Hello everyone. With the Domain Name nigaming.co.uk expiring in a few weeks, it came to our attention whether we should continue this project. We know that we haven’t updated in such a long time that our listeners have made for greener pastures, but we also feel that this is a part of a very good history together. Thank you to all who did listen to our shows and I hope you listen to whatever shows we make in the future.

This site is dusty, very dusty, in an internet way – to the point that I may have to clean everything out!!! I have disabled all comments because my inbox is now filling up with spam and almost all users here are spam users.
On the next time around I will be putting in verification systems for users in an attempt to make things more smooth and not over the top. And possibly more writers on the site. If you need to get in contact, email me.

Yes we missed out an episode even with 2 being recorded!!!

Who cares?

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Dragon Age: Origins

FFXIII

Fallout 3 mods

Congratulations to those of you who were seniors in high school! Class of ’09 baby!

Some of you might have picked up on it, a great game i play (much less now than before) is Air Rivals.  its a  pretty sweet pvpmmorpg ( i know a mouthful) i made a video of it you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB9aTHtNSWU

and im sure all of you are just as excited for the new seasons podcasts!

-Vacross, out

Alright, our exams are over, and we have 70 days of blissful summer to enjoy. And you know what that means…Updates! Regular, glorious updates for our starved fans that have clutched onto this sporadically renewed website.

Said updating shall begin soon enough, whenever Tristan finishes his editing on the new episode, but until then, I shall give you my thoughts on Sony’s E3 conference.

As far as it goes, I would have to say that Sony was on par with Microsoft. Natal just beat Sony’s motion controller, at least as far as marketing potential goes, and Sony’s future game lineup was superior to Microsoft’s.

Don’t agree with me? Tough luck, I’m the one with all of the writing privileges!

I mean, Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Final Fantasy XIV (Yes, it’s on the PC, but whatever), Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (If Metal Gear Solid: Rising is canon, I’ll eat a hat), Agent, Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, Fat Princess, and the list could go on.

A special mention goes out to Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, because it will, like all of the R&C games, be amazingly good.

I suppose that the main thing about Sony’s conference was the motion sensing controller. I’m all for it, even if it is a blatant attempt to jump on the back of Nintendo’s money-making bandwagon. However, they wish to actually use said motion sensing technology to its full potential, which I am happy to see.

The accuracy is second-to-none, and with the additional processing power of the PS3, the sky’s the limit. What we saw was a tech demo, and it was just that, a tech demo, but throw in some gameplay elements beyond firing a bow, and Sony will be on to a winner. Providing that they can incorportate a method for the player character to move about, of course.

Thankfully, she quickly got onto the subject most of us wanted to hear about (actually, I wanted to hear more about her kids…); Mario. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, presumably a sequel to the DS game, was announced. It will offer four player multiplayer, which Miyamoto apparently wanted in a sequel to Mario 64.  It’ll be out “holiday” 2009, presumably meaning Christmas.

“Mario wasn’t big enough to attract all consumers to our category” coupled with a balance board on the screen gave off some pretty bad signs. Wii Fit Plus, which had been rumoured for quite a while, was officially announced. We’ve got that to look forward to this Autumn…

After another montage, Reggie came onstage. Just what everyone wanted (don’t even try and deny it).  He bangs on a bit before getting to the point. Wii Motion Plus. Old news is old. There’s a video about Motion Plus. It’s a little pointless. “On video you can do almost everything” he said, in what could be a jab at Natal, which hasn’t properly proven itself yet. Bill Trinnen comes along to show us how it all works.

There’s a bit of sky diving, which seems to be little more than a demo for WMP, followed by a bit of archery, which is more meaty. Poor Bill isn’t much good, although it’s all very smooth and precise. He invites Reggie back on stage and they play a bit of basketball. A bit of awkward banter in front of a silent, presumably unamused, audience. Reggie tells us that WMP will be out on the 26th of July, then tells us about some sports games we already knew about.

We get a little bit of chat about Red Steel 2, and we’re told that third party development is flowing to Nintendo, which is basically a lie. Then he moves onto the RPG genre. A slightly hamfisted attempt to please the “core” audience. Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days were rolled out.  Old news all round.

Next was Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, the next in game in the Mario & Luigi series. Very nice, but old news again. Silly Reggie’s going to have to work harder. Which he does, duly showing off Golden Sun DS, a long overdue sequel to the GBA original.

And Cammie came back to us. She decided to curry favour by talking about… James Patterson. The sad thing is that I know who he is and have read two of his books. Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion. You won’t like it unless you’re a middle-aged woman (or me…). Casual tat, basically. With Mah Jong, it seems.

