The first thing that I noticed immediately was the time it takes to create a new game, or the lack of… Being a long time Football Manager player, I’m quite accustomed to waiting a long time for a new game to setup, so I was very impressed when my game was set up and ready to go in less than 60 seconds after selecting my team (Gateshead if you’re interested; I like a challenge).

As soon as you’re in the game, it’s apparent that quite a few changes have been made since Football Manager 2009. Aside from the usual welcome message from the chairman of your club, you can ‘Meet your staff’ who will each give you their opinion on the current status of the club and areas which may need improving. This is a nice feature I found helpful, as I have no idea how good or bad the Gateshead squad is, but if you’re managing a well known club you may not need to pay so much attention to this – you’re the Gaffer after all!

You’ll find that the ‘Home’ section is your main hub for most of the in game information you need to know about, with a very easy to navigate and intuitive interface that utilises 7 tabs that allow you to flick between your overview; profile; news and messages; jobs; search; history and notebook. You’ll also find a mini calendar with a 5 day preview located at the top of your screen with the continue button also relocated to the top. The main menu is accessible through the “FM” button located between the search bar and continue button.

Tabs are also used when viewing the squad. You have a choice of 7 tabs showing each of your squads (main, reserves and u19‘s) as well as club information, the board room and transfer history. On the “Board Room” tab, a slider makes it very easy to adjust your budget between transfer and wage budget which is a nice and welcome addition.

When dealing with transfers, everything is done through the transfer centre which is accessible through the squad tabs or the club drop down menu. It’s nice to have everything available without a host of sub-menus as was often the case with previous versions of Football Manager. When in the transfer centre, you can access player search, staff search and scouting amongst other things from easily visible buttons below the tabbed options. Switching from one to another couldn’t be easier, and Sports Interactive have definitely done a great job cleaning up the interface to increase productivity not only in the transfer market, but when altering your squad and quickly being able to go to tactics when something needs to be changed!

When altering the tactics for your next big game, you’ll be presented with a slightly different tactics screen than you’re used to. On the surface, everything looks very similar to previous renditions, but you’ll notice some changes that make it easy for you to concoct a winning formula. The best thing about the new tactics options is you don’t have to be a mastermind when working with a host of sliders anymore! Replacing all those sliders you’ve become oh so accustomed to are easy to understand options that make it easier to envisage how your team will perform on the pitch, split into ‘General Strategies’ and ‘Playing Style’.

It’s a feature I’ve been begging for since the sliders came about and I’m very glad to see my prayer’s answered in Football Manager 2010. When you’re viewing individual players, the layout is mostly the same as you’re used to from previous versions of Football Manager with the exception of tabs being ever present in the new version.

Ok, your squad is sorted and tactics perfectly planned out, but how’s the actual gameplay? One thing that I was disappointed to see was the lack of change in press conferences, which still ask the same questions over and over in the same monotonous manner as always with limited responses. When this feature first appeared in FM 2009 I thought that it was a good first attempt at integrating the press into the game, giving them a more active role, but it soon started to annoy me and it doesn’t seem like much has changed in the new FM 2010 unfortunately.

When you proceed to your next match, everything is mostly familiar if you’ve played previous versions of Football Manager, although tabs are again used to navigate through this area. Firstly, you’re given an overview of the two teams’ line-ups and formations, before progressing to the opposition instructions screen before your pre-match team talk. Again, the options given to you in the team talk are mostly unchanged from previous versions although you may find a few new instructions floating around.

When you’re viewing the match, you’ll notice a few changes when watching in 3D mode. I preferred the 3D mode in FM 2009 to the standard 2D top-down view despite its limitations and flaws, so I was happy to see some improvements in the match engine of FM 2010.

You’ll probably notice that you can see people in the crowd and actual stands rather than grey walls of nothingness beside the pitch which is a nice visual improvement. A new feature which I love is the ability to issue commands from the touchline so you don’t have to enter the tactics screen every time you want to change something around! You can change the current strategy and issue specific instructions as well, such as ‘Pump Ball Into Box’ or ‘Get Stuck In’.

This is a great addition when compared to the sliders of old (which are still available if you prefer to control your team that way) and help manage the game much more effectively. Oh, and the ball actually bounces off the billboards on the side of the pitch now, it doesn’t just run through them like they aren’t even there like it did in FM 2009!

The game itself ran extremely smoothly in 3D mode, although it’s something I’ve come to expect of Football Manager – you know it’s time to upgrade when your PC can’t run Football Manager! Overall, I think the new interface makes it considerably easier to move around the game when you get used to it, and FM 2010 is a great addition to the already incredible series despite the fact that the 3D match engine which isn’t quite in the 21st century just yet… So what are you still reading this article for? Go and manage your team!

