avenue for the PS3 (and gaming in general) to be going down.

Portal 2

If you’d have told me a week ago that Gabe Newell would be actually present at Sony’s E3 keynote with a native Valve game AND proclaim that it would be the best console version, I would have just laughed.  And laughed.  Now I get to eat my own hat.  But seriously, this is an epic win for the PS3 platform as it means that going forward, we now have Valve working on first-class games for the system.

And maybe, just maybe, good ol’ Gabe won’t slate the PS3 quite so much going forward!

Gran Turismo 5 gets dated

That’s good enough for me.  I mean, months turned into years (almost 2 years since the Prologue version!) and hope turned into despair.  The end is in sight now!

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Not only am I very excited about the next instalment in the series after the sublime sequel, but it’s also nice to get a few perks.  I’m taking about the PS3-exclusive multiplayer beta.  Good stuff.

Medal of Honor

The PS3-exclusive special edition includes a HD remastering of Medal of Honor: Frontline.  Whether this is a deal breaker for some, who knows?  But again, it is nice to get some exclusive perks.  Over the years is has been frustrating to say the least, seeing treasured PlayStation franchises lose their exclusivity.  So what was announced in the keynote along these lines restores a bit of equilibrium in my eyes anyway.

inFamous 2

I’m really unsure about the change of art style and re-think of the main characters(s) as this can lose the cohesiveness that is usually found in a series.  However I’m willing to look the other way on this one as I really enjoyed the last game, and I trust Sucker Punch to make the sequel even more epic.  I can picture the crackle of electrical power to be wielded already.  Muwahaha!

So there you go, just some thoughts of mine.  Am I spot-on, or a bit wide of the mark in some places?

However, as the years roll on, things change.  I originally ran the Steam client on my Windows XP machine, but now I’m running a Mac.  PC gaming became less of an issue for me with the advent of the PS3.  You had true next generation gaming, with each game for the console guaranteed to work- no upgrades necessary.

Rather than continuing being the sole preserve of the PC gaming community, on May 12th 2010 Steam became available for the Mac also.  The biggest benefit though is true multi-platform availability.  If you have a copy of a PC game through Steam, it’ll be available to play on the Mac at no extra cost… in theory.

I was looking forward to playing through some Half-Life, but it seems that for now, Valve are giving away Portal for free to tide gamers over until their flagship catalogue becomes available.  Even Portal hasn’t escaped some rather annoying bugs though.  An early play through of Portal showed black portals instead of see-through ones.  As of May 15th though, this has thankfully been fixed.

So what is my verdict?  Well I’m going to have to disappoint you in saying that to the average gamer, the experience on the Mac is almost exactly the same.  Whether the lighting, colour range, or anti-aliasing is different or not though; I’m not that obsessive and don’t really care.  You’ve got the same great gameplay as the PC version and the graphics look great.  Of course, just like the PC, your mileage may vary depending on the hardware under your hood.

So those are just some quick thoughts for now.  Obviously we just need to wait now for more games to become available on the Mac platform.  The key development to watch though is ‘Steam Play’ where Valve simply state: ‘purchase a game once and play it on your Mac or PC’.  In an industry where we’re facing increasingly arduous and unfair DRM, ridiculous end-user licence agreements and accusations of theft, it’s so refreshing to see a common sense approach.

Yes, Steam itself is founded upon DRM and is not perfect, but I’m sure any other company would have had you pay in full again, or introduce a top-up fee to play on the Mac.  And so, my PC games collection has been given a new lease of life.  Thank you Valve.

I’d be interested to hear thoughts from anyone else who’s had a play with Steam for Mac.

I’ve previously mentioned dabbling with Modern Warfare 2 and moaning about how difficult it has been.  So much so I even came up with my own tips on how to complete ‘Loose Ends’ on veteran.  As it turns out, after I’ve kept chipping away at the game, I’ve mastered most aspects of it.  It’s now really fun and I can pretty much hold my own against anyone.  I still struggle with some of the more challenging special ops though.  I don’t really see myself completing them all.

