ITCHY TRIGGER MUSIC

Hey All

Came across this today and thought i'd share.

The clever chap or chapette that goes by the name of "One shot film" has noticed something YOU HAVEN'T (I hate you so MUCH for that)

If you listen closely when playing COD 4: MW 2... you can hear music....

Just tune out the death, screaming, gun fire, explosions, radio chatter, beeps, clicks, bangs, grunts and that 13yr old swearing down your ear hole...

and just listen... video below...

ITS ELEMENTRY HORROR MY DEAR WATSON

So I know you've ALL be rushing out to buy the new adventure "SHERLOCK HOLMES NEMESIS" which features:

2 legendary English characters from the 19th century in a terrifying investigation!

Terrifying is bang on actually... just see Dr Watson here....

Turn up your speakers first! *Runs away*

ITS OFFICALLY TIME TO GET EXCITED ABOUT THE WORLD CUP!

Hey All

Yes I am back, now my big move to the new place is complete and the wizards have weaved there arcane works to restore internet to my home Riaktions Reaction is back in full working order.

That all said, gonna kick off with a quickie.

If you hadn't noticed by all the car flags the World Cup starts next weekend and its now OFFICIALLY TIME TO GET EXCITED.

Why?

Play the below......

Enjoy!

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

RIKS ENTRY TO THE RPS DRAGON AGE COMPETITION

Hey all sorry I haven't updated the blog in a LONG time, if I am honest I have been saving up tings to write about... and there will be a GLUT of updates soon. I have thoughts on piracy, Borderlands, Batman Arkam Asylum, Dirt 2, FIFA 10, Wolfenstien and the Far Cry2 movie (yes movie).

In the meantime however, my usual Internet haunt the mighty Rock, paper, Shotgun are currently running a rather generous competition about upcoming mega RPG Dragon Age.

You can see the details here


Now for the attention of Jim, Kieron, Alan & John, my entry is below:

NOR AMELL

And so our hero stepped from the tower of magic... and he was... unremarkable.

A mage of moderate magical prowess, of moderate tastes, moderate views and moderate fashion sense.

He loved the magic circle, mostly for the grey shade of robe he could wear. The constant instruction to resist temptation.. to be dull. It was great!

He wears a smirk (which can be seen on his portrait)... one someone could only wear when completely confident in his own adequateness.

It is if the gods themselves, the creators of this indifferent hero simply let their tools of divine creation rest in the middle, the centre... the boring boring middle of the road. Nothing to either extreme.

He is our hero, your hero and he is normal. They named him well.

REVIEW - AGE OF PUZZLE (iPhone & iPod touch)

Hey All!
OK well I have been away for a few days and sadly I haven't been around to update "Riaktions Reaction", however while I have been out and about I picked up AGE OF PUZZLE for my iPod and thought I would share some brief thoughts on this little match 3 game; Read on!

OK firstly If you don't know what I mean by a "match 3" game, its where the main game mechanic is you matching three colours, symbols, shapes and sometimes animal heads together to WIN! And that's it. The most famous example the Genre would be Bejeweled, which I am sure you have heard of.

Age of Puzzle's twist on this is to steal.. erm sorry... borrow.. the basics from another game called Puzzle Quest and do a worse job of making the game engaging and fun. In Age of Puzzle you take the role of a male or female (you choose) fantasy warrior and fight your battles via the power of match 3





The way battles work is you match 3 of the symbols with a Star like explosion background and by doing so hurt the bad guy.

• 3 Red swords do melee damage (WHACK!)
• 3 Orangey wands do magic damage (ZAP!)
• 3 Green bows do ranged damage (TWANG?)

Getting 4 of the above does more damage and gives you an extra turn, and getting 5 does even MORE damage. As exciting as this sounds.. I never once whooped or punched the air.

This mechanic is identical for defending.. get 3 swords, wands or bows with a shield as the background, and you will earn "defense points" against that attack type from your opponent. 3 swords with shields means defense against a melee attack (WHACK). You get the idea I'm sure ;o)

As you play you will level up and get to increase the power of one of the 3 attack types as well as spending points on defending against them. You'll also pick up some basic rudimentary loot to equip on your character, and that sits in your investory which can be accessed once per battle.



Regarding the loot finds, you'll never be scratching your head trying to find the right mix of attack and defense with your loot, its just too basic, if I am honest it all becomes pointless if you pile all your level up points into just one of the skills, say the Melee skill; whenever you match three red swords, you do so much damage its pretty much game over.

Its a basic game. No quests, no story, no dialogue, just a chain of battles linked together to give you the chance to match 3 symbols together. The graphics are clear and bold and animations are smooth and its ideal for passing the time on a short journey or while sitting in a waiting room.

Oh.. there is one big thing in its favour... its 59p, and for me that the exact RRP.

FAIL - DONT TRY THIS AT HOME

OK I'll admit this has nothing to do with gaming.. but I thought I would share this regardless.

Don't try this at home.

GAMER - THE MOVIE

So this is what happens whan you log into play Call of Duty 4 or Battlefield 1943 online... I never knew.

Yes thats right folks, a film where gamers play a real life battlefield war game... controlling real people. Its the future!

The synopsis reads as follows:

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player from a game called "Slayers" looks to regain his independence while taking down the game's mastermind

Interested? Heres the trailer....

MICROSOFT SLASH THE PRICE OF THE XBOX 360

So here we go, my first blog post, and just a quick one. :o)
Its official, the Xbox 360 is getting a price drop, probably in response to Sony's price drop on the PS3.
So thought I would wrap up whats going on!

There are 3 tiers of 360 out there so lets look at each one in turn...

The "Arcade"
Your "entry level" 360 if you like. No bells and whistles here sorry. You get no hard drive, wired controllers, a general lack of respect from your friends and peers and it probably smells funny. It still supports component HD though (not HDMI) and Microsoft have kindly dropped the price on this to about £130 ($199)

The "PRO" (for the professional consumer I assume)
This is your mid tier console, and the one you will find most people have. The "Pro" boasts a wireless controller, headset, Component HD support (not HDMI), a free month of Xbox Live gold membership and a 20gb Hard drive. There is a newer "Pro" available which added a HDMI port and a 60gb HDD (Surprising how this came out at the same time as the PS3 arriving on the scene)

I understand that this console is being phased out and you can't pick up a new one in store anymore .... well you won't be able to in the future anyway. If you own one, its going to be a collectors item.

The "Elite"
Now we are talking. This is the big daddy of the 360 family. Quieter, with a monster (in console terms) 120gb HDD, HDMI support, wireless controller, headset and most importantly a new coat of lovely black paint, if you own one people will know that your gaming heart is an obsidian block of merciless destruction, bent on crushing your online enemies with the maximum humiliation!!

OK well it doesn't quiet inspire that kind of reaction however the good news is that this can now be purchased for a very reasonable £200. And in my opinion the best buy for a newbie to the 360 world.

So there you go. My first blog, more of a news piece than anything, rest assured some true blogging is on its way as I plan to give you my thoughts on Mirrors Edge, Infamous, WipeOut HD Batman: Arkham Asylum... once I get through it and many more!

If you think you might care about my thoughts on things, please follow the blog by "Following" me on the left hand side of the site and of course... add this site to your favourites! Thanks!