“Is this game as much fun as Street Fighter 3: Third Strike?”

Generally, opinion is divided on 3^rd strike, as it is essentially the title that stopped Capcom from making fighters for over 10 years. The problem was that the learning curve wasn’t a curve, it was a line which rocketed up like a ride at Alton Towers and then didn’t slow down for a couple of years.

It divided the fans up; some people preferred the previous titles like Street Fighter Alpha, and the VS series of games like Marvel VS Capcom.

With the introduction of parrying into the game, some people felt that there was no point playing a game when your chances of landing a hit could be nullified with a game mechanic.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An example of this is the classic EVO moment number 37, in which, during the final match of the tournament, Daigo Umehara manages to pull off a full parry of Justin Wong’s Chun-Li’s super art, and finish off his opponent. Now, there are generally 3 reactions to watching this clip;

1)      Wow, that’s cool, I’m going to play this game and I’m going to do that
2)      Damn, that looks hard to do, I’ll never learn that
3)      What’s the point in playing a game when you can’t land a hit?

The retail sales for 3^rd strike were far from amazing, In fact, I think it’s the worst retail performance of any Capcom Street Fighter game to date, however, with the re-launch on the current generation of consoles; we could be looking at the rebirth of the parry.

The problem with this now is that players who are coming into the fighting scene with games like Street Fighter 4/Super/AE/MVC are used to some assistance from the game, whereas 3^rd strike is raw, which is where I think its beauty lies. There is nothing like winning a round with a parry counter combo, however, the rush down opportunities for some opponents is nothing like that which new players have experienced and this may immediately put people off.

I will say that in my experience of playing fighters, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is the most fun you can have in a fighting game, if like me, your enjoyment comes from not just playing, but learning, and in this game, you have plenty of opportunities to learn, mostly after you have been on the receiving end of a beating.

A beating isn’t always bad, as Kami pointed out in a recent blog – it can harden your resolve, make you want to sharpen your fangs, or it can help you realise that, you know what, I’m not for this, which again isn’t a bad thing, you’ve tried it, you have an opinion, its allowed.

It’s like I’ve always said, if you don’t try something new, you’ll always be shit in bed.

Am I saying that playing Street Fighter 3: Third Strike will make you better in bed?

The answer to this would be yes, obviously.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Being a PC gamer, I’m used to buying from Steam – I have been for almost a decade. I signed up for my Steam account late in 2002 and I have a four digit account, which according to Steam aficionados is a big deal, it means I was there at the beginning, when the digital distribution revolution began.

Ol' buddy ol' pal of mines!

So, I had worked out that my total collection on Steam, plus my collection on my Xbox, all of which were either games or DLC purchased through digital distribution, are now worth more than the total of retail games, peripherals and hardware that I have purchased and are greater in number.

I think by now most people are used to the ease of delivery that DLC offers us but that wasn’t always the case. I can distinctly remember whole walls dedicated to PC games in most retail games shops. Times have changed though, there is very little wall estate used up for PC games now, some people say that PC gaming has declined but I think it’s more that digital distribution has had more of an impact than games retailers would like to admit. Some now even offer it as their only option for selected PC games from their own sites.

With that said, I don’t think that consoles are quite there, I would prefer it if when a game went retail, if we were given two options, buy it from a store or download it directly over the web, allowing us to preload and unlock content as it becomes available.

I can appreciate that you may not get as many grand game launch queues outside stores, but I think it will give a more accurate number of pre-orders and it’s a step closer to the excellent options that PC gamers have.

The only downside of this for consoles is that storage space is a real consideration, with my Steam folder currently sitting at 196Gb and with only 70% of the titles I own actually downloaded and installed, I think that even with current options on console storage way up at 250Gb, it still means that people will have to actively go and manage their collection, which I think a lot of people won’t want to do.

So yeah, I was there at the beginning, when this digital distribution thing began and yes, it does make me feel like a big man.

You'll always end up with a number of points so low they can't buy you anything, it's a cunning ploy from Microsoft to get you to buy more!

Confusing? Yeah, that sums up this game and the universe.

This is a fighting game which has a strong story mode. At the time when this first appeared back in 1998, it was a break from the norm. A story mode in a fighting game had never really been done before. It was just turn up and fight; job done. This was following on from fighting games typically being set in an arcade environment. Your average versus fighter fan didn’t want to watch a drawn out story mode, they just wanted to get on with the part where they ram a fist/foot/projectile/weapon into your face.

The game sets the story in the future, around the 22nd century. Last year, we found an unlimited source of power which was so powerful we gave it the name magic. Yes, magic. Combining people with magic (yes, magic) turned them into gears, which were essentially just living weapons. Being superior to normal people, it didn’t take gears long to turn on their inferior human counterparts, thus  kicking off a war which would blah blah blah. Now, that was the first game, with so many iterations of the Guilty Gear franchise now available, I honestly have no idea where the story is at. For all I know, the characters could be fighting over who gets the last Ikea home card in the world. For great discounts, there has to be a great battle.

The confusion doesn’t end with the story. The in-game mechanics available are many and varied. I’ll run you through some of the base options you have available with all of the characters. You have your normal gauges as in all fighting games but in Guilty Gear XX ACP, you have a health gauge, guard gauge, burst gauge and tension gauge. So yeah, four types of gauges. Movement wise you have high jumps, multiple jumps, run/dash and air dash as well as backstepping. All have their uses. Backstepping, for example, gives you a couple of frames of invincibility. Defense wise, we have just guard, faultless/fortress guards, slash back, air recovery and throw escape. Slash back is unique to the GGXXAC/ACP universe – it acts as a counter. That leads us on to attacking. We start with throws, you can throw on the ground or in the air. You also have a dust attack, a sweep attack, knockdown attack, dead angle attack, clashing attack, force break, overdrive and instant kill and we have a couple of combo mechanics which are roman cancel and force roman cancel, to allow you to extend you combo strings. Yeah, I’m not finished yet. In most fighters there is the option to stun or dizzy your opponent; par for the course in GGXXACP. There are two type of this. One is dizzy and the other is stagger, which from what I can see, seems to be like a mini-dizzy.