So what does a gamer who is new to the Call of Duty series do next?  Hungry for more sublime action, I decided to get Call of Duty: World at War.  Yes, the game will be two years old this November, but I told you I was new to the series!  I’d always fancied getting World at War, but it had always been too expensive.  So, I just waited for it to come down in price and with a little help from the invisible hand it was mine for about £17.99 ish.  Sweet.

The verdict?  I love it!  The tried and tested control scheme is spot-on, the visuals are great, and the storyline keeps interest.  The difference between Modern Warfare and the WWII era games is refreshing and maintains variety.  It’s interesting to see how Treyarch approached  the different game modes with having both competitive and co-operative campaign modes, and when you’ve had enough of that, you can always blow the heads off some pesky Nazi zombies.  Good stuff.

I’m currently making my way through the campaign again on veteran and finding it a nice challenge.  As I’ve mentioned in some of my tweets the so-called ‘grenade spamming’ can get quite annoying.  Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it!  Your options are pretty limited if three or more grenades drop at your feet in an enclosed area.  So as I work my way through each mission, it seems like gunfire will be the least of my worries!

We all know that there’s another Treyarch Call of Duty game due this year, possibly called ‘Black Ops’.  You can be assured that I will answer the Call of Duty again.  Next time though, I won’t take as long to answer the call.

I restarted the mission three or four times, and was stuck on this mission for days.  So whilst I can’t call myself an expert, I’m pretty well-versed in this mission!  If you’ve got any tips for this mission or anything else you’d like to add, please share!  In the mean time, here’s my guide:

Make it to the safe house etc

This should be straightforward.  If you can’t make it to the safe house, then you probably shouldn’t be playing on veteran.  It does help to hang back a bit, and use the trees as cover.  Once you’re at the safe house, you’ll have to breach four rooms within the house.  Again, straightforward.

You’ll then have to connect the DSM to Makarov’s computer to retrieve the intel.  You’ll be prompted by Ghost to start the download, but ignore him for now, as you’ve got plenty of time to prepare.  If you were to start the DSM download immediately, you’d be unprepared for the swarm of enemy forces that will storm the safe house.

Instead, go downstairs and set up claymores at all the entrances.  They won’t kill many, but every little helps, right?  You can pick up additional claymores in the armoury within the house.  Make sure you grab yourself a decent sniper rifle in addition to your machine gun and then place yourself wherever you fancy after you’ve started the download.  Good places to shoot from are either on top of the stairs, or in the far room looking directly ahead to the front door.  From the latter position, you can kill enemies storming in the front door, from the side door, and those coming up the stairs.

Kill them all.

Run!  Or not…

After the download has finished, you’d be pretty tempted to grab the DSM and run to the LZ, right?  Well, whatever you do, don’t!  If you do, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a small army of enemies just wanting to rip you to shreds.  You’ll be pinned down from your front and from behind.  This is not a good situation to be in.  you could probably do this on a lower difficulty, but on veteran, you’ll die.

Instead: grab the DSM so enemies can’t shoot it up, then position yourself at the top of the stairs.  Kill everything that moves.  At some point, a checkpoint will be triggered.  Kill all remaining enemies in the house, then meet up with Ghost.  Stick to the left side, and you’ll see another array of solar panels with a gap in the fence.  Run for cover and regain your health.  Watch as all the remaining enemies run down the hill, right past you.  Kill anyone foolish enough to engage you.

When it’s all clear, head down the hill with Ghost to the LZ.  Another checkpoint will trigger and Ghost will mention mortar fire.  There are more enemies down below with machine guns and RPGs, but this time, there’s now no one behind you!  Now,instead of hanging back and killing everyone, you must push forward.  I found that if you do kill everyone, the game doesn’t like that and always kills you with ‘random’ mortar fire.

