IS CALL OF DUTY FINISHED?

Hey All

Just another quickie... the new Medal of Honour game thats in development has released an annoucement trailer which I thought I'd share.

Is this the end of CoD?

No... no its not.

Trailer below!

WINDOWS GETS A CENTURY, NICE INNINGS!

Just a quickie...

Every month I back up my music, pictures, por..... erm... personal videos... and all the other stuff that would be awful to lose in case of internal hard drive fires.

A common occurance.

On setting off the back up to my External Hard drive Windows gave me the following estimated time of completion:



Thats just over 114 years.... not to bad then!

I think the best thing is thats its "about" 41712 days. I'm sure you'll agree though, as stabs in the dark go, thats pretty shite.

Who programmes these things!?

HOLOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGY!? YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!

Hey All

Came across this the other day and had to post it simply because I couldn't believe it.

Some band I have never heard of.. called the "Neurosonics" teamed up with famed beat-boxer "Beardyman" (and I encourage you to look at that link) to create the following piece of music that was performed live on stage with HOLOGRAPHIC Beardyman heads....

There is no CGI here and this is what the audience saw... check out the video below...

I have my holo-deck on pre-order.

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

SONY GETS A HOT DATE!... WRONG!

Sony made a boo boo. A big boo boo. Thankfully a short boo boo... but a boo boo nonetheless.

They might know how to create highly prized televisions, huge mechanical hearts for the start of football matches and dodgy touch screen phones (I think I have lost my train here)

BUT they can't read a calendar.

HOW EMBARRASSING.

Did you try and log onto your £400+ shiny black box of hardened gaming flint on the 1st of March. Did you see this?



Did you get confused? Then annoyed? Then ANGRY?

Well that's Playstation speak for I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE DATE IS.. ARRRAGAHGAHGAHGHGGGAHHAHGGGHHH *weep, gurgle, death*

Millions of gamers worldwide weren't able to use their PS3.. and here's why:

A long long time ago, a promising engineer in the dark Sony Dungeons knew that 2010 was a leap year.. he KNEW... and taught the original "phat" version of the PS3 this irrefutable fact in Playstation school.

Mr.Three (as he is known) graduated with flying colours and went on his way to live a life of honey and candy.

Years later, this Monday just gone... this irrefutable fact he learned was proudly displayed to the world..

"look everyone, its the 29th of Feb" he said... eyes wide with innocence and pride.

Only to find Gamers all around the world silently shaking their heads with barely contained fury... and with disappointed hearts they pointed to the date on all the other, and much cheaper, branded products they owned... and they all said....

"Its the 1st of March you stupid black paperweight"

This revelation, NO!... this PARADOX, which to Mr.Three was a crack in the very LAWS OF TIME AND SPACE ITSELF caused its tiny brain to melt and its hopeful soul to shatter.

As his sanity slipped away, people heard him jabber...

"I am unable to find the trophies... I am unable to find the trophies... "

Gamers turned their back on him... switched off the light... and to their life partners surprise... took them out for a nice meal.

Mr.Three was left cold and alone under the T.V... with dust its only blanket for warmth. ........................................

Now that isn't the official press release... but that's the gist of it.

Suffice to say once the sunset on 29th of fe... erm.. sorry.. the 1st of March.... sanity was restored and Gamers abandoned their partners again for a serious Call of Duty session. All is well with the world again!

Riaktion

UBISOFT - NOT SOFT ON DRM

Have you heard the news?

Thats right from now on all UBISOFT games will require an "always on" internet connection to play thier games.

PC gamers out there will cry...

"This is nothing new sir! We have had to activate our games online before we can play them in the past! Remember Half life 2?"

But no no, we aren't talking activation here, I am talking about playing a game.

UBISOFT products will now constantly check that you are online, and if you aren't? The game quits out.

Yep, moving house, haven't got your net up yet? No Ubisoft games for you.

Intermittent problems with your wireless connection? You can play! When it works.

Internet goes down through no fault of your own? Best play something else.

In summary... No net connection? YOU MUST BE A PIRATE! YOU DON'T DESERVE THIS GAME. (Then I assume they spit on you as well)

Those of you that know me are well aware of my dislike of pirates, and although its clear to me that Ubisoft have gone insane and have decided to punish LEGITIMATE GAMERS instead of the pirates, I find myself getting annoyed by our downloading brethren.

The sad thing is, this crazy internet only DRM *will* be broken by Pirates and in the end they will get a better service because they won't need a net connection all the time.

Crazy.

Now I have mentioned the mighty Rock, Paper, Shotgun before, probably the best PC only website out there. Excellent games journalist Alec Meer has recently posted about Gamers spreading the word about this and getting out there to tell people that this is unacceptable.

And I agree... so here it is. You know now, spread the word. You can find an interview with a Ubisoft PR man here if you are interested in thier side of the story

That all said... I am fed up with pirates ruining my past time, and then equally so with companies who don't help with hardcore DRM measures like this, but the truth is I don't know what the solution is when it comes to pirates and thats the most frustrating thing of all.

For me... the worst thing is... I don't do anything about it. I am talking about the friends I have that pirate games freely by downloading them. I try and tell them not to, but they don't care, so do I report them? No, they are my friends and I NEVER WOULD, so they carry on, and in truth.. how can I blame them?

Free is a difficult price to beat and if you aren't invested in the games community... why should you care?

How about.... companies going out of business.. like Iron Lore.. see story here

How about... massive AAA titles maybe moving away from the PC... COD 4 anyone?.. story here

How about figures of 10 millions games downloaded illegally in a month.. 10 MILLION!.. see here

I suppose in the end, if you Pirate its down to you. I know none of this will change your mind about copyright infringement, but I guess the question is.... what will? Will anything?

Or does any of this even matter or change anything?

Let me know your thoughts here or at Facebook.

Riaktion... signing out.

I'M A WINNER AFTER ALL!

Yes thats right, I entered a quick competion that the kind people at Gamezebo.com where running, and I won!

Hooray! Therefore I wanted to pubicly say thank you to them and point all of you in thier direction for your casual game reviews and news!

So what did I win?

1 free game at GOG.com (good old games) where old PC games are released to work on new Windows systems for low low prices. Hooray again! I decided to pick up Freeapce 1 & the expansion, introduction below....

Also I won £10 on the lottery this weekend... BONUS!

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

Yes the results are in... and I didn't win.

Booo! But the winners are worthy ones to be fair.




You can see the winning entries here!


Make sure you put Rock Paper Shotgun in your favourites, its a site well worth reading if you want to keep up with the strange new world of gaming.

In other news I picked up Dragon Age anyway and on the 2 hours I have played its looks to be excellent. The voice acting really stands out, in a good way, and I am looking forward to playing through the epic story.

Hope you are all well!

Thanks