Football Manager 2010 is available for both Windows and Mac OS X, and is available from around £20.

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I’ve never know a game that has been put back so many times as has the Final Fantasy 13 release date being delayed, well perhaps Duke Nukem takes that crown, but anyway a release date has now been set in stone for the launch of the European and US version of Final Fantasy XIII which will be 9th March 2010. The Japanese are lucky as their release date is much earlier and they are getting the game next month…..surprise, surprise!

The game will be released on both PS3 and Xbox 360 at the same time but I think I’ll be getting the PS3 version as the 360 one, from what I’ve read, had to be split onto two discs.

There’s even been an announcement of the theme tune for the game which is going to be sang by………..hang on a sec…….. *John, am I reading this correctly?* …….ok, so it isn’t my eyes, but the theme tune is sang by none other than our very own Leona Lewis…………………………ok then. I’ve listened to it and I don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as the usual music in Final Fantasy games to be honest though.

There’s also a new video which tells us more about the game which is worth checking out the video below:

So what do you think? Leona Lewis the right choice for the soundtrack? Will you be getting it on PS3 or 360 or do you think there’s still plenty of time for the Final Fantasy 13 release date to be put back yet again? Will we still end up playing Final Fantasy 14 before 13? Let us know in the comments section below!

Via – Eurogamer

Related Pages:

1. Final Fantasy XIII Release Date Delayed
2. Final Fantasy XIV Trailer
3. Project Natal Release Date & Price Announced
4. Wii Motion Plus Release Date

The crime? Installing new chips that allows them to run unofficial or illegal programmes and games, and easily pirate games and download them for free. According to Microsoft this modifying of the console with the express interest to play games illegally is an infringement of the terms of use of Xbox Live and have therefore banned them from the service.

A spokesman for the company said: “All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live”.

Although some people have raised the issue of how Microsoft managed to identify those that had actually committed some kind of crime they seem to have done a pretty good job, as despite the fact that the numbers of people who have been cut off is relatively large (estimates range from 600,000 to a million) there seem to be very few complaints from people who have been banned unfairly – and although obviously those who have been banned are far from impressed they generally seem to be able to see why Microsoft has taken this action.

But if nothing else this action (which has affected a ‘small proportion’ of the 20milllion worldwide Xbox Live users) has re-raised many of the questions that have plagued the industry more and more over the last few years, what is the solution to internet piracy?

The most obvious of these would be the manner in which piracy is ‘destroying’ the media industry, and that the £750 million that is lost every year to illicit activity will eventually be the cause for the downturn in the industries fortunes. This is a complicated argument, and not one that I intend to delve into, but it’s fair to say that by taking a stand against it Microsoft have certainly made their point and will hopefully persuade people to follow the straight, narrow and legal path.

However something else that has sprung up, mostly (if not solely) from the people who have been banned, is increasingly vocal complaints over the extortionate pricing of games and feel that they are forced into piracy as they cannot hope to afford all the games that are coming out at such high prices. And whilst you might not agree with their action you can still see their point: top end games prices have nearly doubled from 5-10 years ago (from about £30 to £50) and likewise with new consoles (if I can remember the original PS1 was about £150, whilst the PS3 was £300).

So a bold move from Microsoft, the question is how long until the pirates are able to hack their way round their Xbox Live ban? Also, will we see other console manufacturers following suit? It will definitely be interesting, as although Microsoft will hopefully (for them) reap the benefits of less piracy on their console they will also quite possibly loose a significant about amount of market share as people choose to move to the PS3 – not necessarily because they can use pirate games (as they may have learned their lesson!) but merely out of principle. We shall see, but whatever the outcome it will be definitely interesting!

Via – BBC

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But now hoping to harness the every growing wave of euphoria surrounding Assassin’s Creed 2’s imminent release Ubisoft and Penguin have unveiled Oliver Bowen’s “Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance” which will hopefully add a more culturally accepted face on the story behind the game.

Judging by the publisher’s description if will be following exactly the same story as the game (although I imagine with more dialogue, background historical information and description than blood, killing and combo kills, but I may be wrong!):

“Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, a man embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family’s honour, he will learn the art of the assassins. Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli – knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live.”

Set to be released to the world a week after the Assassin’s Creed 2 game (which translates to a 27th November release date) but it’s already available to pre-order from a whole host of online stores for those a little more keen. But will it work? Or will it just be a painfully poor reflection of what promises to be a great game?