Now I’m not going to spend any time explaining any of those terms above. If I did, this review would quite quickly become the most encyclopedic explanation of the Guilty Gear XX AC/ACP fighting system known to man, which would be cool, but I don’t have the year it would take to explain it all in terms that everyone would understand. So let me just say, yes, you will learn what all of this stuff is. Some is useful; some not so much.

Given its complexity, I’m thinking by this point you will never consider picking this title up and giving it a blast, which I’d say is a massive mistake. All of the core elements in this game are excellent. The gameplay is smooth, the numbers on the combos rack up dramatically, with only a few hours of playing you start to get into the flow of the game, understand the pace and even start using some of the things mentioned above like roman cancels. Quite quickly you will go from someone flailing about on the screen, to someone who’s worked out a few combos and setups of your own.

At its core (ha! See what I did there?) GGXXACP is a balance patch on the previously released GGXXAC. If you have the previous title, then unless you’re wanting the additional two character story extension and the tournament balance that’s been added, this is just the same as the game that you already have.

As solid as this plays, I feel that the complexity of the options available will simply put people off who will struggle to understand what’s happening on the screen all of the time. It takes a fair amount of time spent in game to start piecing together whats going on and while I enjoy this title, I think that people who were introduced to the new fighting game scene and are used to games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will simply find the information on screen too complex to be able to get into this immediately.

There are some things I love about this game, but unfortunately, there are so many things stacked against it that it balances out in the scoring. Availability on the PS2, Wii and PSP but not the Xbox 360 or PS3 is odd – it would have made an ideal downloadable title. I liked the retro look of the game, but then I realise, it’s not being retro, it’s just been updated and rebalanced so many times that the game is aesthetically the same as it was in 1998. Not that it’s ugly, but it certainly doesn’t draw the eye like some of the other 2D fighters out there. 3rd Strike would be one that springs to mind.

So I’m conflicted, I love it because I’m a versus fighter fan but I sit for alot of the time scratching my head trying to understand what’s happening, why it happened and how I make it do it again. If I had the time, I’d sink loads of it into this and no doubt it would help me understand more of whats happening, but that’s not the nature of a versus fighting game player.

Brink puts you in a world where civilisation has split from the mainland to create a colony out in sea called The Arc.  The Arc is a floating city which is protected by a security force but has a host of rebels who are wanting to leave to find out if there is life outside of this futuristic colony.

This is an objective based FPS. There are eight maps which have stages of objectives to complete for each side. On each map you will play either in an attacking or a defending force. Attacking forces usually have three or four objectives to complete to finish a map whereas defenders only have to stop you completing any single objectives to be successful.

The class structure of this is identical to the previous games by Splash Damage. You have a soldier class who can resupply other players and plant explosives on objectives; an engineer, who can repair damages objectives, build objective objects and buff weapon damage for other players; an operative who can assume the disguise of a fallen enemy player and hack enemy objective points and a medic who can heal fallen teammates and buff other players’ health.

Each class comes with its own unlocks which you will obtain as you play through the game with level points. You can choose to spend these points concentrating on class specific skills like building a turret as an engineer or on core abilities like having the option to reload while sprinting. There are loads of unlockables and class specific options available.

The game also has a unique movement system for an FPS. It looks like parkour. You are able to move around objects and obstacles with great ease (depending on your customised character body type) which adds a nice flow to the game. However sometimes you won’t be able to slide under or jump over certain objects. That aside, it does add some options when you’re in a gun fight, especially as you can sprint towards and then slide to knock over an opponent and then finish them off while they are on the ground.

Now, while the unlockables are pretty essential, there are also weapon and character customisation unlocks available. These are unlocked through a single-player challenge mode, and at this point I would recommend that for everything except the challenges (some of which can also be completed with friends for unlocks) you play every other part of the game in either co-op or versus mode online.

The reason being for this is that the A.I. in the game is so insanely bad, in saying that it would appear that its just the A.I. on your team. The A.I. on the other team is powered by a quantum super-computer which can predict your movement and actions with a 100% accuracy and will quite often just destroy your face for 10 minutes.

When I first started playing, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the stupidity of the single-player A.I. on my team, for example, being killed while a medic is close by on your team doesn’t guarantee that they will help you, for the most likely thing they will do is run back to spawn or just run away and leave you to die. So when it comes to completing objectives in single player its essentially you versus the entire other team.

Given that this game is all entirely hosted online, I feel that the frustrating single-player mode should have been removed from the game.  Making this an online only multiplayer game would remove the starting frustration which I have no doubt a lot of people will have felt while in this game, after all, not everyone is used to jumping into co-op or online when they have just purchased a game, however, with Brink it’s essential and actually brings out the best aspects of the game immediately.

Once you’re in co-op online, the aspects that make this game great all come together. You can actually see the other players working towards the objective, buffing other players with abilites, completing sub-objectives to make the main task much easier, and this is when the game truly comes into its own. I completed the entire campaign in online co-op mode and then I went and did it again, and again and again. For me, this game offers something that I think has been missing on consoles for a good while – a game thats focuses on co-op play to complete an objective. Fighting through to complete the mission gives me a sense of achievement. Even the microphone chat in game was civil, with people actually telling me what they where going for and how many enemies where up ahead.

