General

Xbox 360?

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Edge are running an interesting article about the name of the new Xbox, which is now apparently going to be called Xbox 360. Even if the name isn’t as cool as Xbox Next, I definitely like that they’ve made it white. That’s a nice break from tradition and you only have to look at the Dreamcast to see how good a white (OK, dirty white if you want to be pedantic) console can look. I’m sick of the multiple shades of grey and black and find the GameCube’s purple to be a step too far in the opposite direction, so white is good.

Anyway, that article certainly shows some really fucked up names for a console. Odyssey of the Mind? Optimal Ozone? The irony of the Xbox being called P2P at one point is also very apparent. I’m actually going to be watching MTV when it’s unveiled (or, rather, watching the fallout online as it will be shown in the US and posted online a long time before it comes here) just to see what they’ve done to improve what I thought was the best console of this generation.

White is good. Xbox 360 is acceptable. The hardware is excellent. No hard drive is bad. Wireless controllers are good when done right. The supposed picture of Project Gotham Racing 3 is incredible. Whether any of those rumours turn out to be true will have to wait until then. It’s just sad that such a potentially huge announcement is coming through a channel as malapropos as MTV.

Impressions

God of War Impressions

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I’ve got my hands on the import version of the acclaimed new PS2 action title, God of War, and have taken it for a quick bash. I was surprised to see what looks like a fairly generic and insipid action title (you have to admit that playing as a servant of the gods and defending Ancient Greece from mythological creatures doesn’t sound like the most original concept) getting such incredible reviews, but having played it I can see what they’re getting at. This game is shamelessly good fun.

God of War

The game, in which you play as Kratos, a Spartan who is haunted by his past and serves the gods as his route to forgiveness, hearkens back to the days when Mortal Kombat was the latest threat to our youth and the fad amongst developers was to drown their games in blood. It could be the biggest load of crap that you’d ever played but as long as it had a distinctly sanguine tint, everything would be OK. This is probably where my apprehension about this game came from, even after Edge’s glowing preview; it just sounded like the same old pomp that we hear every time. Like those games, it has no qualms about spraying everything with blood and (sometimes literally) tearing enemies limb-from-limb, and blatantly doesn’t care what anyone thinks abou it. Why slay the hydra when you can skewer it through the eyes and impale it on a broken mast? Why silently kill the gorgon when you can tear off its head and use its hideous gaze to turn your enemies to stone? Well, why not? There’s an M-rating on the box after all.

Kratos is a fairly transparent protagonist with only the bare bones of a personality on which to base the action. If anything the design of his character is somewhat poor as his looks and personality fit firmly into the category of “vanilla rage-filled anti-hero”, but even if he lacks the charisma of Devil May Cry’s Dante, the action is done well enough to carry itself. The comparison to DMC is probably apt as they’re fairly similar – violent action led by combo-heavy combat and gigantic bosses, all wrapped up in a very pretty shell. This definitely is one of the best games on the PS2 and is more than worthy of a purchase.

General

Eye of the Tiger: Mark II

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To expand on my less-than-eloquent post about this earlier (what can I say? I was excited), I’ve now ordered my copy of Tiger. The price from the UK educational store was something like £52 compared to £89 for the retail copy, but I’m interested to know why our education price is higher than the US retail price. There can’t be that many taxes to pay on it even when the dollar is pitifully weak.

I found out about it in a way more interesting than how I was planning – I happened to be looking around the Mac OS X section of the Apple site for a specific page when I noticed that the opening paragraph of the Preview page didn’t say “Open, view, scroll, work within and print any PDF document in record time with Mac OS X Panther”, but said “Open, view, scroll, work within and print any PDF document in record time with Mac OS X Tiger”. Thinking that something might be up (Apple do make most of their announcements on a Tuesday, after all) I refreshed the page to find that the whole thing had gone black and that the announcement was there. Normal bodily functions had to take a backseat in my rush to the phone.

Anyway, I should hopefully receive it on the 29th and in the meantime I have another 512MB of RAM on the way for my iBook. With any luck that will arrive tomorrow and keep me amused for a while.

General

Coppola Whacks EA

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EA can never be accused of putting too much emphasis on the artistic side of gaming (or anything for that matter), so it’s good to see a real artist letting their frustration with them known. Making their own GTA clone that could sell itself would have been too much work, so lifting one of the great works of modern (ish) cinema must have been the obvious solution. Paramount aren’t much better for actually selling the rights to them, but Paramount deserve credit for putting out The Godfather in the first place.

I’ll be surprised if it’s any more than Driv3r or The Getaway – a pale imitation of Rockstar’s games.

General

Know Any Horseriding Jokes?

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Today is both Charles and Camilla’s wedding day and the Grand National. I’m sure there’s an obvious joke in there somewhere…

In all seriousness, good luck to them in their marriage and good luck to me on the National. I should also be getting God of War for the PS2 soon which is by all accounts a stunning game. I’ll post impressions whenever I get it.