Hopefully the latter but only time will tell. I’m personally hoping to get my hands on a copy pretty soon after it’s out and will have read it before I’ve actually played the game (due to the delayed release of the PC version to which I remain faithful: curse Ubisoft!) so I’ll be able to give you a heads up as to whether Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance could be the bridge between games and books that as of yet has been lacking.

Via – Guardian

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1. Assassin’s Creed 2 Preview
2. Left 4 Dead 2 Announced
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Obviously this was made 35 years ago so at the time it could have been seen as scary, but I found myself to be laughing more than being scared. The acting in this film is beyond appalling and I couldn’t have cared less if the characters died or not. From annoying, whiny voices that only a five year old kid would make, to constant screaming that is completely unnecessary and hair pulling annoying.

Story

Anyhow, in case you weren’t aware of the storyline, here we go. A group of friends are on a road trip and pass by the farm where a couple of the group grew up. So they stop by the house, which is abandoned, and a couple of them decide to go find the nearby watering hole/pond/bit of water to jump in. Upon getting there, they find it dried up, but see a house just beyond that. So of course they go snooping around and want to see if the people in the house have any spare gas (petrol). Then the killing begins.

Picture Quality

To say this has been converted over to Blu-Ray, I was quite disappointed with the quality. I know it’s an old film but I’ve got other films that are almost as old that have been converted much better. There’s lots of grain on the picture and the dark scenes don’t have too much clarity to them. If they wanted to keep the authentic feel to the film and keep it looking old then they should just keep it on DVD. But on the other hand, this was filmed on an old 16mm camera that wasn’t state of the art so this could be the reason the picture quality is like it is.

Sound

The picture is poor, but the sound is really good. I only played it through my TV and not surround, but it was still a crisp sound which I was quite impressed with. But on the downside it made the screaming even more annoying, but the sound of the chainsaw was cool and did help in adding a little bit of atmosphere to a dreary film.

Extras

This is the saving grace of the Blu-Ray edition of the film. The actual movie is only 80 minutes long, but you get over 4 hours of extras which include two feature length commentaries from some of the cast and crew. There’s even a tour around the house that was used in the film with Gunnar Hansen who played the original Leatherface. I found this really interesting as he goes into what was used where and certain things they could and couldn’t do as the house was being rented by someone whilst they were filming. They show the house in 1993 and again in 2000 when it’s be turned into what looks like a B&B. Of course there’s the token deleted scenes, alternate footage, outtakes and trailers. I’m a bit of a nerd so like my extras, and it’s good to see to people behind the film talk about how the film was made.

In Summary

Overall, I know this is an old film and is regarded as a classic and was a benchmark for horror films in later years, but in today’s day and age, this has past it’s sell by date. If you’re a big fan of the film or even think it’s an okay film and like your extras, then I would recommend this film. But if like me, you like something a bit more from horrors, then I’d probably go for the remake which has lots more gore and it quite creepy.

The ‘Seriously Ultimate Edition’ of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is available on Blu-Ray from 16th November and will cost you around £13.99.

2.5 out of 5

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A couple of days ago, Twitter started to roll out an automated retweet (RT) button across some accounts. It’s still in beta so you might not be able to see it yet, but tweeters who can have mixed feelings. One one hand, it does make the retweeting process a lot easier, on the other there are some disadvantages to it which I’ll discuss later. First here’s an overview.

What Is It And How Does It Work?

The new button appears next to the regular reply button when you hover your cursor over a tweet. Simply click it and a dialogue box appears asking if you want to retweet this to your followers. Click yes, and it will immediately be posted to your followers. It will not appear on the main Twitter home page displaying all recent updates though, and it doesn’t feed through to external services such as Facebook, similar to the way @replies only appear to people who are subscribed to both parties.

You will also see RTs from friends, but they will no longer be preceded by RT, instead you’ll see an icon at the start of the tweet.

The RT button appears on both your home page and profile pages, but at the moment, not on list pages. Hopefully this will change because logically the people you’ve added to lists are those you are most interested in.

In addition to the RT button, there is also a new section in your sidebar along with your @replies and favourites listing all your RTs, your friends RTs and any of your tweets which have been retweeted.

If you find some of your followers are a little RT happy – some people do seem to share almost everything that appears on their home page – then you can opt not to see RTs from them using a button on their profile page. Just click the little green button, and those pesky tweets will be banished from your feed. Don’t worry, I’m still keeping up with that guy, whoever he is!