So if you’re looking for a game thats not a brainless FPS, where teamwork is essential and you want a sense of acchievement for completing a level with your friends, Brink is definitely for you. This game is exactly what I’m looking for in a co-op title, something that I can get friends involved in where we all take a role and work together for an objective. It reminded me why I loved the previous games by Splash Damage

That’s always the case with most types of games. There would appear to be one exception, Fighters. If you’re a Street Fighter player and a new fighting game comes out and people ask you if you’re going to get it, when you reply “No” you get some odd looks.

Street Fighter 4 did something that very few titles in fighter history had done before, it revitalised a whole genre of games. Companies who saw the success of Street Fighter 4 decided that the time was right to release new titles and give people more variety of games to play than just one title on these next generation consoles.

The game which started it all, (again).

Think about it, until Street Fighter 4 came out, what did we have? Street Fighter HD:R, Virtua Fighter 5, original Xbox games, some PS2 fighters, pretty much nothing that didn’t need either a custom fight stick or a PC with M.A.M.E on it. Then when Street Fighter 4 was released we were looking at a wave of title releases.

• Street Fighter 4 – released Feb 20 2009
• Blazblue: Calamity trigger  - released June 25 2009 (Japanese console release)
• King of Fighters XII – released July 28 2009
• Marvel Versus Capcom 2 – released July 29 2009
• Tekken 6 – released October 27 2009
• Samurai Shodown Sen – released December 10, 2009
• Super Street Fighter IV – released April 27 2010
• Blazblue: Continuum Shift – released July 1 2010
• Marvel  Versus Capcom 3: The fate of two worlds – released Feb 15 2011
• Mortal Kombat (2011) – released April 19 2011

Now, if you look at that list, that’s a fair amount of games within a two year period, not to mention the subsequent flow of titles onto the XBL and PSN from the SNK Playmore team. We have gone from having very limited choice to a veritable smorgasbord of options available to play.

However, if you’re a fan of a fighting game, you don’t have to like everything else that comes out from that genre. In fact, some of these games will be so different from the original titles which got you into fighters that you may dislike them, and that’s actually okay.

You don’t have to like them all. You’ll probably download a trial or play them on a friend’s console and question yourself for not liking them, thinking, “Hey, I should like that game; it’s a fighter”. That reaction is perfectly normal, but you can say, “No, actually, I’m not a fan”. You see, a lesson which I have learned over this past couple of years is that, it’s okay to not like something, as long as you’re not a dick about it.

The last part was the hardest part; not being a dick about it. I’m a dick about so many things, this was a new concept for me, but it’s working. When people ask me my opinion on MVC3 for example, I’ll tell them that game looks and plays well but it’s not for me. Same with Mortal Kombat. I’m actually allowed to not like these games. With all of the options available to me now, I think I can afford to say “No”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In fact, the tutorial is so good, that while I was in a pub and the tennis happened to be on, I was telling some friends the shots that where being used and if they were good or bad and what those professionally trained tennis players should be doing better; that’s the level of understanding you get from the tutorial mode.

The tutorial sets the pace of the game. Everything is well polished; it all looks fantastic. It’s all too easy to spend two to three hours playing with friends without wanting to change to another game, which in a time where people seem to have a decreasing attention span, is an excellent achievement.

The only down side to this well polished aspect is that it’s too clean. There is no one in the crowd shouting, there are no outlandish moments of frustration from the tennis players who have just missed a ball, it’s all very clinical.

However, if you consider this a Tennis simulator rather than a game, then this title  is fantastic. It reminded me what I loved about Tennis, for the most part. The balance is right, the control system, once you have mastered the tutorial, feels fluid and responsive and you will always know what to do and when it’s needed.

The PS3 and Wii versions will feature support for the Wii controller and Playstation Move, and while I loved Wii tennis, the complexity of Top Spin 3 made me immediately question whether or not this was a good idea. The Top Spin 4 promotional video made me think differently about that, though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is really a game for everyone. The action is always there; you will always be at the edge of your seat making sure your able to hit the dipping right drop shot or next lob, but if you’re coming into this game looking for something that was as much fun as Mario Tennis for example, you may find that the lack of life within the tennis players themselves puts you off what otherwise is the best tennis title I have ever played.

1. Sentinel’s health reduced. (1,300,000 down to 905,000)

2. Akuma’s hit stun on Hurricane Kick decreased, removing infinite.

3. Spencer ground glitch removed.

4. Haggar ground glitch removed.

5. Dormammu’s Jumping Medium Attack does 70,000 damage, up from 50,000.

6. Spencer’s corner loop has been removed.

Now for those of you who hate Sentinel this will no doubt be good news. However, there is a downside to these changes being put into effect.

The face of the enemy online or just another character?

The first one for me is the speed at which this update has been released. Given that most fighting games take a good few months for things to become apparent, like infinite loops, 100% damage combos, etc. this game has been updated within a month of it being released, without a real in-depth understanding on how players will use characters. I’d say that it’s way to early to be looking at changing characters’ health or properties.

The next one is the history of changes. Most people who play FPS or MMO’s will be used to regular changes and updates to the game; these are usually accompanied with patch notes which detail which changes have been made to the game. As far as I’m concerned, these are pretty essential for players who want to know if the characters they play are going to be affected.

For me, the changes they have made don’t deal with the character’s main problem, which wasn’t health; it was damage output, which is massive, and well deserved for the largest character in the game who also happens to be a metal killing-machine.

