Gaming Charts – Mafia II Somehow Takes Top Spot
August 31, 2010
Last week’s entry Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days managed to take the spot despite being little more than a mediocre title and, worse still, Mafia II has achieved the same thing. Top of the charts for both the XBox 360 and the PS3, Mafia II proves that if you’ve got an average game and you want to get attention then you wait until there’s a lull in the releases.
Last week’s leader, Kane & Lynch 2 has dropped to 2nd place while the arguably better title Toy Story 3 (we never throught we’d say that either) is holding number 3. Other new entries include Grease on the Wii but nothing has managed to dislodge Super Mario Galaxy 2 from the top spot and the rise of Mario Kart Wii back into 3rd place means that the 25 year old plumber holds all three of the top spots on the Nintendo machine.
XBox 360
Mafia II is top of the pile, pushing Kane & Lynch 2 down to 2nd place. Sniper: Ghost Warrior slips back into third place with Red Dead Redemption in fourth and the lack of decent titles seeing Crackdown 2 rising from the ashes, or at least rising from 9th to 5th. Here’s hoping Dead Rising 2 can help out next week.
- 1 – (-) Mafia II
- 2 – (1) Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
- 3 – (2) Sniper: Ghost Warrior
- 4 – (3) Red Dead Redemption
- 5 – (9) Crackdown 2
PS3
Things don’t look much better on the PS3 either with Mafia II at the top, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days in second and Red Dead Redemption pushed back to third spot. Modern Warfare 2, enjoying its 42nd week in the charts, is back in 4th and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is holding up the pile in 5th spot.
- 1 – (-) Mafia II
- 2 – (1) Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
- 3 – (2) Red Dead Redemption
- 4 – (5) Modern Warfare 2
- 5 – (4) Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Wii
The Wii charts are all about Mario, as ever. Super Mario Galaxy 2 retains top spot with New Super Mario Bros Wii in 2nd and Mario Kart Wii rising one place to 3rd spot. Toy Story 3 has slipped one place to 4th and LEGO: Harry Potter Years 1-4 has managed to hold onto its 5th position.
- 1 – (1) Super Mario Galaxy 2
- 2 – (2) New Super Mario Bros Wii
- 3 – (4) Mario Kart Wii
- 4 – (3) Toy Story 3
- 5 – (5) LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
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Kinectimals – Train A Virtual Cat; No Bins In Sight
August 31, 2010
Anybody that’s owned a cat will tell you that training it anything it doesn’t want to learn is virtually impossible. Sure, it’ll soon learn that food is in the cupboard and that breakfast time is always ten minutes before you wake up. They’re also quite adapt at learning that scratching will stop you from stroking their bellies and hissing will usually ward off all but the most adventurous of dogs. In some cases, they may even learn that standing too close to the bin at the front of the house may end in disaster.
However, training a cat to do tricks? Unlikely. All with a single hand gesture? Very unlikely.
And yet, you might have guessed from the name that Kinectimals for the XBox 360 has been developed to show off the tech behind Kinect and in all honesty it does look impressive. It’s definitely a game for kids, allowing them to train any of five exotic animals so that they will perform tricks and even complete the obstacle courses that have been laid out especially.
While the game is primarily aimed at kids (just look at the sickeningly cute cover), that’s not to say that the parents won’t appreciate the tech behind it and it will undoubtedly give an hour or so amusement getting to grips with the motion sensor but after that everything else would prove a little too simple for all but the most casual or juvenile of gamers.
The technology behind the Kinect does look and sound mighty impressive but with a launch list of 15 titles that is little more than a collection of bundled mini-games, exercise/fitness/dancing titles, and the occasional smattering of extremely young games like Kinectimals it’s not going to attract the hardcore gamer. With a fairly hefty price tag and direct competition from the well established Nintendo Wii it’s also not really going to be all that appealing to the casual gamer.
Will you be buying the Kinect for the XBox 360 just to get your hands on a furry kitty?