So that’s what it does. The good news is it is very easy to use, and it is handy to have a separate section handling retweets because there are times when standard replies get lost in a sea of them; this makes it much easier to keep up. However, there is some bad news.

What’s Wrong With Twitter’s Retweet System?

First, the limitations on who can see a tweet, and more specifically how a user can broadcast them (ie: not sharing with Facebook) is a step back. Social media has become ever more interconnected over the last couple of years so it seems odd that a now mainstream function has been effectively taken away.

Next, not all RTs are visible to the person who originally posted the tweet. If someone outside their network reposts their tweet, they might not see it. (Some RTs from people within a network have also failed to appear, but this may be a bug.) Once again, this seems like a step back. Twitter was built on communication and sociability, most people like to say thank you to those who share their tweets, now they won’t always be able to. I can understand that some people did abuse the existing system to draw attention to themselves, but it is unfair to penalise everyone because of the actions of a few. We already have the option to block the obviously spammy, so I think this is overkill.

Finally, the most controversial change: using the built-in RT button means your tweet appears instantly, and you don’t have any chance to edit it or add commentary. This is a shame because most people do like to add a few words to explain why they’re sharing something, or express an opinion on it. Once again, removing this option makes Twitter less sociable; all RTs appear verbatim making it less likely a conversation will ensue.

If you still want to be able to add more to a tweet before you share it you’ll need to post it manually, possibly adding something like ‘via @username’ to the end of the tweet. This would also get around the problem of tweets not being published to other networks.

In Summary

Automated retweeting is long overdue, and the addition of a simple button would have been more than enough for most people. However, the way it has been implemented has, in a sense, destroyed the whole ethos of retweeting by removing the aspects that turned the reposting of information into the beginning of a conversation. In a sense, Twitter have tried to fix something that wasn’t broken. The new system is still in beta, so what we have now may not be the definitive version, but if you’re particularly unhappy about the way it works make use of the feedback link in your sidebar to share your thoughts with the Twitter developers.

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On its release there will be 14 games available, but nothing yet on whether any of these will be AAA titles. Lionhead have been working on the Project Natal AI kids known as Milo and Kate so could this be a possible launch title? From what I’ve seen of it, it looks impressive and is one of the many reasons I bought an Xbox 360.

No doubt the majority of the release titles will be third party games as is usually the case with peripherals such as this. But with giants such as Activision, Capcom, EA, and Square Enix to name a few, creating games specifically for Natal, it makes me think we’re about to see something really special.

I know that Peter Molyneux has said that parts of Fable 3 will work with Project Natal which could make it interesting. But what about a new Halo without a controller? It could be fun using your arms to control an invisible gun and lobbing grenades from thin air, or maybe even driving around Liberty City on the next GTA game with an imaginary steering wheel. Have you seen the initial promotional video for this new Xbox 360 peripheral? If not take a look at it here:

So what are your views on Project Natal? Will it stick to that release date and price? Do you think it’s going to be one of the best peripherals so far on any console, something fun and worth the money, or just another pointless gimmick? Let us know in the comments below.

Via – Eurogamer

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1. Project Natal – Xbox 360 Motion Controller
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The installation is very quick and easy and when you start the backup tool for the first time, you’re presented with a simple, easy to use menu. The main screen highlights the backup, restore and clone disk options, with the backup process being extremely straight forward – using Todo Backup for the first time reminded me of using Windows XP for the first time after using Windows 2000 with the new “bubblegum” interface, with everything nicely laid out and visible.

Backup Up You Data

When you want to back up your drive, you have the choice of archiving the data or creating the image sector by sector. When you decide, choose the location where you want to store the backup! When you’ve got the formalities out of the way, you can go on to prioritise the backup – a feature I found most useful when I’m on my computer all day doing various things, some of which are rather CPU intensive. You can choose whether the backup is low, normal or high priority to make sure that you have enough juice left to do the things you need to, although if you’re just web browsing and sending e-mail, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about this.

On the same window, you can then choose whether or not you want to compress and encrypt the backup image. The image has three compression settings, set at either normal, high or maximum – bear in mind that the higher level of compression you set the longer the backup will take, so think before you choose! If you can only backup to limited media, DVD for example, you can split the image into certain sized segments. I thought this was a great addition for those who don’t have external or secondary drives for their system.

Restoring Your Data From A Backup

So that’s backing up done, but what happens when your hard drive packs in and you need all that data back from where it came? I was actually surprised at the simplicity of the whole thing; it was a case of simply locating the backup file and telling the program where to put your stuff! As long as the destination drive has enough capacity for the image, you’re good to go. One very handy feature I found here was the automatic hiding of all the drives that aren’t big enough to handle the image which helps avoid possible confusion, although if the only drive in your machine wasn’t big enough to handle the image it may actually cause some confusion. As well as the backup/restore functions, the clone disk option is nice if you want to copy data from one drive directly to another. I found this to work great with either 2 internal drives as well as an external drive too.