The last one for me is that this has actually been done. In the history of Capcom fighting games I’ve played – without a separate release – the only updates to games have been to patch glitches or game breaking bugs. Ono San admitted quite early on in Street Fighter 4 that Sagat was over-powered; Urien in third strike had an infinite, which in the 12 years the game has been out, has never been patched, and there are many well known Magneto/Sentinel combos in MVC2 that are infinite. Again, these have never been resolved.

There are two sides to this story, though;  people are now getting a response to the complaints that they have been openly voicing on the Capcom community forums, so those people who have spoken out about their issues with Sentinel should be happy.

However, those people out there who are happy about this should worry that the characters they are playing could face the wrath of the public and face a similar fate.

I’m fully aware that balanced games don’t sell. No one really wants to play a game where everyone is as good as each other. Characters who are individual should have their own merits and flaws, that’s what makes the games interesting.

Regardless on your point of view on this, this is an interesting development. It’s the first time that quite significant game changes have been released to a fighting game, outside of DLC. Capcom could potentially have started something that may become quite common. I think we will have to watch this space to see what praise/fallout comes their way.

All Points Bulletin is a massively multiplayer online third-person shooter game based in the modern-day fictional city of San Paro featuring two factions, Enforcers and Criminals. Players can join either faction, and then form their own customised team and group to join the constant battle across the urban landscape.

In our usual excellent fashion, Ready-Up has a load of Beta keys up for grabs to let you get on and experience the game before anyone else and help contribute to the final product.

All you need to do to enter is follow @readyup on Twitter by the 30th of March and fill out the form below.

However, let’s look at two particular cars, one being the ever reliable Volkswagen camper. It’s been around for a while but every time you see one it’s been customised in some way. And the seats aren’t as comfortable as they used to be, but it gets you from A to B and you always know you’ve spent loads of time in it and it constantly delivers the same performance.

The other car would be the Aston Martin Vanquish. It’s fast, it’s powerful, and it’s relatively new on the scene. Everything about it is comfortable and luxurious. It looks fantastic and after driving it you never want to be out of the driving seat again. Truly a fantastic experience.

So while playing RIFT, I had A LOT of people tell me that it was just a World of Warcraft clone; that it looked the same and that they weren’t going to give it a try.

To them I say, “Yeah, but it’s an Aston Martin”.

Sure, there are similarities, as there are in 99% of the MMO’s out there on the market, but this one is about the luxuries you have while you are in the driving seat. The options available to you while playing are staggering. Every single class has the option to fulfil every single role which you would require in a raid environment, levelling is made easy with the wealth of skills available, and questions and rewards are quick and easy to understand.

We all know what’s involved in playing an MMO. Rift has everything tweaked and honed to make the player experience as good as it can be.

So if you’re in for the long drive, do you want to be chugging along in the WOW camper wagon, or hitting the RIFT highway in the luxury of an Aston Martin?

Old friend, we've had some good times, but it's time for the new guy to take over.

The length is just right. It doesn’t cost too much. It’s funny enough to keep it enjoyable the whole way through. The difficulty is just right. The characters are excellent and the story mode keeps you interested right up until the end.

Given the amount of games you have played in your life, how many do you think you could say that about?

I’m going to go ahead and guess that it’s probably one or two, to date. This is the only game that I have felt that I can truly say these things about and not feel like I’m hiding something. This is the only game that exists that I feel that I 100% completed the game, all of the side quests and missions because I wanted to; I wanted to see what the characters would say, I wanted to see the benefit on getting the additional items. I enjoyed going the extra mile to make the experience complete.

I have only played through it once, I could play through it one hundred times and still enjoy everything about it. This is my perfect game, I know I don’t need to keep revisiting it, it did everything right first time.

When the DLC was released, I didn’t hesitate to pick it up, the points were added to my account and I immediately stopped what I was doing to get back into the action. It was almost like I was engaged in auto-pilot.

So, if anyone asks you the question in future, you know, the one we all hate answering; “What’s your favourite game?” – I now have an answer for them, do you?

Oh yeah, the game is Costume Quest and if you haven’t played it, you are a dick.

Double Fine, I salute you!

A couple of weeks in, I get a few phone calls from some friends asking if I’m on for some Bad Company 2 or if I’m into getting into a WOW raid, or that there is a LAN coming up that they think we should all attend.

I explain the circumstances, the calls stop, then I think I could probably just pick up an Xbox 360, a couple of games, I won’t spend that much time on it, it’s cool. As the hours start creeping back up, I start thinking, actually, that LAN event sounds like it might be a good laugh.

Within a month of kicking the habit, I’m back on the bandwagon, in about the action like I never left and wondering why I decided to get shot of everything anyway. I’ve done this five times over the past twelve years; the process feels like a cathartic and necessary thing that I have to do.

Speaking to a friend about it, she explained to me that the process that I’m going through is most common with addicts; people who want control of their life back over something they feel they are compelled to use, often go through a process of separation. So by that explanation, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m an addict. Which sucks. But now I know if I want to kick this habit all I have to do is stop playing games with my mates, stop buying games I love and stop spending time with people who share the same interests. Sounds easy enough. I heard that people on heroin get methadone to get them off the hard stuff; I wonder if the government has a similar programme for gamers. Free hardware? Access to the latest titles on medical grounds… I think I’ve stumbled upon the jackpot here.