Next up was Cop: The Recruit. Ubisoft’s been watching The Fast and the Furious, and so have ripped it off for a rather pretty looking DS game, but with added shooting. “Let’s shift gears” says Cammie in a moment of liver cirrhosis inducing punnery, before introducing us to Girls’ Mode. A fashion game. Thanks for that.

Another montage, this time about the DSi. Lovely. She talks about the DSi complementing the cheaper DSLite.  Basically, she’s saying they’re so rich they can wipe their caviar bloated asses with hundred dollar bills. She then announces Moving Memo, now called Flipnote Studio, will be about this summer in the US. Bit late.

Next up is Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again. This DSi Shop sequel to March of the Minis will be out in America on Monday. Very snappy. It’s mostly a level editor, so a bit Little Big Planet-y, but hopefully in a way that actually works. Then comes WarioWare: DIY. Similar idea, but WarioWare. Wonder if Nintendo will be making any games at all.

Next big news is photo transfer via Facebook for the DSi. Facebook seems to be quite the big thing at E3 this year. Spirit Tracks trailer is next. Old news… another montage. Then Satoru Iwata rushes out onto the stage amid a squeal of guitar noise. Fifty this December, that man, but doesn’t look it. Gives us some waffle about active, maybe and never gamers. Makes very little sense. In short, he just wants more cash.

He starts going on about games needing skills, Wii Wheels, Wii Fit and Brain Training. Eventually we get to the point. A little thing that clips onto your finger and measurse your pulse. It looks like a tampon. That’s all he had to say. He wants to force people to relax with it. Nice guy. Bye bye, Iwata. Don’t come back until you’ve made us some games.

Hello Cammie. Back to talking about games. She threatened the audience with more Mario news. She then whips out Super Mario Galaxy 2, the first time for three generations there has been more than one full Mario game on a home console. Looks like it’s been built on Galaxy‘s engine, but with Yoshi. Thankfully, the audience reacted to that. Poor woman…

Reggie comes back to tell us that he reads the blogs. Presumably, he has someone who reads them for him, but that’s not important. He talks about some third party titles out before the end of this year. The Conduit, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and Deadspace Extraction. More old news. Reggie then adopts his winding up tone. Oh dear.

Wait, what’s this? A new, edgier game. An old Nintendo franchise revitalised? Metroid: Other M, made by Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive). It looks to be first and third person, very very different from any Metroid game before. It will explore the Metroid universe and Samus’ background. Sounds fascinating. And that’s the end. Bye bye Reggie.

Not as bad as last year, to be honest. They didn’t cut out the casual stuff, but didn’t focus on it completely. No real killer blows, though, and quite a bit of old news. Microsoft are still in the lead.

By the way, I haven’t time to see what Sony’s been up to today, so I’ll write that up tomorrow afternoon.

Sparky.

Microsoft’s press conference opened with The Beatles: Rock Band, complete with the two surviving Beatles and the dead ones’ wives. This was followed by another celebrity endorsement when Tony Hawks mounted the stage to show off his new plastic skateboard (complete with accelerometers!). Then he disappeared off stage, presumably to make awkward small talk with the remains of the Beatles.

Then we got a huge surprise. A trailer for Modern Warfare 2 which everyone’s already seem before. There were some explosions and all that kind of gaff.  Messers Yoshinori Kitase and Motumo Toriyama came along to show off Final Fantasy XIII on the 360, although they didn’t have a great deal to say for themselves. Spring 2010, they told the world, presumably for both platforms, but hopefully not.

Following this was something called Shadow Complex. It was slightly unmemorable. Left for Dead 2 was next, then Crackdown 2, then Splinter Cell Conviction. “Driven by his emotions, Sam is now the ultimate predator” and other such gibberish.

There was some driving game, but I’ve forgotten the name of it (it’s just a driving game), then Halo ODST, which looked like… Halo. No huge surprises.

Then there was a lecture on Xbox Live. All sorts of stuff that you can usually do on your computer, you can now do on your Xbox too. Last.fm, Facebook, Twitter, all coming this Autumn. Hideo Kojima crept on stage.

Big announcement: Metal Gear Solid Rising, featuring Raiden as the main character. Not exclusive to the 360, as it turns out. Gamespress gave it away yesterday, presumably by accident.

Microsoft’s killer blow came next. Project Natal. To put it simply, it’s an Eyetoy, but with voice and face recognition. Poor Microsoft. Their two big innovations have been online gaming (PC and Dreamcast got there first) and a beefed up Eyetoy. Steven Spielberg came along to tell us about people being scared of traditional controllers and how historic Natal is going to be. Frankly, he’s a film director. He’s slightly irrelevant, but seems to be trying for the position of archfiend of casual gaming. There was a bit of (rather dodgy looking) painting and messing about with avatars (well BAM there it is).