In Summary

If you’re an advanced user that needs more than what this is offering, you’ll most probably have to pay for what you’re looking for – the only minor negative I can find in the application is the fact that I had to restart my PC after installing the program; it’s the 21st century, do we really need to restart our computers after installing a piece of software?

For a free piece of software, Todo Backup is an absolutely fantastic and easy to use backup solution that I’d recommend to anyone looking to back up their data. It has all of the features that the average user needs to back up, and presents it in an easy to see and easy to navigate way.

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Well the race for the thinnest laptop has been a little quieter since then, and this probably down to the fact that most manufacturers have realised most people actually can’t tell the difference between 0.65 and 0.76 inches, and even more importantly aren’t willing to pay hundreds of pounds for the difference. But Dell have seemingly been undeterred by this opinion, and have really pulled the stops out with the Dell Adamo XPS – the new thinnest laptop.

And when I say thin I mean thin: Dell have managed to roughly half the thickness and it now measures on average (the actual values vary by about 0.4mm either way depending where you are along the laptop) 9.9mm. For those of you unfamiliar with metric that’s 0.39 inches, whilst the original managed 0.65mm, and the Air came in at a relatively fat 0.76 inches.

If you’re looking for more relevant comparison, that means it is thinner than a standard CD jewel case, which by any measure is very impressive! But how on earth have they managed to do this? Well by severe space saving and a few clever tricks.

The first thing they’ve done is positioned the keyboard so that it fits in the slight recess created by the screen, but this means the hinge for the screen sits about 10cm further up from where they normally lie. This means (and you will probably have noticed this already in the pictures) that the screen sits up at around a 25 degree angle which I am assured is weird, but not something that you can’t get used to!

The second thing they’ve done is scrap anything unnecessary from the outside of the laptop – you still get the basic sockets (power [obviously], headphones, line in, two USB ports and a DisplayPort socket) but you can say goodbye to your Ethernet port, and you will have to rely on external DVD/Blu Ray Drives for your disk based needs – for a small cost of course!

Another interesting point is the lack of obvious branding – there is just a small “Dell Adamo” imprint on the front laving the rest looking very chic and metallic! The other major curiosity is the way in which you actually open the lid: there isn’t a button rather a pad which you stroke your finger across to open the Adamo XPS up. Yes this does mean that if the relatively short lived (about 2 and a half hours) battery dies than you cannot open it, and although Dell are right in their logic that you wouldn’t need to open it when it has no power they evidently haven’t counted on people wanting to show it off!

Finally after all of that on the dorm factor, we get down to the specs, which aren’t as bad as they could be given the space Dell have given themselves to play with. There’s 1.4GHz Intel ULV processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a Solid State 128GB drive as standard – the screen is 13.4-inch HD WLED 720p (1366 x 768) and will be more than adequate for anything you want to do with it.

And now the scary bit: the price. It will be released at $1,799 which is about £1,100, and in case you’re not very good at processing figures I’ll tell you that’s a lot especially for a laptop that can only muster 1.4GHz of processing power.

And it’s for that reason that I think the Dell Adamo XPS will be something that will be confined to the hands of people with lots of money, and who are more than happy to show this to everybody else. Yes it’s great to see people pushing the boundaries, but it has to be said that this really is a niche market – and we can only hope that this kind of innovation will filter down to the ‘lower’ end of the market and that us mere mortals will get a taste of this thin-goodness.

Via – Geeky Gadgets

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Since the testing versions of Windows, guides have been popping up all over the net on how to add other country themes to your own (country-inspired theme styles along with various wallpapers of the country concerned), which is included by default, which is all well and good, but it’s a bit of a hassle digging out the themes from the Windows folder on your hard drive, and when you do your choices are limited to 5 countries.

What’s more surprising to me is that not many sites mention the fact that all these themes along with 15 more are available from the Microsoft download site! I downloaded every theme available, although downloading all 20 separately was a bit inconvenient…

When you have your .themepack files downloaded and waiting, all you have to do is double click on whichever you want to use. This sets the theme as your current theme and saves it in your collection of themes you’ll find in control panel for future use.

If you don’t like the default themes from Microsoft, you can even create your own – more on that another time… Have you got a favourite Windows 7 theme yet?

Let us know in the comments section!

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