Ketchup

Wasnt it a picture of Saturn though?

MGS:TTS is great and annoying in equal measures. The beginning is stupidly difficult thanks to the extra features, such as guards being able to hear footsteps on the metal walk ways. Also because they now have radios, killing them all outright isnt always an option. Everyone now gets stuck in the tank hanger when that was probably the most enjoyable part of the game originally. However, the cutscenes are perfect. Yes they are silly, yes, having liquid do backflips whilst he is talking to you 100's of foot up is stupid. But its so damn fun! The extra bits they have put in really make the cutscenes like an action film. Snake jumping onto a rocket? Impossible but it is a real showy off piece. The Ninja cutscene is better than ever. Its great. The voice acting leaves a lot to be desired at the start but does get better. You can blame Konami for that one, not wanting to pay the voice actors a lot of money and having David Hayter give up his fee to give more money to the others. The use of first person doesnt make the game easier, the use of lockers are a nice addition that doesnt really work all that well due to their random placement. The game could have been so much better than MGS, but this is a fine port with some worthwhile additions but a few niggles thrown in along the way for die hard MGS fans.

Because if you go back twetny or so pages, some were saying the graphics were crap, especially compared to crackdown...when they are obviously not. And the artstyles are not all that different, Crackdown is more like GTA3 whilst GTAIV is maybe more like Saints Row.

The graphics look amazing. Even better that crackdown and i don't see how anyone can dispute that. Heres a crackdown screenshot for reference. Not the best crackdown screenshot in the world, but its more cartoony and no where near as detailed as GTAIV. Not that realisim matters but GTAIV does look better than crackdown.

I loved 28 days later. How ever, this seems to have a kid in it as one of the main stars. Meaning it could well be utter crap. Hopefully not though! It reminds me of the Resident Evil films actually...

Just like the original then! Gona buy this at Tesco's if it is indeed only £18.

The music, why? So glad it has custom sound track support but why did they choose the music they did? I like my crappy american Sonic Adventure style rock music, but this is more background music than something that ties in with the race. I love the whole tree dash though, that is so exciting.

And here are some pictures to pique your interest again This one was created thanks to 3dsmax's werid rendering system when dealing with cel shading. Creates a nice sketch effect. And heres one of the jumps in motion with the board being flipped. I've been watching a lot of the THP8 vids out there to get a better understanding of how to animate it all. It appears that characters don't move a lot. When landing jumps they try not to change their center of gravity too much and when skating or on grinds don't balance themselves as much as you'd think. Of course this will never be as good animation wise as that, but its something im using as a guide to help. I'm taking my time over the animation and hopefully this time i'll be able to pull it off.

No, because you havent actually completed a contract. All their emails will state something like 'Your interest in this item has been registered'. Basically the order is only complete (and the contract between you and the shop complete) when they actually take money out of your account.

99.99999999999% not. But its worth a try. Sometimes they honor the first few but HMV online are generally crap at doing anything order wise. Bet it becomes 'Out of stock' For everyone who ordered it at £5 and is on back order at the suppliers forever.

Whats the difference between the jap and uk version then?

Sonic on the Wii i think is the follow up to Sonic Adventure. Firstly its fully 3D (in the sense you can move where ever you want within a corridor of space) but the main thing that it doesnt have that all the other 3D Sonic games have is pits of death or floating levels. It all started with Sonic Heroes, where by all the levels must be hundreds of foot in the air and be floating platforms that you need to jump to. If you miss them, you die. They also included other ways to get across the gaps, generally with objects you had to jump onto which if you missed, resulted in death once again. Sonic on the Wii doesnt let you die this way. All the levels are on the ground. If there is a hole to fall down, the game stops you from just running off the edge. If it requires something like wind to get across the gap, again the game won't let you die or miss it and fall to your death. Sonic is about running along multiple paths, not jumping from floating platform to floating platform.

Nope, it seriously came in at the start because back in 2002 everyone was talking about it and wondering how the whole stars catalogue was going to work. Especially as it took them over a year to even get anything other than wallpapers on the site.

This has always been in the T&C's ever since the start. And they have never deleted stars points on anyones account.

Kill/Death Ratio: 1.1225 Why does Bungie.net have the words "Welcome to Bungie Studios : The Tru7h. The Whole Tru7h. And Nothing but the Tru7h" 777? 07/07/07?

It reminds me of some kind of Halo 3 fan site. It just looks so generic and like a template. The other site may have been slow and a bit crap, but it sure did look original.

Apparently the developers of this game have shut up shop...there is a closed topic on their forums from what would appear to be a disgruntled employee talking about it.

Like i said, its a bluetooth device (the wiimote) so interferance can happen randomly. A game itself can't tell if the remote is connected, the wii is what sends a signal to the game to display that message. I can't even hear the disc drive on my wii so if its making funny noises then something is wrong somewhere.

Thats not a random death hole though. You can't just run straight off into it like other 3D sonic games. Every place you can fall and die whilst running has a blocker at the end that'll stop you running into the hole. This is more like classic 16 bit sonic where there are holes in the floor but they are easily missed. Compared to later 3D Sonics where all the levels were suspended hundreds of foot above the floor and you could fall off quite easily, or be aiming at enemies or ropes and fly past them to your death. It's part of the game to make it more exciting, you don't know where the other path leads, but its probably not towards the goal sonic is aiming for. Jumping i will agree is a bit crap, it shouldnt have the skid in there and you shouldnt need to hold the button down for ages to get a high jump. As the rev said, that won't be the game, that'll be your Wii. Your remote might have other interferance as its a bluetooth device. As for load times, is your disc dirty or scratched? Because levels load in seconds, the main menu is what takes a bit of time to load.

