Feeling great!

After a long day at the office there’s nothing quite like a massage to relieve the stress from those aching shoulders. Thanks to the XNA Community games a massage is now available straight from your 360 controller!

Rumble Massage is a new community game which will set you back 200 Microsoft points or for an even cheaper thrill .. erm .. I mean for a free taster you could always try the demo. There are various vibration settings to satisfy even the hardcore massage fans including the mind bogglingly named "Epic Mode".

Official description: Shoulders and back getting stiff from 18 hours of straight Gaming? Try Rumble Massage! Put a controller behind your neck and feel the soothing vibrations of the Xbox 360 controller. With the ability to control the rumble intensity and pulse, relaxing after a hard day of gaming has never been easier.
Note that the developer clearly states where you place the controller. Even so this piece of software reminds me of the rumble pants designed to work with REZ. Can’t imagine why I would think that.

Cheap thrills also available HERE

Killzone 2: Living up to the hype?

I haven't really got caught up in all the fuss surrounding Killzone 2. The first one didn't grip me and I kind of felt that there was just too much weight being put onto this new one that it couldn't possibly do anything other than disappoint. Then I watched this...



and then this. It's not original for sure but it certainly looks a hell of a lot of fun!

Now I've gone and added to all the hype check out the GAMEOV3R Forum

Looking good!

I downloaded and tried out the Resident Evil 5 demo on Monday night and I have to say that it looks utterly gorgeous. If a survival horror can be described as gorgeous that is. The environments are stunning and exceptionally realistic and the main characters are as life like as any perfect looking humans would, I guess, look. Capcom have pulled out all the stops here.

Memories of the awesome RE4 came flooding back to me as I set off running down the dusty, winding track. The gameplay of the demo feels identical to RE4, I played through the Game Cube version, and as soon as I started to move around and aim there was a feeling of natural familiarity. Great to see the over the shoulder camera, that refreshed RE4 so much, is in full use in RE5. Claustrophobia here I come!

If you're familiar with Resident Evil you'll recognise lots of the series usual items. The herbs are here to collect and combine as you wish and the dead zombies melt away revealing piles of gold and ammo. Breaking open boxes with your knife is staple RE stuff and it’s here too. So is standing still to shoot. Yes it's still in there! I guess it's part of RE lore but come on! Running and shooting at the same time would have been a nice improvement Capcom.

After playing through both the demo levels of Resident Evil 5 my opinion of the game and my desire to play the full version has changed. It's gone from my "must have" list to my "maybe" list. Despite the hot and dusty setting of the game I've been left feeling a bit cold and disappointed.

It could be all the expectation and hype that’s been surrounding the game, though I haven’t been too wrapped up in that, or it could just be that what I’ve played so far isn’t a great leap from RE4. Improved visuals notwithstanding. It could also be that Dead Space took survival horror to a new level whereas Resident Evil appears to have stood still. Maybe reading some RE5 reviews will put the game back to "must have". Or maybe not.


Resident Evil going stale and rotten? Sounds like it should pull up a chair next to Gameov3r

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage

Fallout 3 was easily the game of 2008 for me. Despite a bit of a slow start it developed into something I couldn't put down and I easily put 70, maybe even 80 hours into it by the time the ending came. I encountered a couple of bugs along the way but rather than spoiling my enjoyment they actually raised a smile. Seeing a Rad Scorpion suddenly fly hundreds of feet into the air for no reason is a sight to behold.

All this puts me in a bit of a dilemma. The recently released DLC called Operation Anchorage seemed like it would be right up my street. More Fallout 3... how can that be a bad thing? Priced at 800 points it's said to provide 4-6 hours of extra play but all the reviews I've been reading of it suggest it's nearer 2-3 with the quest being a pretty linear combat based experience. I'm no longer sure it's really worth the £6.80 asking price which is a shame. Anyone downloaded this and want to share their opinion here or on the forum?

Check out the GAMEOV3R Forum

Pants!

.. .. crying walking sleeping talking Hero doll.

I was just thinking, you see the wee guy up there, him wearing the skin tight Union Jack Speedo’s? He’s the generic Hero doll from my Fable 2 game. Now I’m guessing that UK gamers all have the same Union Jack Speedo wearing doll. What I’m interested to know is whether other countries have their own specific colours or flags on their Hero doll’s pants. They may not have seeing as Lionhead is British but I do wonder if Canadian Fable 2 players have Maple Leaf pants, USA players a pair of Stars and Stripes pants and if Italian Albion residents have Tricolore pants.

I’m also wondering if I have become obsessed with Albion...... maybe I need to get out more.