Someone then told us that “Xbox 360 is home to every hit franchise”, which we all know simply isn’t true, and, a couple of minutes later, it was all over. Frankly, it was impressively star-studded and packed with new games, so Nintendo and Sony and pretty much screwed. Microsoft look set to walk away with E3 yet again.

By the way, there’s speculation that Nintendo are going to be showing a new Mario game because of these photos. Apparently, you can make out blocks, coins and fireflowers through the sheets.

Sparky.

Now recently I completed Bioshock (yeah I know, take my time why don’t I?). Now it’s a great game, I mean, how games can you fire lightning bolts out of your hands? (InFamous, D&D games)

…..OK well how many games force you to choose between the life and death of a little girl? (The Sims?)

…..Nah doesn’t count. The Sims is a over-glorified fishbowl, Bioshock is a gritty life or death, impulse shooting fishbowl experience. Since Dermot has already written a review about it, I’m not going into details. However I will talk about SPOILERS!!! So only read on if you do not want to read the good or any ending!!!

I guess what really got me was Andrew Ryan’s death at the hands of you, however the player is not in control, nicely done. Adding to the puppet theme that was recently sprawled all over your face by Mr. Ryan basically telling you, you were controlled the whole time by Atlas..

Even this is not what I’m trying to get at. No in fact, it is the ending that disappointed me. I choose to save the little sisters, all of them! Yes I’m an angel now, well done.  So I go to fight Fontaine, kill him. Game done.  It’s over too quickly, there is little to no build up in suspense. No reasoning why Fontaine looks like a deformed gingerbread man and why despite have no clothes on, has no gentalia? So I guess I am left to assume all this? OK… he got put in an oven for a few hours left to simmer with a few plasmids then drenched in EVE marinade.  And he never had any balls to begin with!…Oh please….

Sorry Bioshock, but you let me down! Seriously! For being such an epic game, like making me dress as a Big Daddy and all then to come out with a wishy washy ending? Sickening!  Playing on Normal feels like Easy (see Tristan’s last post), Fontaine isn’t remotely difficult, sure he spits fire and throws ice, but if I have all 9 Medikits, I survive without a scratch.

Are games getting easier? Where they ever difficult? The same questions plague examinations each year…. in video gaming, for me, it was a different matter entirely. I used to play for the factor of completing the game irrelevant of  how I did so, so it was easy all the way. Of course, easy can provide you with a cut down version of the game with corners cut on the enemy intelligence, abundancy of items and time required for puzzles. As I grew old and a bit more keen to push myself  I started going for normal or advanced difficulties (hard was still out of my league, I was trying to wean myself off easy), skyrocketing my playtime  and forcing me to spend months on one game.

Only when I had knocked advanced down to size did I even attempt hard. Deadspace on hard is not scary, its frustrating and wetting-your-pants-because-you-have-no-ammo-and-little-health terrifying, the scare is taken away because it just seems as if the game is jeering at you.  And I loath being jeered at, espicially by a game.  Then along came Farcry, and the standards changed.

Yes I understand that Farcry came out before Deadspace, but you are so lucky it doesn’t measure up in difficulty.

Farcry has its own difficulty scale. Beginner, Medium Advanced Veteran and Realistic. Trust me, Medium is like impossible.  Instead of being able to run around like some superhero, Farcry really makes sure that everyone on the map is a sharpshooter, there are about 33 of them and they are all hell bent on killing you.

And don’t get me started on the ‘things’ in the forest….No game should be THIS hard. Who plays this on Realistic?

The developers? However realistic that difficulty is, I couldn’t realistically enjoy the game. On the other hand, there is a good deal of bragging rights to be won here; for example “hey I just completed Farcry on Realistic in 10 minutes” to which we reply “dude, cheating doesn’t count Phail”.  This game assumes you are ready to win and doesn’t give other people a chance, it is a mean dick of a game.

It begs the question, maybe there should be a limit to how difficult a game is, or maybe I’m just being a whiney baby because I find it difficult

… SHUT UP!! It IS difficult! that is the reason this game is good though. It doesn’t take you by the hand through a safe and easy tutorial, you learn or die. I think some games often miss that aspect these days, trying to be ‘family friendly’. Give us some more diaboloically hard games for core gamers to chew on.  And maybe some other enticements like actual replayability.

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Now playing: Metallica – Mama Said
via FoxyTunes