It's been a while since my last blog, and lots of things have happened. Most notably the death of Michael Jackson, his death shocked the world almost three weeks ago. People will always ask the question: 'Where were you when you found out Michael Jackson had died?' My answer would be at The Railway Inn in Winchester watching a couple of my friend's bands play a gig. How did I find out? Via Twitter, that's how! The micro-blogging social networking phenomenon that is taking the internet by storm informed me of the sad news that Michael Jackson had died. Lots of my friends were tweeting that he had suffered a heart attack before the confirmed reports came in that he had indeed died. After reading those tweets on twitter I checked my facebook friend's status updates and sure enough almost every status was about MJ. I think that the true power of twitter was shown that night as many people must have heard of MJ's death via twitter. Within minutes of the news spreading MJ was already in the list of trending topics and soon reached the top trending topic on the site. Twitter also crashed for a while because there were so many tweets about MJ being posted!
In the weeks prior to MJ's death I had become addicted to twitter and without it who knows how I would have found out the news? I think the reason why twitter is so popular is because of its accessibility, not only can you tweet via the twitter website but there are hundreds of applications that allow you to tweet so easily. For example, I have TwitterBerry and UberTwitter on my BlackBerry, TweetDeck on my PC and TwitterFox – an add-on for internet browser FireFox. All of these offer simple and easy ways to tweet and to keep up with the latest updates from your friends/celebrities whom you may follow.
Twitter wasn't the only website to collapse under the weight of MJ's death, other sites included TMZ - the site who first confirmed that he was dead, the LA Times website and Perez Hilton's famous celebrity blog. Google also found it hard to cope the surge of traffic and therefore when searching for Michael Jackson all users got was an error message because the site thought it was under attack. This shows how popular MJ really was, imagine the amount of people that are using the internet now, it would be a very large number, but then imagine the amount of people it would take to crash the internet, this must have been such an extraordinary amount of people frantically searching the internet for news about the MJ's death.
The funny thing about it was I was going to buy tickets for me and my mum for one of Micheal Jackson's O2 Arena shows but my mum said 'he'll never make it'. She didn't think he would die but rather just thought he wouldn't be physically well enough to do the shows. Very eerie!
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
E3
Yes, I know E3 was a week ago but I’ve had a lot of work to do to finish Universty for the year. Now, finally I have a spare half an hour to blog my reaction to the biggest gaming event of the year; the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Being an avid user of both Facebook and Twitter, the announcement that these two huge social networking websites are coming to Xbox Live was a big one for me. The screenshots of both these applications look like they are extremely well optimised for the Xbox and what's more is, they are both coming free 'this fall', which I understand means ‘autumn’ in American.
Project Natal was clearly the biggest weapon in Xbox's arsenal to take out the competition and it really did, I knew Sony or Nintendo would not be able to touch it. Taking the idea of motion sensor controllers to a whole new level, where you, the gamer and your body are the controllers. The level of interactivity shown in Microsoft's presentation of Project Natal was truly unbelievable. Obviously Nintendo fan boy’s will argue that Project Natal is just a Wii rip off and maybe it is, Nintendo did get the ball rolling for this type of interactive gaming, but Microsoft completely reinvented the wheel this year.
Ok, the idea is cool, but how much will the technology cost? It is clearly aimed at the more ‘family’ market and I am unsure if it will appeal to serious gamers as much, the concept is nice, but wouldn’t they just rather shoot people using a controller on Call of Duty? I can see it now, Call Of Duty: Project Natal, where you use your hand as a gun!? Perhaps I am being too cynical too soon and fair enough Microsoft already has the serious gamers market and needs to appeal to a wider audience and Project Natal is an excellent way to go about it. The demonstration with ‘Milo’ was a bit creepy though, I’m not too sure about that, not only creepy, but it looked extremely childish. Sorry Lionhead.
As for the games that were shown at the show I am very excited about Left 4 Dead 2 and obviously Modern Warfare 2 as well, I hope it’s not just hype, because the gameplay did look amazing! The Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy franchises now being available on Xbox is very big coup for Microsoft and I look forward to playing them!
E3 does get bigger and bigger every year, but this year it was truly unbelievable, with so much competition between the three gaming giants. My non-biased opinion would be that Microsoft did have the best press conference. No-one could have expected what they produced and the technology is just revolutionary. All in all, it was a good show!
