Grass is green and the girls are pretty?

I've not noticed any girls in Paradise City. Heck, there isn't a single soul in town. It's like the whole place is some futuristic, car-controlled world where humans have been removed because they could not stand us moaning over game ratings and censorship. I really enjoyed the drivers flying out the windshield in Flatout: Ultimate Carnage and there are some spectacular ways to trash your vehicle in Burnout. Think of the ragdolling you could get upto! Not to detract from the hugely enjoyable experience but everyone who watches me play asks why the car has no driver! I was apparently one of the few that liked the demo. Burnout faithful are seemingly upset over the free-roaming gameplay that Paradise City now offers. Screw them! Burnout is hugely entertaining with some excellent online modes to dabble in when the mood takes you. Only downside is I am a big collector of game boxes and since my copy is a promo version it has a butchered front cover and no manual. Beggars can't be choosers as me 'ol grannie used to say!

Battle for free!

More magazine freebies in this post. The NMS Battle Book was another Harrod-inspired tome of fighting game facts and nonsense. The beat 'em up was at it's peak during the '90s and NMS was drawn to them like flies on shizzle. The Battle Book was a collection of the best of the best including Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and most of the SNK stuff doing the rounds at that time. World Heroes FTW! One thing I didn't hang onto was the NMS battle cards featured in the picture above. Anyone out there hang onto those?
Hi-Rez
Never got round to this shooter first time around so I'll be giving it a try later tonight to see what it's all about. I prefer my shmups side-on but I'll take whatever is going when there's so little choice nowadays.

Gamer's may cry…

…due to the insane amounts of joy to be had from playing Capcom's latest DMC installment due out shortly. Downloaded the demo, and I like the small ones since I have no patience waiting, and beat it senseless in a matter of minutes. Played like a dream and other than that dull stretch in the snow it looked the business too. Demo did the trick. You've got my money on launch day Capcom!

Shirt off my back

Working hard on new shirts and the latest designs are currently in staging ready to go live. Hopefully by tomorrow they will be available for all the retro faithful out there. Still, if you're a fan of Mean Machines or Maximum but tighter than a gnat's chuff then you can at least spread the word brudda! The Mean Machines shirt is a redesign of the Mega Game badge used in the magazine. I redrew the basic outlines then scanned the art before creating outlines in Illustrator. Some line weight tweaks, a bit of pondering for the text and there you go.

Who has a Shiny Helmet?

Well, if you don't then perhaps you need to sample one of the new shirts just added to that stellar gaming tee site videogametees.com this very minute! More designs coming soon but they have to rock or I won't let them through quality control.
Omega 7 out of 10?
Chuckled when I read Eurogamers review of the new XBLA shmup Omega Five. The reviewer was whinging on about the difficulty. That's the problem with 'noob' gamers. Brought up on Nintendogs and Wii Sports they expect everything to be a doddle and if there's no easy mode or endless credits they cry into their skirts. Grow some balls Parkin! Omega Five is certainly a challenge but it's easily overcome once you are familiar with the mechanics. Now if you want a 'hard' shooter then try Mushihime-sama Ultra.

Saddle 'em up

Covermounted gimmicks were so easy for Emap mags. We did not have to worry about DVD trailers or DS case decals or repackaged content in a cardboard folder. We just had to give the readers anything with Street Fighter on it! This particular freebie was a splendid editorial effort to push the Sega Turbo Edition and make use of the great art we always managed to wangle from Capcoms coin-op dude. Cannot remember his name but we would meet every now and then outside the Electrocoin test center near Goodge Street and wax lyrical about arcade stuff. One such time had us staring at a Fatal Fury poster on the door and he launched into a tirade on SNK artwork and how bad it was. The artist in question was Shinkiro and I was a big admirer of his drawings for Fury and KoF etc. Shinkiro actually went on to work for Capcom when SNK went bankrupt back in the day!