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XBox Live Prices Going Up But Audio Upgrade And Avatar 2.0 Incoming
August 30, 2010
It’s bound to cause a stir but there’s a price rise in store for XBox Live Gold membership and, in all honesty, it’s not really that big a surprise. As Microsoft has said in their blog post, they have added and upgraded the service considerably since 2002 and haven’t since then increased the price. Yes, the additions helped to make the service more popular but the proposed rise to £6 per month still represents good value for money we think.
While the increase isn’t quite global, it will see prices in the US rise from $50 to $60 a year and in the UK it will go up to £6 per month with a Canadian subscription increasing to $12CAD per month. When you consider what else you can get for these kinds of prices it really isn’t that bad.
To help appease the masses and partially because of the launch of Kinect, one suspects, there is an audio upgrade inbound. The quality of multiplayer chat has been somewhat limited by the audio codec which only required a 64k connection. As msot gamers now pack seriously more punch than this, Microsoft has quite rightly deduced they can afford to improve the quality of the codec.
You won’t have to put up with the crackly abuse anymore, and you’ll be able to quite clearly hear the insults being hurled at you by annoying foreign kids.
There’s also news of another XBox Live upgrade coming our way, this time in the shape of Avatar 2.0. The upgrade will mean that avatars will appear considerably more realistic and lifelike than the current cartoon or caricature looking ones.
Avatars are extremely popular and they’ve undoubtedly proven a good little money spinner for Microsoft as new outfits and accessories, which generally cost a fairly minimal amount of Microsoft Points, are downloaded my masses of people.
Does £6 a month still represent good value for money?
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Mafia 2 – Too Linear But Not Too Bad
August 28, 2010
Mafia 2 has been a very long time in the making; seven years to be exact. And, as this means that the developers would have started work for consoles like the original XBox and Playstation this means that it has essentially enjoyed two games’ worth of development – the burning question for such a massively popular franchise (in terms of films and crap amateur impressions at least) is whether it has been worth the wait and whether players will benefit from such a lengthy development time. The honest, albeit entirely non-committal answer is “in parts, yes, and in other parts, probably not so much so”.
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the graphics are incredible. Fortunately, gone are the days where you basically had a straight up choice between great looks or superio gameplay. Numerous titles have managed to combine both now so there’s really no excuse.
And, in all honesty, Mafia 2 does what it does quite well, it’s just that we as a collective group of gamers and we here expect more from a next-generation game than a bunch of linear based missions which tend to amount to nothing more than driving or shooting. There are some reasonable cut scenes in there too but again not all that much to write home about (unless you’re really stuck for stuff to write).
The game is also short which might mean that missions won’t become too repetitive but it also means that you won’t care about Vito by the time you reach the conclusion of the game. It also means that after 15 to 20 hours of gaming you’ll also be wondering whether it really was the best way to spend £40 of your hard earned money; we suspect the answer will be “probably not, but it could have been worse”.
Our Mafia 2 review in a Tweet? Looks stunning and has a great soundtrack but is way too linear, too short, and overall a little bit too old school.
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Gamer’s Broadband Released As Defence Secretary Slams Medal Of Honor Game
August 25, 2010
World of Warcraft and XBox Live addicts are getting a new hypodermic needle to fill their craving bodies with more online gaming as Demon Internet is releasing a new gamers’ priority Broadband package. Gaming traffic is given priority with the £22 per month package which means that there should be a lot less lag and fewer interruptions while playing favourite online games. For anybody that’s got caught out with dodgy buffering in the midst of a round of Call of Duty will testify it could just be the icing on the cake.
Installation of the new package costs gamers £30 but there is a limit on bandwidth or usage. 100GB a month should be ample even for the heavy gamers and the restriction “only” applies during the hours of 8am and 11pm when most gamers are presumably enjoying their much needed rest ready for another all night gaming session.
One game that you may not be able to play through the new service, at least if defence secretary Liam Fox has his way, is the new Medal of Honor game. Fox has branded the title as unBritish under the misguided belief that players are rewarded for fighting as the Taliban and killing British soldiers.