Being an avid user of both Facebook and Twitter, the announcement that these two huge social networking websites are coming to Xbox Live was a big one for me. The screenshots of both these applications look like they are extremely well optimised for the Xbox and what's more is, they are both coming free 'this fall', which I understand means ‘autumn’ in American.
Project Natal was clearly the biggest weapon in Xbox's arsenal to take out the competition and it really did, I knew Sony or Nintendo would not be able to touch it. Taking the idea of motion sensor controllers to a whole new level, where you, the gamer and your body are the controllers. The level of interactivity shown in Microsoft's presentation of Project Natal was truly unbelievable. Obviously Nintendo fan boy’s will argue that Project Natal is just a Wii rip off and maybe it is, Nintendo did get the ball rolling for this type of interactive gaming, but Microsoft completely reinvented the wheel this year.
Ok, the idea is cool, but how much will the technology cost? It is clearly aimed at the more ‘family’ market and I am unsure if it will appeal to serious gamers as much, the concept is nice, but wouldn’t they just rather shoot people using a controller on Call of Duty? I can see it now, Call Of Duty: Project Natal, where you use your hand as a gun!? Perhaps I am being too cynical too soon and fair enough Microsoft already has the serious gamers market and needs to appeal to a wider audience and Project Natal is an excellent way to go about it. The demonstration with ‘Milo’ was a bit creepy though, I’m not too sure about that, not only creepy, but it looked extremely childish. Sorry Lionhead.
As for the games that were shown at the show I am very excited about Left 4 Dead 2 and obviously Modern Warfare 2 as well, I hope it’s not just hype, because the gameplay did look amazing! The Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy franchises now being available on Xbox is very big coup for Microsoft and I look forward to playing them!
E3 does get bigger and bigger every year, but this year it was truly unbelievable, with so much competition between the three gaming giants. My non-biased opinion would be that Microsoft did have the best press conference. No-one could have expected what they produced and the technology is just revolutionary. All in all, it was a good show!
Friday, 29 May 2009
Sky TV coming to an Xbox 360 near you!
Yesterday Xbox announced a deal that will enable Xbox 360 owners to watch Sky TV on their Xbox. In a revolutionary move users will be able to watch Sky TV without the need for a satellite dish, set top box or an existing Sky subscription.
In the press release Microsoft said that "The ink is barely dry on the deal", which basically means that they have no idea how it is going to work yet or what they are going to do but they were so excited about the deal they wanted to announce it as quick as possible. It is due for release in the autumn and entitled 'Sky Player', see what they did there?
Being a technology geek I am very excited about this. It is a great idea for people that only have freeview and being a current Sky subscriber myself, I'm hoping for a good deal for existing Sky customers like me. I can see it being pretty expensive, but no other service will be able to offer what the 'Sky Player' can. It was announced that there will be subscription packages along with pay per view, so it is highly likely that things like football matches will be avialable on a pay-per-view basis. Incorporation with elements of Xbox Live will make for a very interesting idea, for example being able to discuss football matches with your friends over Xbox Live.
It is a very interesting move on the part of Microsoft because their competition, Playsyation 3 and Wii, have BBC iPlayer available on their consoles. Its has also not been ruled out that BBC iPlayer will come to the Xbox at some point. This also comes as Microsoft announce that BBC programmers will be available on demand on the Xbox in the US.
In the press release Microsoft said that "The ink is barely dry on the deal", which basically means that they have no idea how it is going to work yet or what they are going to do but they were so excited about the deal they wanted to announce it as quick as possible. It is due for release in the autumn and entitled 'Sky Player', see what they did there?
Being a technology geek I am very excited about this. It is a great idea for people that only have freeview and being a current Sky subscriber myself, I'm hoping for a good deal for existing Sky customers like me. I can see it being pretty expensive, but no other service will be able to offer what the 'Sky Player' can. It was announced that there will be subscription packages along with pay per view, so it is highly likely that things like football matches will be avialable on a pay-per-view basis. Incorporation with elements of Xbox Live will make for a very interesting idea, for example being able to discuss football matches with your friends over Xbox Live.
It is a very interesting move on the part of Microsoft because their competition, Playsyation 3 and Wii, have BBC iPlayer available on their consoles. Its has also not been ruled out that BBC iPlayer will come to the Xbox at some point. This also comes as Microsoft announce that BBC programmers will be available on demand on the Xbox in the US.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Fallout 3 Vs Trade-Ins
At the moment the game industry is in a massive war with trade-in's; where a game is bought, completed, and then traded in.
