Featured Articles, PC, Xbox 360, past, technology - by Matttbh - April 14, 2009 - 15:40 UTC - Be first to Comment!
Today Microsoft have announced that the E74 Error, usually caused by a problem with chips near the AV connection, is now under a similar extension of warranty as the dreaded Red Ring of Death. Another piece of good news is that if you have spent money to get your Xbox repaired because of the E74 Error, you should get a refund within the next 4 – 12 weeks.
“While the majority of Xbox 360 owners continue to have a great experience with their console, we are aware that a very small percentage of our customers have reported receiving an error that displays “E74” on their screen. After investigating the issue, we have determined that the E74 error message can indicate the general hardware failure that is associated with three flashing red lights error on the console. As a result, we have decided to cover repairs related to the E74 error message under our three-year warranty program for certain general hardware failures that was announced in July 2007″ – Xbox Support
This is good news, especially for me, due to my very own Xbox 360 receiving the E74 Error on Easter Sunday.
Source: http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/kb.aspx?ID=969905&lcid=1033&category=hardware
Featured Articles, News, Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Reviews - by Matttbh - April 9, 2009 - 19:06 UTC - Be first to Comment!
After reading the name in the title you are probably thinking… Who?
At first I believed that he may be an old classic from an arcade game, or something we would now consider retro. This is not the case however; Matt Hazard is a new character.
Eat Lead the Return of Matt Hazard is Third Person Shooter, although strangely that’s not its primary purpose. Its primary purpose is to make us laugh, and no not just because it’s another Third Person Shooter revolving around a cover system. This game is far, far more than a generic shooter; it is a look back at the past 25 years of video games.
You play as Matt Hazard (Max Payne anyone?), the fictional video-game star who is appearing in his latest venture as a private detective in search of money that has been stolen from a mob boss. Although, this changes pretty quickly as you encounter a gun wielding maniac, with a faint German/Austrian accent, I’ll leave it up to you as to who that might be a parody of. It is at this point that you will meet QA, a hologram (in the game world), although sadly a blue and fuzzy one, not one with an H on its forehead. QA (Quality Assurance) gives you guidance as you progress through the game, to make sure you don’t die, as the boss of the game company wants Matt dead, but his contract states that he cannot quit or be fired,so he must die… in a video game.
At the beginning you are thrown into a tutorial, which cues Matt’s response of “not another tutorial, I hate those” (or something to that effect), which is pretty much what I was thinking… Must be something to do with his awesome name…. Anyway, this tutorial mainly teaches you the cover system, which is more or less standard in Third Person Shooters these days. The A-Button makes Matt take cover,the Y-Button makes him run to new cover, makes him jump over cover and the Left Trigger makes him aim. The interesting thing about this cover system is that cover can be destroyed, which you can use to your advantage, but be warned, the enemies can do the same.The game consists of 8 levels, all in extremely varied locations with a multitude of enemies to face and their guns to kill them with. These enemies range from Soak’Ems wielding Water Pistols to Space Marines wielding Plasma Rifles. These enemies will appear when you pass a trigger point, and cover will do the same.
The main bosses are all from ‘previous’ Matt Hazard games and a level usually ends with one. The humour carries over onto them, my personal favourite being a character from ‘Penultimate Illusion’ who wields a giant sword and whenever you damage him red numbers shoot out from his chest. This, although a good parody of Final Fantasy, does get frustrating as you click through the many text bubbles before the fight.
Throughout the game there are classic ‘propane tanks’ for you to destroy as well as fire extinguishers to shoot, both of which harming enemies in the vicinity. There are also Power-Ups scattered around the levels one of which turning you red and letting you deal more damage, and the other turning you metallic and invincible. The weapons are standard with generic SMGs, Pistols, Sniper Rifles, but you can however pick up weapons dropped by the enemies from a humble Water Pistol, to a devastating Grenade Launcher.
There are three difficulty settings Minimum Hazard, Major Hazard and Maximum Hazard. Maximum Hazard being unlocked after your first play through… or if you enter a code at the beginning. The higher in difficulty you go the less health you have (or the more damage they do… either way).
This game has no multiplayer functionality, which is probably a good thing as it let them work on a humorous single player campaign, rather than both a mediocre single player and multiplayer. Anyway, if it did have multiplayer it would be very generic, with no lasting appeal, with people trying to boost the inevitable multiplayer achievements.
On the subject of achievements, they are varied and are given at a steady pace: The majority are for completing each level, and indeed, the game. Some are for getting 50 kills with each weapon. Whereas others, are a lot more random, but I won’t spoil them.
The graphics, controls and sound are all pretty standard, which nothing shockingly bad, and nothing that stunned me. I must say though that Matt’s lines did repeat after awhile, and whilst his lines are funny, they are not funny after the tenth time he has said them.