Free Nintendo 3DS from the NHS, I’m sure that will sort me right out :p

Obligatory drugs warning

What’s the criteria you need to have to fit into it? Are we talking about just having a Wii or are casual gamers people who simply sit about on Facebook and spam your page with updates about rainbow pigs and needing nails? A forum member commented that his time to play games has drastically been reduced as he is busy with his life and career. Being a seasoned veteran of gaming, does this now downgrade him into being a casual gamer or do we let him off because he has some history with playing games and that’s good enough to slip out of the criteria?

The thing that makes me laugh the most is that despite plenty of people being shy about calling themselves a gamer and wanting it to become more acceptable in a normal social circumstance, it’s us who created a sub-tier of gamers, seeking acceptability from a greater social mass. We are the ones who are quick to apply this casual gamer title to people to separate them from us, to let them know that when it comes to gaming, we are superior.

My opinion is that if there are that many people out there buying games for portable devices, playing shockwave games, doing whatever it is that gets them tied down as a casual gamer, then surely we want to bring them into the fold? Strength in numbers makes sense to me. So, here is what I’m asking you to do, the next time you are going to call someone a casual gamer, think about the term, think about why you think that fits, drop the casual and stop the segregation of people who just want to play games.

Every revolution starts with a simple notion. Let this be the one that helps us get past this casual gamer nonsense.

I hate that line, when people utter it I want them to experience a punch in the grill. However, that’s a completely unacceptable way to act and after being told that couple of times, I decided that there must be another way, so I looked towards technology for an answer.

Falcoooooon PUNCH

Unsurprisingly, it answered with plenty of options for me to capture those moments and put them into any device or format that I wanted so that I could show the world how awesome I was and why everyone else sucked big.

First off, capturing game data is easiest while playing on a PC, while it’s not any harder to capture from a console, it is more expensive because of the additional items you have to buy, so lets run through what you will need for each device.

PC: All you really need to capture game play on the PC is some software, there are plenty of options which I’ll run through later.

Xbox 360/PS3: You will require a PC or MAC with either a PCI/PCI-E or USB HD capture device, depending on your capture device, you may also require a distribution amp for the output of your choice, be it component or HDMI, I’ll explain more about the distribution amp later.

PS2/Gamecube/Wii: Essentially the same as listed above, but as these devices don’t support HD resolution a SD resolution capture device and distribution amp will be fine (and much cheaper).

As mentioned above, a distribution amp is a device which will capture your original source and will boost and split that signal over multiple output options, typically, this is used so that you can play games and record the game play without having to experience any delay on the controller input which occurs when viewing the feed from the capture device.

You can also output to multiple TV's, which is nice :D

Capture devices come in many options, for people wanting to capture the Xbox 360 and PS3, you will be looking for an HD capture device, these can either be a card you place inside you PC or MAC or they will be external devices which you connect to through either USB or a Firewire connection, both are standard connections on PC’s and MAC’s.

An example of an external device would be the Hauppauge HD PVR USB Hi-def H.264 Video Capture Device, this device is essentially an external capture card with an HD component and HDMI interface, capable of capturing an HD input of up to 1080i,  you would use the software with the device to save your captured game play direct to your PC or MAC for you to edit later.

A good example of external capture devices

A good HD capture card example would be the Black Magic: Intensity, this is a PCI-E card which will be placed inside a PC or MAC, this takes a wide range of inputs like; composite, component, S-Video, and HDMI, the benefit of this card over the external device is that this card has its own small HDMI distribution amp built into it,  reducing the cost of getting set up.

One of the best capture cards available

Both of these items come with their own software which will allow you to capture in your preferred format, resolution and quality, making editing and uploading to Youtube, Vimeo, etc, much easier.

Once you have all of your devices, you will only need a few cables to complete the setup, if you are capturing HDMI you’ll need a couple of spare HDMI cables, the same if you are capturing with component. The setup itself is relatively straight forward;

3 HDMI/Component Cables and some hardware is all you need

It really is that simple, HD Source being your console of choice, a HDMI/Component cable into the distribution AMP, then a couple of separate cables out into the PC/MAC/Capture Device and the display you are using, be it a TV or a Monitor. The Black Magic card would act as the distribution amp if thats the device you have, so it would be even simpler to setup, HD device, into your capture card and then from the card into the TV or monitor.

After this you can start to save your content, make hundreds of sick tomahawk kills from Blops or show off your sickest Street Fighter combos, the only thing you have to contend with is file size. HD capture can take up a lot of space on a hard drive quickly and can be machine resource intensive so if you have an older machine, it will be advisable to see what the recommended spec is for your card of choice, external devices like the Hauppauge won’t require this so that’s one benefit of an external device over an internal one.

If you are a PC user, this part is really easy, for many years, I’ve been using FRAPS, an application which allows you to capture video and screenshots of any games you are playing, in Vista and Windows 7, it even allows you to record your desktop, so if you are having an amazing game of minesweeper, you can capture it and show it off to your friends, when you lose them, you could also stick them up to Youtube to thrill the internet minesweeper community. There are plenty of alternatives available, but I have found that over the years, FRAPS is an excellent application that has constantly been kept up to date and has excellent support from the developers, you can download it as shareware or pay for it to unlock its full potential.

So, you now have all of these excellent videos of you running about smashing people up or dropping 40 hit combos on people’s faces, previously you would have just uploaded these videos to Youtube or Vimeo and let people find them and comment on them but the internet has another option, you can stream live what you are capturing so that people without a console can check out what you’re playing and see you living the dream while they are stuck at work or are sitting in the house bored and in need of inspiration.

In days gone by, you would need to setup a streaming media server and sort out your broadcast bit-rate and all sorts of nonsense, these days there are plenty of sites available that allow you to sign up and within a few minutes have your stream up and running for everyone to see.

