Second Nature – Episode 4 – Umm

Recorded – 12/03/09

Episode 4 is live! Check it out on iTunes!

* Host issues.

* How little we have played, again.

* This weeks news.

* Several rants about Change 4Life.

* Question of the Week, well Question’s really.

Second Nature – Episode 3 – 05/03/09

Episode 3 is live! Check it out on iTunes!

* Over 100 podcast downloads now!

* How little we have played.

* Technology gremlins steal part of our show.

* This weeks news.

* Discussion about Home.

* Question of the Week.

Second Nature – Episode 2 – 26/02/09

Well out second show is now out. It should be up on iTunes soon. Listen and enjoy!

Download here
or on iTunes.

//Opening
* First podcast out!
//WRUP?
* Davs – Street Fighter IV, Resistance 2 co-op, Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars, Noby Noby Boy, Fifa 09
//WRUP?
* Kris – Worms, Mario, Tomb Raider Underworld Demo
//News
* PSP2/PSP-4000 Rumours
* Killzone 2 Too Powerful?
* Analyst embarrassed.
* LBP, Motorstorm, Rock Band and AC for PSP.
* Quake Live Beta
* CoD 6 – Inifinity Ward Twitter suggestion
* Rare ‘Under Review’
* Lost Planet 2 announced
* RE5 Xbox – Looks awful
//Question of the Week – Do you think that Video Games are a superior story telling method to films?
* Via Lorcan! from TheSixthAxis

Second Nature – 19/02/09 – Show 1

Second Nature – Gaming News and Views

Well here it is! Our first show!

You’ll need to remember that it’s recorded on a radio station so it’s all live, hence lots of mistakes.

Please listen, rip it to shreds, leave us comments, criticisms, anything really.

Download the podcast here
Or get from iTunes.

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Show Notes

//Opening

///=What You Been Playing?

//Song – My Favourite Accident – Motion City Soundtrack – Burnout 3 Takedown

//News
Fifa Ultimate Team Details
Black Rock Studio teases new title
Legandary Cars for Burnout
Ray Muzyka Interview
Braid on PC March 31?

//Song – Imaginary Places – Bus Driver – Tony Hawk Underground.

//Question of the Week – How FPS have evolved over the years.

//Song – Paper Wings – Rise Against – Burnout 3 Takedown

Lack of Activity

For those of you that actually check this may have noticed a lack of activity.

This would be due to the fact that I know write for TheSixthAxis.com. The likelihood of me posting anymore articles are on here so I would recommend checking out TSA for it’s news, reviews and witty humour.

Cheers =)

Review: Prince of Persia

 

Repetitive beauty filled with eloquent banter. After a brief phone call with my other half, where I became the middle man between herself and my housemate in a school-yard-esque war of the words including the ever so popular, “You smell”, countered with, “Well you’re small”, I decided to summarise Prince of Persia in just a single sentence and thus avoid a review all together. (Oh imagine if that were true).

For those of you unfamiliar with the Prince of Persia series, you’re in luck. Ubisoft’s first Prince of Persia on the apparent seventh generation of console has been given a substantial makeover. The acrobatic nature of the gameplay is still very much present, however the combat and time mechanic have been altered and removed respectively. The game is somewhat unsurprisingly set at some point in time in Persia and you assume the role of an incredibly athletic and witty Prince, of whose name is unknown. Roaming the mysterious land that a sandstorm has landed you in on your own would be very boring and have voice actors looking in the Friday-Ad for jobs; therefore you are accompanied by a magic-instilled ally named Elika. In search of your beloved gold-carrying donkey you, and blinded by the previously mentioned sandstorm, you cross paths with said Elika, and thus the story unfolds with progression achieved by healing the fertile lands.

Gameplay wise, Prince of Persia is very similar to that of the Sands of Time trilogy, as the acrobatic, puzzle solving nature of the game has been retained, with the objective requiring the player to fight and vault around to heal the fertile grounds located throughout the world. Several key things differ from the soon-to-be-movie Sands of Time, most notably the time manipulation from the Dagger of Time being emitted all together. All of the acrobatics are performed using a series of single button presses that whilst may simplify the controls schemes, to perhaps open to a larger market; they are still satisfying once performed. I am somewhat surprised at claims that the game as a whole is easy. It may not have been the most challenging adventure I’ve ever experienced but it definitely isn’t easy as I needed saving over one hundred time, hence failing to a collect a precious gold trophy.