From the gaming clichés to sarcastic comments; Eat Lead offers a few hours of enjoyment while steadily throwing achievements at you. But sadly, no amount of gaming clichés and humor can make this game any less repetitive. In short, you run into a room, enemies and cover appears, you take cover and shoot them, then scramble for ammo. Rinse and repeat…and repeat…and…you get the idea. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game as a purchase, I can however recommend it as a rental, and I think that this game is an ideal example of a rental game: something that you probably should play just to look at the satirical view of the past 25 years in gaming, but will only last you a weekend at the most.
Featured Articles, News, Xbox 360 - by Matttbh - February 18, 2009 - 18:57 UTC - Be first to Comment!
Today it has come to light that some people’s Xbox Live Accounts been pretty much deleted. Not for hacking, cheating or anything malicious, just for not using the hotmail account they signed up with.
This is due to the fact that Hotmail accounts expire after a long period of not being used, and as we all know hotmail addresses are Windows Live IDs thus are used for the creation of Xbox Live Accounts. People who have not been using their hotmail accounts for whatever reason (just made it for XBL, now prefer to use GMail, etc…) have had their hotmail addresses expire. What does this mean for the Xbox Live Account however?
Well… It means that their Gamertag, Friends List and ACHIEVEMENTS will all fall foul to Microsoft’s silly design flaw. The account will still remain up-to-date with all the achievements on your local hard drive, but any attempt to re-sign-up to Live will only end in disappointment. A Microsoft Customer Service representative stated that “The only alternative is to set up a new Gamertag, with your preferred email address”
Microsoft said they are trying to resolve the issue and recommend visiting Customer Support. If you’re worried however, about this happening to you, my advice would be to log into that address once in awhile… Just to be safe.
Featured Articles, industry - by Matttbh - February 17, 2009 - 16:05 UTC - Be first to Comment!
Sorry about the title, I couldn’t resist…
Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, has warned that the software giant’s revenues will be impacted by the global economic crisis.
“Revenues in our industry, and in our company, will be affected by the enonomic conditions,” Ballmer told reuters at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Last Month, Microsoft announed plans to cut 5000 jobs in an attempt to reduce costs during this difficult period. This led to th e job cuts and the eventual closure of ACES, its Flight Simulator studio which has been running since 1982 and has an extremely dedicated modding community
This also led to the closure of the Gamerscore Blog team , in which Chris Paladino from ‘The Video Game Show’ and Nelson Redriguez, from ‘Achievement Junkies’ were both part of.
More recently however, there is a growing concern over Microsoft’s plans with Rare, the word ‘restructuring’ has been thrown about, but job losses are most likely as Microsoft PR have refused to confirm or deny whether job losses at Rare are imminent.
Indeed it would seem that most of Microsoft’s plans for lay-offs will impact the divisions responsible for the Xbox 360 and the Zune
Featured Articles, News, Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews - by Matttbh - February 16, 2009 - 00:19 UTC - Be first to Comment!
Picture this… Call of duty 4 breeding with Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. Then throw the two most recent Bond films into the mix and you pretty much have 007: Quantum of Solace.
This game was developed by Treyarch, who have brought us such good games as Call of Duty 3 & World At War, and if you can’t tell… that was sarcasm.
This game showed promise at E3 when the teaser trailer was shown, but when the time came this game was swamped in the desperate struggle of games trying to quickly pinch Game Of The Year. Maybe… just maybe, this game might have been better received if it wasn’t in the shadow of the titans of Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, and many others.
The game takes the story of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace with tweaks to make it work well as a game. I’m not sure if playing the game is a replacement to seeing the movie, but if you’ve seen the movie then the direction the game is going in will not surprise you one bit.
The game is built on the CoD4 engine with an added cover system, alternate weapon fire (being able to switch from single shot to 3-burst to full auto, with compatible guns) and the ability to take silencers on and off (all of things that R6V2 has done).
The single player campaign is very short even with its fifteen levels (one of which consists of being poisoned and staggering to your car), ducking and diving between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and would probably take 3-5 hours on first play through. In my first play through I played on Field operative (2nd easiest) and it seemed too easy. On a second play through I did it on 007 (hardest) which seemed like it was how the game was meant to be played.
Throughout the campaign there are ‘Cell Phones’ for you to collect each with a snippet of information. There are typically 1 – 6 per level and there is a 30g achievement for finding thirty and a 40g achievement for finding all of them.
In addition to ‘Cell Phones’ there are ‘Power Weapons’. There is one ‘Power Weapon’ per level (some don’t have one). These weapons can range from a Super Magnum to the D.A.D. rocket system, with all points in-between being just as destructive.
There are a few QTE’s (Quick Time Events) which work rather well:
~ Hacking locks – D-Pad when green is shown in direction.