There are three main sites that I see most people using, Justin.tv, Ustream.tv and Livesteam.com. All of these sites have quick and easy ways to get up and streaming, all three offer applications to make life easier for people who want to just get straight to it with the least amount of hassle.

3 simple steps to get up and running

Justin.tv — these folks use an application called Dyyno, this is exceptionally easy to use, you essentially just drag the ‘D’ into the window you want to stream, for your games, it would be the software window for your capture device, this will instantly begin to show your console gameplay and capture the audio for everyone watching.

Ustream.tv – the Ustream producer application allows you to show multiple streams at once, for example, you could have your capture card showing and a smaller screen hooked up to a webcam, showing off your gamer face while laying down the action online, the application also allows you to overlay music onto your stream, unfortunately, sound has to come into the application through the sound card, which may require you to have a look at your capture device to examine what your sound out options are. The web interface for Ustream is also worth a mention, this allows you to download an Adobe Flash Media Encoder file, which lets you use Adobe’s own product to let you stream exceptionally crisp and clear high quality video, this will require that you have a higher bandwidth to achieve this, but I’ll run you through the options for that later.

Livestream.com – There are a comprehensive list of applications to help you get up and running quickly, you have: webcaster, procaster and studio. Webcaster is a quick and easy way to get your webcam or capture device up and running and showing content to people, almost everything is managed with automatic configuration, so for people who want to just get going quick, this is your option. Studio is a flash based application that’s built into the site, it gives you multiple options available to you, much more control over quality and inputs and allows you, like Ustream to have multiple outputs, like your capture device and a webcam, it also has on screen overlays like text and you can fade in and out of various sources with transitional effects. Procaster is an application which gives you the highest quality broadcast, it also has a chat box built in to let you chat to your viewers while playing and you can capture your stream locally or automatically upload to a youtube, Facebook or vimeo account.

All of these sites are free to setup, my advice is to get an account on all of them, have a play with each one, see which one suits your needs and your level of understanding, you won’t lose out on anything by giving them all a try.

My personal preference is livestream, the ease of use for the applications and the easy sound, input and recording management make this much easier to use than the others, if you’re looking for a good place to start and don’t want to be overwhelmed with options this is an excellent place to start.

The only thing you now have to take into consideration is the old quality over bandwidth issue, everyone wants their stream to look excellent, who wouldn’t, the problem with that is, the greater the picture and sound quality, the more upload bandwidth you will need on your connection to carry that off, most connections in the UK give you approximately 1Mb upload speed, this equates to roughly 75-125Kbs, which given that you want to broadcast audio as well as video, isn’t a great amount of bandwidth available, the best thing you can do is to have a play with the quality settings on the site you are using, take a note of your settings, crank them up and see how they perform.

A word of warning on that note, if you use up all of your upload bandwidth, if you are playing a game which is online, you will experience a dramatic slowdown in your connection speed as you have essentially maxed out your outgoing traffic, slowing data being sent to and from game servers or to other peer to peer players, this will be noticeable so again, it will take a few tweaks to get everything working just right.

So, there we have it, covered off some of the items you could use as capture devices, how to set them up and saving content locally and then streaming them to adoring fans waiting for your stream online, all you have to do now is actually get out there and get it done.

This is an MMO for those of you who are bored with the standard cut and thrust of your fantasy MMOs these days. Its blend of melee and ranged first-person combat helps you feel like you’re taking part in the action, instead of just bashing a few buttons ad infinitum on a keyboard.

The first thing I’m going to say about this relates to your rate of exposure to information as soon as you’re out on your own exploring the world. In some cases you are just bombarded with information – mostly about skills you’ll need to craft and gather resources to make items you will need in the game – and sometimes there’s a complete lack of it, for example on where to find quests and where to go on the map. This all eases out after a couple of hours of playing, after that time you should be familiar with the layout and flow of the game. When I started running about I was pretty lost, but asking questions on the global chat, I soon got answers and that made the game a lot easier. Finding out that you had to push tab or middle mouse button to enter the combat mode took a lot longer that it should have.

As you progress through the game, killing stuff, collecting stuff and completing missions, you will be rewarded with APs, which are Attribute Points. These can be spent directly on skills, or on character stats. Stats and skills can follow preset templates, like Soldier or Leader, and give you an idea of what you want to spend your hard earned APs on. You can follow them or you can just make a character to suit yourself. Customisation plays a big part in this game, too, from the character creation screen to your what your character wears; it’s all very detailed with plenty of options.

If you want good equipment and weapons, etc., you will have to become accustomed to the crafting structure in the game. It plays a massive part of the leveling up process as items aren’t always available at vendors and you will have to make them for yourself. You can’t miss this option when starting a new character because your bag fills up with all sorts of random stuff, which you will initially think is junk, but later turns out to be the life blood of how you generate your income. Unfortunately, you will find yourself scavenging a lot to make cash to buy some of the things you need early on, so get used to rummaging about in the dirt.

You will probably find that after a while of playing the same character you want to go back and create a new one to take advantage of all that you have learned while playing your initial creation. I found things easier when I did this and got into the game and the story more easily once I had an understanding of everything that was happening in the GUI and in the game.

Although I found this highly enjoyable, this definitely isn’t an MMO for everyone. However, if you enjoyed games like Fallout and Stalker then I think you will be pleasantly surprised by this offering from Icarus Studios. It blends together the components of FPS and MMO well and is by far the best attempt at something original and unique that I’ve played in an MMO in a good while.