I don't like reviewing games until i have fully completed them, but Fallout 3 just keeps giving and giving, i don't think i will ever get to review it. With two more downloadable content packages announced for the end of June and end of July. It looks to be like there will be many more hours of gaming within the Fallout universe, making Fallout 3 the longest game i have EVER played, i certainly don't plan on trading it in.
I'm at about 70 hours of gameplay now after completing the first two sets of downloadable content and being half way through the third. However, each downloadable extension pack costs 800 Microsoft points which works out at about £6.80. So for the complete set of downloadable content it will cost £34, this is about the price the game costs in the first place, so it's like buying a new game! Some would argue that we, the consumers, are being manipulated to buy game add on after game add on, but in the game makers’ defence, it's a good way to counter the constant war that game makers’ have with trade-ins.
With the last set of downloadable content due out about nine months after the initial release of the game; Fallout 3 might just have found the secret to end the trade-in war and may just be that game that you don’t trade in!
I don't like reviewing games until i have fully completed them, but Fallout 3 just keeps giving and giving, i don't think i will ever get to review it. With two more downloadable content packages announced for the end of June and end of July. It looks to be like there will be many more hours of gaming within the Fallout universe, making Fallout 3 the longest game i have EVER played, i certainly don't plan on trading it in.
I'm at about 70 hours of gameplay now after completing the first two sets of downloadable content and being half way through the third. However, each downloadable extension pack costs 800 Microsoft points which works out at about £6.80. So for the complete set of downloadable content it will cost £34, this is about the price the game costs in the first place, so it's like buying a new game! Some would argue that we, the consumers, are being manipulated to buy game add on after game add on, but in the game makers’ defence, it's a good way to counter the constant war that game makers’ have with trade-ins.
With the last set of downloadable content due out about nine months after the initial release of the game; Fallout 3 might just have found the secret to end the trade-in war and may just be that game that you don’t trade in!
You Me At Six review published @ RE:SUS Magazine
12th March 2009
Portsmouth Pyramid Centre
By Paul Carrett
As part of the completely sold out ‘777’ tour You Me At Six brought their catchy pop punk riffs to Portsmouth Pyramids.
Support tonight comes from two American bands: ‘Emarosa’, making their debut in the UK, and ‘The Spill Canvas’ who have already established a large fan base in the UK. However, with ‘The Spill Canvas’ being quite a slow band, they didn’t really warm the crowd up for the headline band.
You Me At Six kick off their set with the recent single ‘Jealous Minds Think Alike’ followed by ‘Gossip’, this is UK pop punk at it’s best. During ‘The Truth Is A Terrible Thing’ the Surrey boys break into an excellent cover of Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’.
It’s amazing how far this band have come in the four years they’ve been around and their maturity is shown with the complexity of slower songs like ‘Tigers and Sharks’ and ‘Always Attract’.
You Me At Six finish the night with ‘The Rumour’ and with the entire crowd hands in the air, singing the lyrics ‘Hold your hands in, into the air, Hold your hands as if you care’ as loud as possible, You Me At Six really are at the top of their game.
Support tonight comes from two American bands: ‘Emarosa’, making their debut in the UK, and ‘The Spill Canvas’ who have already established a large fan base in the UK. However, with ‘The Spill Canvas’ being quite a slow band, they didn’t really warm the crowd up for the headline band.
You Me At Six kick off their set with the recent single ‘Jealous Minds Think Alike’ followed by ‘Gossip’, this is UK pop punk at it’s best. During ‘The Truth Is A Terrible Thing’ the Surrey boys break into an excellent cover of Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’.
It’s amazing how far this band have come in the four years they’ve been around and their maturity is shown with the complexity of slower songs like ‘Tigers and Sharks’ and ‘Always Attract’.
You Me At Six finish the night with ‘The Rumour’ and with the entire crowd hands in the air, singing the lyrics ‘Hold your hands in, into the air, Hold your hands as if you care’ as loud as possible, You Me At Six really are at the top of their game.
Monday, 27 April 2009
WWE Legends Of WrestleMania Review
Bit late with the review but i think this game deserves a good review from a wrestling fans point of view and from a casual gamer’s point of view.