The latest MOH title is another realistic title this time taking on the Taliban and the war in Afghanistan. The game is an 18 rated title and the single player campaign sees gamers playing as US soldiers attempting to fight and ultimately defeat the Taliban.
One thing Fox should have considered before urging retailers to stop selling the title is that the game is US manufactured and, as is tradition, it is short sighted enough to exclude all but the US from the allies side. Players can play as the Taliban in multiplayer as the game takes on the traditional route of pitting player against player so Taliban vs the US it is.
Will you play as the Talian in the new Medal of Honor game?
Will you fork out £30 installation and £22 per month for the gamer’s broadband package?
Review – Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
August 23, 2010
The original Kane & Lynch game gave plenty to write home about – assuming nothing had happened in your life and you instead wanted to write a description of possibly one of the most overrated and unplayable games to hit the next-gen consoles. OK, so there were far worse games in many respects but Kane & Lynch managed to take the crown largely because it was controversial and really, really bad at the same time; not a good combination.
And yet, despite the awful fighting mechanics, dreadful storyline, and lack of just about anything we’ve come to expect in such games, a second title was virtually agreed to before the first one had even had chance to flop.
At first glance, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is a definite improvement on the original and for a few reasons. The camera work looks grittier, there’s less in the way of controversial but oh-so-poor storyline, and the gun mechanics have been improved. However, all of this comes at a trade-off – there’s a whole lot less to do in the second than there was in the first.
Dog Days is a regrettably repetitive game. Move and shoot, shoot and move, cover and swear at the clumsy cover system. Swear, move, shoot, cover and that’s about your lot all the way through. Except that the cripplingly realistic weapons mean that you’ll also spend a very large amount of time looking for better weapons strewn on the ground.
In its defence, the multiplayer side of things has been shored up a little. There’s a couple more multiplayer modes but most notable there is a multiplayer co-op. The very nature of the story, which includes two people working in tandem, meant that the first game truly lacked this mode – something that developers Square Enix have moved to remedy and good on them.
Did you play the original Kane & Lynch?
Will you be running out to buy the second instalment?
Gaming Charts – Kane & Lynch 2 Takes Top Spot From Toy Story 3
August 23, 2010
They couldn’t be much more polar in their game play and content, but Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days has overtaken Toy Story 3 to hit the top spot for all platforms in its debut week.
The game is number 1 for both the XBox 360 and the PS3 while Super Mario Galaxy 2 remains top for the Nintendo Wii. Last week’s new entry Madden 11 has slipped while the Nintendo’s only new entry this week, We Sing: Encore, has only managed to reach number 6.
Gaming Charts – Toy Story 3 Still Top Of The Pile
August 16, 2010
There’s been a little more change this week in the gaming charts and while Toy Story 3 still heads up the all platform chart there’s a new entry for Madden 11 that’s made the top 5 for the PS3 and XBox 360.
Things have been pretty stagnant in the charts for the last few weeks with just the occasional swap and change and while there’s hardly a plethora of new titles or mass changes there is some movement worth noting. New entry Madden 11 has only managed to take the number 10 spot for the all platform title but is number 3 in the XBox 360 charts and mnumber 4 on the PS3.
Gaming Charts – Toy Story 3 Takes Top Spot
August 10, 2010
The gaming charts are out again and Toy Story 3 has taken the top spot from last week’s winner Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty for the all platform title. A bit of a reasonable game and a lot of stellar branding is all it takes to hit the top top it seems. Modern Warfare 2 is back at the top on the PS3 while the XBox 360 chart is still headed by Red Dead Redemption and the Wii’s most popular game is still Super Mario Galaxy 2.
This Week In Gadgets
August 8, 2010
The AA has dubbed iPod listening pedestrians as iPod zombies and has even gone so far as claiming that they could be the reason for pedestrian related accidents increasing by 5% over the last year. Things could be about to get worse with iPhone zombies too, as the incredibly popular US game MyTown which is like a real world Monopoly game is launched in the UK. Leicester council has basically given the iPad its seal of approval by saying that although they need to be making 1,000 people redundant they will be spending £40,000 on iPads for everybody that’s left.
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