A major change is the Prince’s companion; maybe supporting character is a better description. Whilst you never directly play as Elika she is the foundation of the gameplay as she is key in both free running and combat but she also saves the Prince from death. That’s right, a game where you cannot die. Any moment when in any standard game you would die, Elika swoops in with her magic to save you from a painful death. Now you would think this would remove all challenge from the game, if you can’t die, how can you lose? Well, it’s not about losing. The essence of Prince of Persia is the free running sections, trying to keep the flow, similarly to Mirrors Edge. Having to die, go to a load screen and begin again, just disrupts the rhythm of play. Deciding to have no death was a very smart choice indeed.

Just like the American Pie series, after the original trilogy they decided to change something and it didn’t really work out. The combat is now one-on-one and is simply memorized Quick Time Event’s, with each face button acting as set attack type. Combinations of the face buttons provide for a vast variety of combos, with a trophy for using them all as an incentive to mix it up. The addition of actual QTE’s with scripted attacks from bosses does become frustrating but seems to have been used to reduce button bashing which it did do for me personally. In keeping with the acrobatics, you cannot die in combat either, but if Elika needs to step in to save your sorry ass this provides your foe an opportune moment to replenish some of their health. Now there’s nothing particularly wrong with the combat, the combinations of moves are well thought out and when executed look stunning in their pre-scripted nature, it just feels slightly slower and stilted than the fast moving free running.

Every single animation within the game looks stunning and with an illustrative art style very similar to that of the beautiful Okami, it provides some vistas that are just awe inspiring. The dialogue between the Prince, who you may recognise as the voice of Nathan Drake from Naughty Dog’s PS3 exclusive Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (acted by Nolan North), and Elika is humorous and charming as they grow on you as characters throughout the game.

In complete contrast to Sands of Time’s linearity, the current generations reboot gives the player the opportunity to roam the open world environment at ones leisure. The inclusion of collectable light seeds (small orbs of light required to unlock new abilities to access new areas) provides not only a collectable for those that sought out every single star on all of the Mario games, but also their locale often highlights a main path with a level. With a fraction over a thousand seeds to search for and only half of those needed for all of the levels, it never feels like a chore to explore and find them.

 

Whilst Prince of Persia perhaps fails to reach the heights of Sands of Time, it is a very good revamp for the franchise. It may not be as epic or mind-blowing as some titles currently on the market but it is a very solid game and one that provided me with a very enjoyable experience.

Update: Physical disc or Digital download?

Recently I asked you all which you would prefer:

“If you woke up tomorrow and all games came on a disk or as a digital download (where bandwidth caps, hard drive space and download speeds weren’t an issue), which would you prefer?”

And I have to say I was incredibly pleased with the response I received, with the final results being:

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Physical Disc – 85% 

Digital Download – 15%

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An overwhelming win for tangible objects worldwide! 

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Rather than just leave it at that, I have selected a few of the comments from my friends over at TheSixthAxis.com with their reasons for whichever choice they made.

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Mike: “Physical disc wins hands down for me. I like to be able to have something tangible and something pretty to look at. You don’t have that with a digital download, it’s just all 0’s and 1’s. And as you all know I’m obsessed with Limited Edition stuff, and you can’t get that with digital download!”

cc_star: “Some people like me, prefer physical media, but at the same time I love the convenience I of downloads, I probably wouldn’t clocked up all my time on Warhawk, if I’d had to keep getting up to insert it in to my PS3.”

LiquescentShadow: “I just prefer to have something tangible which feels truly mine.”

colossalblue: “The Gadget Show did a test once like that. One of them started an Apple TV movie download and another one went to Blockbuster, bought a Blu-Ray, came home and watched it before the first guy’s movie was downloaded.”

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Thank you to everyone that commented and voted.

You filthy pirates.

You filthy pirates. Today an article on N4G  that was somehow approved as newsworthy, stating that “Torrent users weigh in on beta version of Microsoft’s next operating system.” Personally, providing a voice for people that have illegally downloaded anything is incredible unprofessional of the site in question. This was not what irked me though, that was done simply by a few users. Firstly, N4G user Death, I commend you. Well done for standing up to N4G users Graphics Whore and Kakkoii, I totally agree with your argument.