As a WWE fan, I buy the annual game from WWE, which generally, year after year has been improving. Then WWE release WWE Legends Of WrestleMania, apparently for the 'older' generation of gamers who will remember WrestleMania’s from the past 25 years. This game boasts a simpler control system along with a good selection of legends and authentic arenas that create an excellent sense of nostalgia.
The first thing any wrestling game fan will notice is the very simplistic control system. It's in an arcade style and makes use of only the four face buttons; these are for strike, grapple, block and action. At some points in the game this is actually more complicated than it sounds. Since there are only four buttons, each one does different things in different environments, and this can get very confusing at times. Obviously this game is trying to target the casual gamer market that may be intimidated by the complex control system of the Smackdown Vs Raw games.
With the tag-line 'relive, rewrite and redfine' that is exactly what you can do in ‘WrestleMania Tour Mode’ with previous WrestleMania matches... kind of. It's very limited. With the relive mode you gain points in matches by completing events that actually happened in the matches. With rewrite you have to change the outcomes of the matches and with redefine you compete in the matches but with different stipulations. This is a lot of fun for matches that you have watched.
The game also has a 'Legend Killer Mode’ where you can use any superstar or created superstar to attempt to beat a selection of legends, one after the other, all in one go. The last tier being the hardest and most time consuming, where you have to defeat all 38 legends on the game in one go. It’s challenging at first but then just feels like a chore.
The presentation of the game is good; the graphics are just as good as the Smackdown Vs Raw games. Also before you play any match in ‘WrestleMaina Tour Mode’ there is a video with rare WrestleMania footage of the match you have reliving, which is a nice touch.
WWE Legends Of Wrestlemania has a small roster, with only 38 legends, however if you have a WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2009 game save you can import the entire roster from that game to have current superstars fight legends, which can be fun for a while. That's pretty much what this game is, fun for a while. For example I acquired the maximum 1000 gamerpoints in about a week but it can be done in a lot shorter time than this and the re-playability is one of the main things that lets this game down. There is not much reason to play this game again once you’ve completed ‘Wrestlemania Tour Mode’, ‘Legend Killer Mode’ and played all your fantasy matches between current WWE superstars and Legends.
I don’t really think casual gamers will be interested in this game at all, nor will the new generation of WWE fans who might feel pretty insulted by the simple control system and get bored very quickly. However for the ‘older’ generation of WWE fans this game will be fun, being able to relive the matches they watched when they were young with a simple control system.
7/10
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Giant penis on roof of house!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_7961000/7961224.stm
The fact that is was there for a year and his parents didn't know anything about it is the funniest thing!
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Economic Concepts
After an interesting lecture on economic concepts i would quite like to think that i am not an empiricist, if i were then i would be very limited to believing that anything i had not seen actually experienced even existed, and this is just stupid.
So an empirical idea is one based on direct experience, an idea that has reliable proof and evidence. The quote from the lecture was ‘I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes' and it think this summarises the theory well.
For lack of a better example last week i was told that my friend had cheated on his girlfriend, who is also a good friend of mine. I refused to tell her because i had not seen him cheat and he said he didn't do it. Who knows? There was no proof; i didn't believe it because i didn't see it with my own two eyes!
On the other hand a-priori is where something is explained by an a-priori principle or assumption. To explain the difference between empiricism and a-priori: if i have two apples now, and i plan to get another three apples, i will have five apples. This is a-priori because i know that two plus three is five. I did not actually need to get the three other apples and place them with the first two to see that I have five, like an empiricist would.
So an empirical idea is one based on direct experience, an idea that has reliable proof and evidence. The quote from the lecture was ‘I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes' and it think this summarises the theory well.
For lack of a better example last week i was told that my friend had cheated on his girlfriend, who is also a good friend of mine. I refused to tell her because i had not seen him cheat and he said he didn't do it. Who knows? There was no proof; i didn't believe it because i didn't see it with my own two eyes!
On the other hand a-priori is where something is explained by an a-priori principle or assumption. To explain the difference between empiricism and a-priori: if i have two apples now, and i plan to get another three apples, i will have five apples. This is a-priori because i know that two plus three is five. I did not actually need to get the three other apples and place them with the first two to see that I have five, like an empiricist would.
Monday, 1 December 2008
Gears Of War 2 Review
Gears Of War was one of the first big blockbusters on the Xbox 360, many wondered how Gears Of War 2 would top it, but don’t worry, Gears Of War 2 is everything it should be and more!