I had this whole blog written about the cost of PC gaming over console gaming and why it’s totally worth it for the visuals and control, then Treyarch released Call of Duty: Black Ops and it all gets blown away.

I was very much against the purchase of this game, as many of you who took part in the discussion on the forums will know. I was dead set that I wasn’t going to pick this up, but Martin’s comments on the forum and Laura’s excellent review left me wanting, that plus I had about six mates texting me all day to get it for the PC, so I caved, and bought it on Steam.

While you console players were happily getting into the single and multi-player, I was stuck with what seemed to be a game crippling PC performance related issue.

My machine has the following spec:

• Intel Quad Core Extreme QX6850 @ 3.00Ghz CPU
• Asus P5E-VM HDMI Motherboard
• 4GB OZC Reaper PC2-8500 1066Mhz Memory
• 2 x 150Gb WD VelociRaptor Hard Drives
• Asus ENGTX260 LG+ 896Mb DDR3  Graphics Card

While the machine isn’t the latest cutting edge i7 series, it can certainly power through everything I have on-board, which included the previous three incarnations of the Call Of Duty series.

Trust me, it's no slouch!

The issues can be seen here, I would have captured my own gameplay, however I don’t think the expletives would have allowed you to hear any of the actual game audio:

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you connected to a multiplayer server, which was the first thing I fired up when it was installed, it was apparent that everyone was suffering from the same issues, people seemed to be warping all over the place, even with a ping of <30 ms, it looked like network latency but it was actually the game engine itself, after about 20 minutes I gave up, fired up the single-player and hoped that it would be patched soon enough.

Single-player, although not as bad as multiplayer, still had its own frustrating moments, any time any action kicked-off the game would start to stutter and freeze, sometimes pausing for 4-5 seconds and then screaming back into action. It was pretty terrible, don’t even get me started on the get to the trenches section…

As someone with a fair bit of config experience in the Call Of Duty series, I headed over to the players folder to check out the config.cgf and config_mp.cfg files which hold all of the system variables for Call Of Duty on the PC. Much to my surprise I found that the game configuration was set up for a single core, multi-GPU machine, given that the base system requirements ask for a dual core machine, I don’t think this machine configuration would actually exist. I changed the settings down, it seemed to help single-player but multiplayer was still a mess.

Although a quick patch was released, Treyarch Twitter and Facebook pages are still being swamped with PC players who have issues which are stopping them enjoying the game.

A lot of people have hit back at PC gamers stating that it’s launch day and some issues can be expected on launch. Now I would normally accept that, but given that Treyarch had already built a game on the very same game engine three years ago which had none of these issues, I have to question that and say that this looks like it just wasn’t given the same attention in testing as the console versions were.

As I mentioned, Treyarch quickly released a patch, this resolved single-player performance issues and decreased the frequency of the multiplayer stuttering and freezing but the problem is far from resolved for PC gamers.

So next time you PS3 and Xbox 360 people are jumping on playing Black Ops online, spare a thought for us PC gamers, who although we paid the same price for the game, got the sharp end of the ballistic knife up the jacksy.

Sair Yin!

First off, being the first in (what will potentially be) a series of MMA games, EA have the chance to lay the foundations of what to expect in the future with a solid base structure. You can see from the look and feel of the game that they have avoided doing what the UFC title has done and decided to throw you into the daily life of a fighter: the training, the travel, learning new moves, learning new combinations to put together and even a couple of patented special moves.

Getting to know the game is quite easy because even though there is a tutorial mode called MMA 101, the real tutorial mode comes in the form of the first couple of hours in the career mode. This mode teaches you pretty much everything you need to know on how to play the game. The training asks you to complete various challenges in order for you to level up your fighter’s ability, but really, passing or failing will reward you with the same result so it’s more of a tutorial mode to prepare you for online play. This is good because some of the training gets hard relatively quickly.

The control system is similar to the UFC version, but not without a special mention to the “Total control striking control method”- first shown in the Fight Night series – which allows you to pick and choose which type of punch or kick you want to land on the opponent by using the right analogue stick. This method of control combined with the much simplified aspects of the ground game makes EA MMA easy to pick up and within a few minutes let you stop a takedown with a sprawl and survive an arm bar; something which in UFC 2010 was almost impossible to achieve without putting in several hours.

The online features are fantastic. You can play versus as normal, as you would expect, to compete for online titles and belts, you can upload highlights of matches to the www.easports/mma website for your friends to watch, and there are a host of user uploaded fighters free for you to download. The single most impressive feature is that you can get nine friends together, set up a five fight main event pay per view and actually broadcast it online so that people can watch you all fight without them having to do anything. A fantastic addition.

Ultimately though, this game lacks the shine and presentation that the UFC 2010 title brings. While the controls are years ahead of UFC 2010, the look and feel of the game has a generic EA Sports feel about it. I’ve played both Fifa 11 and Fight Night Round 4 in the past few weeks; this game combines the excellent Fifa online options with the Fight Night training to win boxing play and sticks a new control method on top of it.

The ultimate MMA game for me would be the combination of the look and feel of the UFC 2010 game and the control system and career mode of the EA MMA title. If anything though, it’s a strong start from EA MMA. I’m sure that with subsequent releases the game will find its own groove, separating it from the obvious borrowed features from the other EA Sports titles.

Another annoying addition is the multiplayer one-off voucher. The promo didn’t have a code with it, but given the list of features available for me to use, I decided that the 800 Microsoft® points were worth it. This is more a reflection that companies like EA and THQ, don’t benefit directly from second hand sales.

If you remember back to when I was talking about getting the gear, you had to grind a particular emblem, which you could get from daily and weekly quests, this has now been simplified and all of the emblems you had for the other stuff have been converted into a form of equipment currency called Justice Points.