Another bi yearly update. Im getting this done now. I dont care, its being finished soon. I've decided that its become a bit of a mess so dropped all the animation, the cameras and the people from it. The 4 main characters will however be staying. It really was/is far too large a project for me to take on considering my skills but over the last few weeks ive been reading and improving them with a view to fix the problems in this project and have it come out hopefully half decent. I've also finished off the world so it is now one complete scene and max file compared to 3 different scenes and max files. This will mean that rendering it can involve just one camera compared to having to line up different cameras where different scenes stopped and started. Also by removing the animations (for a 2nd time) i can hopefully fix the two main problems i had which were 1) skater not attached to the skateboard at all. Which meant he moved around a bit during the animation and 2) the speed of the animation can be constant. Due to my lack of knowlege i had the animation set to be smooth, which meant the skater sped up to the middle point of the animation and then slowed down. Causing huge problems for me and jerkyness in the animation. This will be fixed. The people will reappear, but only at the end of the project. Because having so many in a scene, all animated caused the scene to have over a million extra polygons. Something my machine had troubles coping with. So hopefully expect more regular updates on this and for it to be finished very soon.

How? Firstly there are NO instance deaths from falling off a floating platform. There are no 'Oppps sonic missed the target and flew off into the distance' attacks. Take Sonic Adventure. Remove everything from the game apart from the set pieces. Times the set pieces by a million, add in some control and you have Sonic on the Wii. IT works really well and with each level lasting about ten minutes, its ten minutes of pure fun and thrills. Sonic 360 is what you'd get if you gave sonic to a CG forum. Looks great, no gameplay at all. But thank god Sega have removed the horrible floating platform level designs that were in Sonic Heroes to date.

Every so often i'll post about one game that made a difference in gaming. Maybe its because it offered something never before seen, had an experience you had to be a part of. Or maybe it was so crap that it was great and you need to play it to just understand why. This week is Steel Battalion Why's Steel Battalion so great then? Graphically its very average. Extreamly blurry textures, simple objects and a draw distance that makes Turok look good. Even the cut scenes involve a badly drawn guy appearing on the corner of the screens rather than lots of animation and cool effects. Sound wise, it nails it with some fantastic sound effects but the lack of custom sound tracks or even good music hamper it slightly. Even the gameplay isnt great, its stupidly difficult, even before you add in the 'You die and your whole save game gets wiped' feature. It often involves nothing more but tackling the enemy from far away, hoping you get more shots in than them and that you don't run out of ammo or money. So far, so not worth being called a great game. Except for this. The Steel Battalion controller. If you could play the game on a normal Xbox pad, it would have been forgotten in an instance and been described as a bit crap. But this, this huge controller, making the game cost £130 on launch is the reason to, if not own at least sample this game. Get a desk set up to put the thing on, plug it all in and get ready for an experience which only Rez can match. Start the game and everything bad about the game fades away. Sure you still have your crap cut scenes but the first moment is magical. The level starts up, everything flashes at you as it turns on. Things appear on screen. You try to run forward out of the hanger. Shit, its not moving....oh yeah i have to start it up. Wheres that sodding manual, as the egnition button flashes at you faster than a man in an anorak near a primary school. You finally work out you have to push the buttons as they light and hit the switches on time with whats happening on screen. Thanks to your minutes of faffing about, you see the enemy charging towards you through the open hanger doors. The top of your mech finally shuts down and you feel safe, whilst the thing sodding boots up. GO GO GO! Still no luck, you have to wait STILL whilst this enemy mech is taking its aim at you. All of a sudden everything kicks in, GO GO GO. Nothing. You forgot to put it in gear. You smash it into 5th for a fast getaway...nothing. You drop it down to first and accidently hit reverse and smash into the back of the hanger as the enemy mech has started firing missles your way. You manage to find first gear after all and manage to slowly stomp your way forward as you wildly aim both your view and your guns everywhere but at the enemy mech. You fire off everything you have got. Somehow you survived. Although alarms are sounding, things on the controller are flashing, you survived. Seeing the flashing buttons you push them all not knowing what they do. Your window is now clean, your magazine has changed and you managed to drop all your fuel on the floor. Great. Now your a sitting duck. The controller is the game, it is an experience that makes this worth playing. As you go through the gears to speed up your mech, you feel in control. As the mech tilts as you go around a corner you still feel in control of keeping it up right. Being able to radio in help or control other mechs on your side thanks to the dial. Changing weapons in an instance with all their clunky glory. But the button, everyone will want to touch is the eject button. Theres nothing more exciting than your mech about to blow up, you lifting the flap and pushing that big red flashing button and flying out as your mech blows up beneth you. The levels have been fantastically designed too. Do you take the bridge for example, where the enemy are directly on the other side trying to destroy it as you rush across. Or do you go beneth it through the river, hoping you don't go into the deep end and drown your mech. The game doesnt have just one way to play, you set up your tactics, flank the enemy and get in control of the situation. Doing a beach landing and rushing through the water with 10 other mechs by your side, running up steep mountains for a surprise attack, its all designed to thrill. As mentioned, the graphics are a bit poor. But they add to the charm, early mechs have 14" portables for TV screens making viewing hard, but all the more tense. You can zoom the camera, view maps and other details without losing sight of the enemy. Seeing enemy tanks on the ground and running over them as they slowly try to run away, firing a rocket at a little match stick man. ITs an experience you won't get anywhere else. Sure there are other mech games out there, Chrome hounds for the 360 for example. But without the controller they are lacking. They feel dull, devoid of anything fun and slow. Steel Battalion is a great game because it immerses you so much, you feel enclosed in your mech, you feel like you are at the controls of it. And flashing buttons, how could that not be a winner. Crap graphics do not matter a jot when all you can think about is how you are controlling a 50 foot fighting machine.