~ Takedowns – Only takes one button press (X,Y,A,B), after the initial LS Click. Then cuts to an animation of Bond taking this enemy down (There are many animations so it will take while for the same one to come around again).
~ ‘Bosses’ – Now I hate to call them bosses because that stirs up images of Bowser, etc… but at the end of some levels there will be a Fist-Fight with a main character which involves the pressing or ‘mashing’ of the colored buttons.
Also to add even more depth Treyarch added the clichéd Spotlight or Camera movements making you time your next time to cover. Balancing along thin poles also plays its part with a bar and siding ball on the bottom of your screen which needs to stay in the middle or Mr.Bond meets with the iconic blood trickling down the screen.
First of all, I was too young to enjoy the value of the original GoldenEye, yet I have extremely fond memories of Agent Under Fire and Nightfire local multiplayer for the PlayStation 2.
The multiplayer consists of 9 playlists: Although strictly speaking there are 7 unique playlists as two of them are a mixture of some of the others.
Now the online playlists that are different from the normal Deathmatch, Free for All, Territory Control, etc are the Bond Themed modes: Bond Versus, Bond Evasion and Golden Gun.
In Bond Versus you see one player as Bond (Daniel Craig) and everyone else as ‘The Organization’. Bond has two lives, everyone else has one. Bond’s objective is to defuse two of the three bombs or eliminate the Organization. Bond is rotated at random after the round. And in Bond Evasion there are two teams MI6 and the organization. MI6’s task is to escort Bond to the extraction point, which is at the Organization’s spawn. The Organization has to kill bond to stop him reaching the extraction point, or run down the clock so he does not do so.
Teams are swapped halfway through and Bond is randomly rotated.
Golden Gun is a Free for All Mode in which there is a Golden Magnum with an ARO Scope which spawns in the middle of the map. The player with the gun can be seen my all on the mini-map, but to make things fair the bullets from the gun explode on impact. Although this may seem unfair it is surprisingly hard to fend of 7 other players as they hunt you down in order to receive the gun. The gun is so sought after because getting a kill with the gun or killing the possessor of the gun with bank you 5 points as opposed to the normal 1.
Depending on your game type you will earn ‘credits’ (form of currency) per kill. This relates to what you can buy. You can spend your hard earned credits on a variety of things to give you an edge over the opposition. There are weapons ranging from Machine Guns to a Nail Gun…(Yes you can buy a Nail Gun). Gadgets also appear in the ‘shop’ although they are just a Jamesbondification of ‘Perks’ from Call of Duty 4 & World at War which is disappointing. The gadgets can do things such as allow you to reload faster, have more health, see proximity mines on the map, etc…
A range of grenades are also available, but realistically you’ll only use Proximity Mines once you get a grip of things.
There are four attachments: Holo Sight, ARO Scope, Scope and Silencer. Although this may not seem like much, but they can be mixed and matched on specific guns (that allow the right combination).
To buy everything costs around 80,000 Credits, and handily there are achievements for buying everything AND obtaining 100,000 Credits (not at once), so really many of the Multiplayer achievements revolve round the quest for 100k Credits.
I only really have two problems with the multiplayer. The first is the fact that Shotguns are EXTREMELY overpowered, although after you’ve played the game for awhile you will soon be able to combat this. The second is that there is something wrong with the sounds of your own footsteps, although I cannot put my finger on what exactly is wrong. It sounds like someone is behind you when you walk; I am not using surround sound however, so that might be the problem… instead I am using Turtle Beach Ear-Force X1s (which are pretty awesome nonetheless) .
Overall this game is worth it at the average price (which seems to be around £17 -£25) or as a rental from LOVEFiLM, Blockbuster or whatever your preferred medium of renting is. It will have you playing the single player for 8 hours or so (That’s one play though on Field Operative, One on 007 and another on the lowest setting to retrieve all the ‘Cell Phones’ and ‘Power Weapons’)
When you strip the game down it is clear that it is packed full of gunfire with stealth thrown in, and at times it may seem as though you’re just following the compass and killing the swarms of henchmen that want you dead. Then dodging the lights/cameras, only to be spotted (if it finds you) to then be swarmed again by baddies.
It took me half a month to complete this game (1000g) and I had tremendous amounts of fun doing so, shame it’ll be gathering dust on my shelf, or end up being traded-in to CEX or GAME.
This game looked as if it had the potential to break the curse of giving a game a movie license which has plagued games such as King Kong, Enter the Matrix & Jumper. This is due to the game merely being a marketing tool and most games with a film associated with them arebad due to rushed development. This game was close however to breaking the ‘curse’, but not quite there.
This review was written by Matttbh (Penguin_Cube) for BrutalGamer.com and DooYoo.co.uk and may only be used with permission.