This is a massive change in direction for WOW, instead of having to meet certain criteria before you can get equipment, it means that anyone can now grind random dungeons for Justice Points to get equipment, meaning you are no longer reliant on droves of people who play the game, who have no interest in dealing with you because you don’t have the right sort of magic trousers on.

I was initially very sceptical on how this game expansion was going to make the game easier for players to get into and enjoy, but with this simple change to getting equipment, I can already see how they are opening the game up for more people to enjoy.

Lots of changes have happened since the patch and so far I have been pleasantly surprised, plenty of thought has gone into the game’s subsystems like economy, offensive and defensive skills and character abilities, enough so that my sitting on the fence position has been changed to a pre-order.

Apparently, this guy changes everything, I'll see what he's saying when I'm smashing my hammer off his face

I can be sitting playing on the Xbox 360, sitting in a party of friends, having a laugh, then it happens, I’ll get a message from someone, “Markatansky wants to play Splinter Cell: Conviction” or “Haggis The Lord wants to play Borderlands”, after that I’m pretty much up out of my seat hunting around for where I put the discs last while blasting ‘A’ to join like I’m playing track and field.

The games I buy now are games that have the most co-op potential, while I like VS fighters, I enjoy co-op games more, the recent release of Scott Pilgrim VS The World (as reviewed by Dunc) takes me back to why I think I love co-op so much.

A fantastic example of co-oppery, retro in all respects

As much as I like winning at a fighting game, I get a greater sense of achievement from completing something as a group, it may well just be the overactive team player in me but I’m growing out of games that don’t have many options for co-op, Scott Pilgrim is an excellent example of a co-op game doing it right, a game where you have to all be on the same console, in the same room having a laugh is definitely my preferred way to play games.

So for those of you wanting to get into the world of co-op gaming, here are a few titles I can recommend:

This may well be the greatest co-op arcade game known to man!

Borderlands

Castle Crashers

Crackdown 2

Gears of War 2

Halo 3

Left for Dead (1 or 2)

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2

Scott Pilgrim VS The world

Splinter Cell: Conviction

And if you’re wanting someone to jump on and assist in your new found love of the co-op, just drop me a message and wait a few seconds…

Raiding; 5 man, 10 man, 25 man, this will be your life for the forseeable future, until the Cataclysm addon is released. You can quite happily join random 5 man heroic dungeons all day, every day, there is no limit on how many you can do.  When you’re completing these dungeons you will obtain something better than the loot that drops inside, they are called triumph emblems.

These emblems can be redeemed for class specific equipment from vendors.  So, if you’re tanking, you can pick up equipment with strength and more stamina on it.  If you’re going DPS mele you can pick up the strength stacked items with the lesser stamina, and so on. These items are referred to as Tier 9 items (I don’t know why and I’m not able to find an explanation that is consistent).

Sounds pretty straightforward.  You now grind dungeons instead of quests to get these emblems, you get better gear.  Simple?  Possibly but with the release of the litch king there was also a new Tier of equipment released – funnily enough called Tier 10 – which you can only get through obtaining frost emblems (starting to sound familiar?).  You get frost emblems by finishing a random dungeon a day and by defeating the bosses in the Ice Crown Citadel dungeon instance.

Here’s the problem.  In order to get into a 10 man or 25 man run of the Ice Crown Citadel you need to have a decent gearscore.  Gearscore is a real pain in the arse.  Each item you gain through grinding the dungeon has a score on it and the items move up in value the harder they are to gather.  The problem is that gearscore is no indication of a player’s ability to play, it just says that they’ve been around for a while and have probably managed to sneak into some larger public raiding groups.

So, we have tier equpiment, emblem gathering and gearscore and, the main point of it all, achievements.  This is the only game that I know of where achievements really matter.  When you’re trying to join a public group (pugs as they are referred to) you’ll be asked to link your gearscore and your achievements.  This means that the raid leader wants to know that you’ve succesfully completed that instance previously before you can be allowed to take part in the group.  It’s a proper catch 22 – you can’t take part until you have completed it, you can’t complete it until you take part.

The gearscore value is highlighted on this image

So, in order to get your gearscore up to a good enough level to get into a 10 or 25 man group you have to grind the emblems and then finally, in order to get into the instances, you have to have done them before. It’s a very time consuming, laborious process.  This is the real grind because you now have to rely on 9 or 24 people you don’t know to let you into an instance to get more gear to become parts of other 10 and 25 man runs.  You’re also capped to one run of each instance a week, so it’s not even like you can just do these again and again, so you have to pick your groups carefully. My advice would be to get yourself into a guild, or at the very least a capable group of friends who play, have a brain, and want to progress through the dungeons.

Where achievements matter, if you don't have them, you can't take part :(

So, yeah, thats all you have to do in preparation for Cataclysm, simple enough, eh?

I think it must be a desperately lonely life for these game characters, as dating must be out of the question. Even meeting people at parties must be hard, after all, who’s going to invite someone to a party when there is a 99% chance that they won’t be able to attend due to saving the world/stopping the evil people doing evil stuff/fighting in the world warrior arena.

I’d imagine the only way these people get any contact from the other sex is by using the good old dating pages in their local papers, as this way they can take their time, filter through the replies and try to find someone who matches their likes and dislikes. It just so happens that I have a few of these adverts to hand:

I guess being a world famous superhero or icon really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and I can’t help but feel that life would probably be a bit easier for them if they just used Facebook to let the world know what they were up to.

I have some of those status updates, but that’s a story for another time.