Basically Graphic Whore was arguing that “internet piracy isn’t a problem it’s a solution” and that “law’s are form of fear control”. I urge all of you to go and read his arguments and I would like to know if ANY of you agree with him and if so what is wrong with you?

Now I’m not saying that none of you that are reading or myself for that matter have never pirated something from the Internet, even if it was a single song off of Limewire. But can anyone really condone piracy. I am struggling to comprehend how someone can actually argue in favour of piracy. The argument that the developers and such will get paid anyway is very naive indeed. Yes, they may have gotten paid for that game or piece of software, but imagine if just half of the games that are pirated on the Xbox 360 were actually bought, would Microsoft need to slash 15,000 jobs worldwide this month? Would developers be reluctant to develop for the PC or PSP? Will 2D Boy develop another game after a shocking 90% piracy of World of Goo? I feel sorry for any small time musician, developer, company or just anyone that has to put up with piracy.

Arguing that you would not have bought it anyway is not an excuse! I would not buy a Aston Martin as much as I want one, but that doesn’t give me the right to steal one. Saying that as it is just electronic data and therefore no one has lost anything so it cannot be stealing is not an excuse! It is someones intellectual property and it is not yours to take!

Fanboy? – Part III – Games

Well I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas break filled with festive joys and over indulging. I know I have. After a brief break to enjoy time with my family and plenty of food, here is my slightly late third section of my ‘Is it possible to make a console comparison without being a ‘fanboy’?‘ After comparing pricing and hardware so far, this next section focuses games.

“There is no game better than [insert game title here]!” “Everyone knows that [Generic FPS #1] is better than [Generic FPS #2]!” Your favourite game is all based on opinion. I might love one particular game, which then you may think is nothing more than mediocre. The easiest way for me to compare these would be for you to do your own research. You know which games you like. There are plently of fantastic games on both consoles, with just your own personal taste deciding which selection of games is best for you.

Really I could end this section here, as with plently of games for both consoles, it just comes down to preference. But I didn’t feel like ending it, I needed to compare something factual, something true. I was orignally thinking of comparing sales (with the Xbox 360 having a larged install base sales would need to be done as a percentage or sales per console), but without a definitve source from which to gain reliably numbers and with games like Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space and Valkyria Chronicles apparently not doing very well in sales, this didn’t show those truely good games. If say a crap game that’s meant to be some sort of music game, sells a million copies, it is still a crap game. So metacritic scores is what was left.

Be fair. Fair and unbiased I told myself. How could I do it I thought? There are several ways to compare the two. But there are many games that are on Xbox 360 that came out before the PS3 and were therefore on the PS2. So should these be included? I decided no. What about PSN and XBLA games? No as well. The scores that I will compare are the top 20 scores for Xbox 360 and PS3 retail games that are either exclusives or on both consoles.

Number of 90+ scores:

Xbox 360: 13 (5 of these console exclusive)

PS3: 9 (2 console exclusive)

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Average score of Top 20 games:

Xbox 360: 92.05

PS3: 90.35

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As you can see, on average games are rated as better than their PS3 counterparts. Whether this is due to the highly debated extra difficulty of programming for the PS3 or its shorter release time, either way according to metacritic, regarding the best of the best for each console, the 360 comes out on top. This doesn’t really matter as the quality of games on both consoles is quite staggering.

Predictions for 2009!

As this roller coaster year draws to a close, it is a year that will be remembered for so many reasons. We have experienced an economic collapse, the countries best pic’n'mix supplier will soon become a distant memory, President-elect Barack Obama became America’s first African-American to be elected, as well as many other events. But my question to you is not one of this year but one of next. What do you expect to happen over the coming year in the gaming world? I want to know what your predictions are for the year of 2009.

My predictions are as follows:

1. Sales of the Wii will drastically slow down by the end of the year.

2. The PS3 will reduce the sales gap between itself and the Xbox 360 to less than 5 million worldwide.

3. Killzone 2 will sell over 1 million in its first week.

Let me know what you predict to happen in 2009!