You need to run forward and sling a few grenades and flash bangs as you hug the left side.  With a bit of luck, enemies will be stunned, and you can make it near enough (about 40m) to the LZ for the cut scene to be triggered.  Mission complete.  I mention ‘luck’ as when you have to make it to the LZ, so much is out of your control that unnecessary and instant deaths feel really unfair.  It seems to be that it’s either Infinity Ward’s way, or the highway.  You will die a lot on this mission, but persevere, because the rest of the game is a cake walk.

I compiled a list of what I was thinking of playing next and eventually decided to spend my hard-earned cash on The Saboteur and Call of Juarez.  I wanted to tackle Call of Juarez first, but I found it hard to get into.  It’s basically a FPS Western, but I’ve felt a bit saturated with a lot of FPS games recently.  Besides, I really like my third-person shooters and action/adventure games.  So The Saboteur it was…

Games are meant to transport you to another world, and The Saboteur does just that.  I’d wager that 1940′s Nazi-occupied Paris is a situation that most gamers won’t have lived through.  So whilst The Saboteur remains first and foremost a game, I was struck by just how much the game brought the whole dark period from our past to life.

The game plunges you into a black and white world where only a few select items remain in colour, such as windows in buildings, the colour of your car, and the red Nazi flags.  It really gives the whole game a real film-noir feel.  Whilst your eyes are being treated to such imagery, your ears are picking up music from that era from the radios in cars (except for ‘Feeling Good’ which is from the 1960s).

So, what’s with the whole black and white setup?  It has been described as ‘the will to fight’.  When you inspire Parisians to rise up and fight against their Nazi oppressors by sabotaging infrastructure such as tanks, sniper nests and gun batteries, the colour bleeds back into the world.  You’re not actually liberating the people of Paris, but rather, you’re giving them the will to fight.  Nazis still patrol the streets but in fewer numbers, and not backed up by their big toys.

So, what’s so great about The Saboteur?  The story has to be the best part of the game: it incorporates everything you’d expect from a War-era setting like espionage, sabotage, and assassinations.  Heck, the story even manages to incorporate a bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark into the plot.  Combined with the visuals, you’ve got an award-winning combination.  But…

The real failing of the game is due to a mixture of repetitive gameplay (at least the story missions try to vary things a bit) and a cumbersome control scheme.  Most games have a solid set of controls that make sense, but in the Saboteur you have some crucial character functions mapped to increasingly obscure button-hold combinations.  If I were to rate The Saboteur, I’d possibly give it a 7/10 as it’s still really worth a play.  You’d probably be better off buying it at a discount price (I got it for £19.99) or perhaps renting it.

Au revoir.

The voucher codes are as below:

QHMQ-FGBN-E4BD
5T9P-52BQ-BK6K
ETBE-H8BA-PTH4
NQJ6-P2B8-G35C
M9FQ-FNBB-G6C5
P86B-3TBR-QT32

Once they’re gone, they’re gone!  Update: They’re all gone!  Once you’ve used a code, could you kindly reply to this post?  That’s all I ask.

Instructions on how to redeem the promotion code:

1) Sign in to your PlayStation®Network account.
2) Visit PlayStation®Store via your PlayStation®3 system, PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) system, PSP™go system or Media Go for PSP™ on your PC.
3) Select the [Redeem Codes] icon from the [Store Top].
4) Enter your 12 character promotion code and select [Continue].
5) Promotion codes are case sensitive and must be entered exactly as displayed.
6) Follow the on-screen instructions to redeem the promotion code.

I’ve been contacted from PlayStation, and this is what they’ve had to say:

The Game is a global game between two teams, Team A and Team B. We launched it back in January and since it has been played by thousands of people globally fighting it out in either Team A or Team B, creating their own leagues, their own challenges and generally having a lot of fun. The first round ended a couple of weeks ago with Team A scoring on the top of the leader board and ultimately winning the Game.

We have Facebook pages for each teams, where you can meet the team captains and other players.

Team B - http://www.facebook.com/thegameteamb

Team A - http://www.facebook.com/thegameteama

I’ve been told that there’s a PS3 game voucher up for grabs, so I’ll see if we can arrange a giveaway of some sort.