Amusing Musings

I'd read a lot of stories, articles and forum posts over the last year about the unreliability of the Xbox 360 hardware. I even dedicated the Deadbox t shirt to it over at videogametees.com (blatant plug – Ed) and wondered what people where doing to the machines to cause these breakdowns. Sure, the console is louder than an aircraft engine and it generates enough heat to cook a turkey but it's still the owners fault when they break right? Well, December 26th smacked the smugness from my face when my Xbox joined the ranks of the broken hordes when it failed to display a picture on the telly. A bit of research and it would appear to be a heat issue that may have affected the video card connection. I have owned pretty much every console ever made and the 360 is the only one to ever develop a fault. Thanks Bill!
Gaming Tees for all
Regulars will know that my t shirt project was out the gate a few weeks ago. Four new shirts going up in a weeks time. FAQ and About copy is in staging and some other ideas for community features will be added this month also. Plenty of positive comments and a few negatives which enable us to improve the site. Visitors want more shipping destinations, full shirt previews so they can see how big the design will be on the shirt, and of course they want a working FAQ so they can get all the details about what goes on when you order from the site. Shopping online is much safer than it used to be but naturally it can always be improved so the customer feels secure when handing over their details. As far as new shirts go we have plenty of new designs in the works but they take a while to get just right. Richard keeps asking for a shirt with Pippa Funnell on it but I told him to get lost.
Mass Effect
Going through again on hardcore now. Will be collecting a few achievements I missed out on first time round but mainly because it's such a good game. It does have faults. Dealing with your items and the 150 limit is a mass pain in the ass for example. The UI is nice looking but it's a dog when it comes to converting items into Omni-gel. ME2 is a given so hopefully they will sort that out and perhaps add a little more meat to the main storyline. Expanding on the romance sub-plot would be a bonus. First time round I got into Liara's spacesuit and Ashley never got a look in. Perhaps a threesome sub-plot when the Reapers are on an oil break! Huzzah!

Gaming Tees for all!

After an eternity of preparation we have finally managed to get our t shirt empire off the ground and live for the masses. Videogametees is a collaboration between myself and the good chaps over at Teefly and hopefully this can grow into something nice and wonderful for all involved. Our original aim was to get at least eight shirts into each of the four sections but time constraints prevented me from completing them all. Suffice to say, I have a ton of ideas and they are being developed into shirts when time allows. Each shirt idea goes through a long research period where we come up with the concept and then set about seeing if it can be translated into a workable design. The process by which we make the shirts means that the artwork must be strictly prepared. For this reason a lot of ideas get tossed aside simply because they are too complex for the production methods. We did manage 16 shirts though and you can at least browse the site and see if any take your fancy. With plans to get all site sections live by March and more shirts added every month it's highly likely you'll eventually see something that takes your fancy. Except for Richard that is. I made it quite clear that we where NOT making a design based on the recent spate of Pony games. Sorry mate.

Kameo for little kids!

I was asked why Kameo keeps appearing in my GamerTag as a recently played game. It's perhaps the only game, along with Sonic & Pinata, that's suitable for my eldest offspring. The rest of my collection is packed with guns, gore and adult excess which I keep locked away from prying eyes! My lad was not old enough when Kameo was first released but he saw the box and wanted to play. To keep him happy I made a Top Trumps version of Kameo using what artwork I could scrounge from the web. We managed to scrabble together about twenty cards and I considered contacting Rare to get more art to make a bigger set but I gave up. Games industry PR is universally up it's own arse! So when you see Kameo, Sonic etc appear in the GamerTag you can be assured I haven't lost all sense of reason and taste…
Jericho
Working through this basic shooter I got cheaply from Ebay recently. It's worth the £15 I paid for it but I would have been a little miffed had I paid full retail. Gears of War this isn't. Still, a few nice things in there with some interesting Hellraiser-style critters and more gore than we usually see on the Box. Level design is pretty basic (turn left, walk forward, kill, turn right, walk forward, kill more), enemy AI is non-existant and even on Hard you've got to really suck at games not to breeze through the levels. I'll try some more out tonight.

F**k those Flags!

All of them. And the person responsible for making them such an irritating achievement on Assassin's Creed. I want the achievement. I want to feel the overwhelming joy when the very last flag prompts the unlocked bar to pop onto the screen. But I am not a masochist (which as the dictionary states is a willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences) so it's not going to happen. Still, it's just one of a few problems with the game that is only saved by a truly spectacular environment and game mechanics. It's so much fun to actually control the lead character you can mindlessly plough through the same set of tasks again and again and defy boredom! Only problem now is the Xbox keeps telling me the disc is scratched and I am so close to the end! Going to try to clean the disc and hope that it fixes the problem.