The main character Marcus Fenix returns with his best friend Dominic Santiago, with regular sidekicks Baird and Cole, and new recruits Tai and Carmine (the brother of the Carmine killed in the first Gears) completing Delta Squad. The game starts where the last game finished, where the Lightmass bomb that was dropped at the end of the game to destroy the Locust Horde didn’t. The story of the sequel somewhat focuses on Dom’s search for his wife Maria, which adds more emotion in the story. The main bad guys are the Locust Queen and the equivalent of General RAAM: Skorge, who carries a staff with a chainsaw on either end.
If you thought the stunning visuals in the first Gears were remarkable, the visuals in Gears 2 are truly exceptional, especially in HD. If you just take a minute to look around at the scenery instead of ploughing through seemingly endless waves of Locust Horde you can see that the attention to detail is amazing. Critics would say that Gears 2 is just more of the same with not many improvements to the basic game play and weapons. Many annoyances from the first game have been fixed though, for example no longer will you find Marcus or Dom diving into cover when on a Roadie Run. A few new heavy weapons have been added to the Gears repertoire, the Mulcher Chain Gun and the Mortar launcher which produces almost a mini airstrike!
Another additional feature is that Marcus will no longer die when the red skull fills on the screen; he often falls to the ground and the player can tap A to crawl towards squad members to be revived by them. However an ultimately frustrating moment was when I had been shot down and I had crawled to Dom and he just stood there! Nevertheless the AI Dom is generally more helpful than he was in the original. Vehicles are also much improved where Delta Squad ride on Locust creatures: Reavers and also a Brumak. Another stroke of genius is the addition of chainsaw duels where, in multiplayer, the player who taps 'B' fastest wins the duel and chainsaws their opponent in half!
Gears 2 also features a truly wonderful Horde mode where 5 players can cooperate over Xbox Live to take out waves of Locust Horde, with each player getting one life per wave, there are 50 waves in total, each one getting harder and harder making getting to the last wave almost impossible! Other multiplayer modes are still as good as ever, with the first Gears really setting the bar for online shooters, Gears 2 certainly makes online game play bigger and better and in general Gears 2 is simply that, bigger and better than its predecessor.
9/10
The main character Marcus Fenix returns with his best friend Dominic Santiago, with regular sidekicks Baird and Cole, and new recruits Tai and Carmine (the brother of the Carmine killed in the first Gears) completing Delta Squad. The game starts where the last game finished, where the Lightmass bomb that was dropped at the end of the game to destroy the Locust Horde didn’t. The story of the sequel somewhat focuses on Dom’s search for his wife Maria, which adds more emotion in the story. The main bad guys are the Locust Queen and the equivalent of General RAAM: Skorge, who carries a staff with a chainsaw on either end.
If you thought the stunning visuals in the first Gears were remarkable, the visuals in Gears 2 are truly exceptional, especially in HD. If you just take a minute to look around at the scenery instead of ploughing through seemingly endless waves of Locust Horde you can see that the attention to detail is amazing. Critics would say that Gears 2 is just more of the same with not many improvements to the basic game play and weapons. Many annoyances from the first game have been fixed though, for example no longer will you find Marcus or Dom diving into cover when on a Roadie Run. A few new heavy weapons have been added to the Gears repertoire, the Mulcher Chain Gun and the Mortar launcher which produces almost a mini airstrike!
Another additional feature is that Marcus will no longer die when the red skull fills on the screen; he often falls to the ground and the player can tap A to crawl towards squad members to be revived by them. However an ultimately frustrating moment was when I had been shot down and I had crawled to Dom and he just stood there! Nevertheless the AI Dom is generally more helpful than he was in the original. Vehicles are also much improved where Delta Squad ride on Locust creatures: Reavers and also a Brumak. Another stroke of genius is the addition of chainsaw duels where, in multiplayer, the player who taps 'B' fastest wins the duel and chainsaws their opponent in half!
Gears 2 also features a truly wonderful Horde mode where 5 players can cooperate over Xbox Live to take out waves of Locust Horde, with each player getting one life per wave, there are 50 waves in total, each one getting harder and harder making getting to the last wave almost impossible! Other multiplayer modes are still as good as ever, with the first Gears really setting the bar for online shooters, Gears 2 certainly makes online game play bigger and better and in general Gears 2 is simply that, bigger and better than its predecessor.
9/10
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