Anyway, as indulgent as it may be, I thought I’d put up some pics of the Hero dolls.

So here they are!




Before I go, I received an email from a fellow 360 gamer just a couple of days ago offering me a copy of the Hat, Headband, Moustache expression book in exchange for some of the dolls. Many thanks Bloodlustre. It was a pleasure gaming with you. He’s a lot nicer than his name suggests you know.

Union Jack pants or not you’ll be made welcome on the Gameov3r FORUM

Probably the best Community Game on Xbox LIVE

Sin Surfing was my favourite community games until I came across Johnny Platform and his biscuit antics.

A game of platforming and puzzling to test your observation and dexterity and there are 50 levels in which to do this. Each level is a static screen that contains enemy robots, these are the guys that want all the biscuits, an exit, that you unlock by destroying the robots, and lots of cups of coffee to collect to boost your lives tally.

Johnny presents an addictive and challenging game that's a lot of fun to play. There’s a solid learning curve and, thankfully, some save points too. It plays extremely well, with a perfect sense of momentum as you double jump around the screen and it's all very nicely presented.

200 Microsoft Points, that’s £1.70, and it’s yours. Try the demo and you can play the first 20 levels. This will give you a flavour of what’s on offer.

At £1.70 you can’t really go wrong with Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp and the fact is that this is a superb game that will keep you entertained for hours.

You could of course go to the Ishisoft website and download the game for free. Johnny was first developed for the Nintendo DS and I’d imagine that it’s playable with an M3, an R4 or via emulation. Still, I’d heartily recommend that you spend the £1.70, the game is more than worth it, and help support a new game designer.


Hands up if you haven’t even tried out a community game. Come on don’t be shy. Right, now stand up, slap yourself around the back of the head and go and have a look at Johnny Platform’s biscuit Romp. Oh and check out Sin Surfing while you’re at it. After that get on the Gameov3r FORUM and tell us what you think.

Xbox Live Community at it’s best

Forget the trash talk, racism, shouting and swearing. Forget about the idiots that can sometimes try to stop other people having fun online. Most gamers just want to enjoy their games and enter into the community spirit. This is the Xbox Live Community at it’s best.

Fable 2 is the only game that I have ever played that has made me want to get all the achievements regardless of how difficult, devious or just bloody awkward they are to get. It’s a desire I have to squeeze every last drop fun out of Albion and my sign of respect to Lionhead for producing such a masterpiece.

Some of the achievements are straightforward and are part of the story. Others are unlocked for experimenting within Albion while collecting 50 Silver Keys and destroying 50 Gargoyles are quests all of their own. The difficult, devious and bloody awkward achievements I refer to here are of course The Doll Catcher and The Completionist.

The Doll Catcher requires you to have all the Hero Dolls in your inventory. The catch is that only one of the dolls, either Lucien, Hammer, Theresa, Reaver or Garth is available in each game so you have to trade online. It’s not the easiest task to obtain your doll as you must get second place, by scoring between 150 & 174 points, on the Westcliff Shooting Range. I did eventually win myself a Hero Doll, Hammer, and then went on to win 6 more hoping this would be enough to trade. I used the Red Dragon Pistol if anyone is interested in knowing which weapon I used. I found it's fast reload and accuracy helped a lot.

So, with the Hammer dolls in my possession I headed off to Bowerstone Market ready to trade. After a few hours of trying, despite my abundance of Hammer dolls, I didn’t manage to trade one single doll. Not because I couldn’t strike a deal but because I just couldn’t find anyone to trade with. Thinking that this wasn’t going to happen by chance I decided to check out the Xbox Forums. I’m glad I did! Using the Official Doll Trading thread on the Xbox forums I was able to offer my dolls for the ones I needed.

Even with my new plan I didn’t always manage to be online at the same time as anyone offering help but the fact people were offering trades, even those that already had the achievement, was great.

On Tuesday evening this week I officially became a Doll Catcher and .. erm .. despite feeling rather strange that I, a grown man, was talking to numerous other male gamers, most of whom sounded and spoke like mature gamers and who incidentally would probably fit in well on the Gameov3r FORUM, about swapping virtual toy dolls. I needed to shower when I had finished. One guy sent a message to me and I quote “easy fella, never thought I`d ever say this but you up for swapping some dolls?” Nail on the head I thought. He was a nice guy to. We had a brief chat, swapped our dolls and continued our respective cuddly toy related searches. There was none of this demanding large sums of gold or saying, “I want 5 of yours for one of mine” - he must have been a Taxman, or “give me all your gold and legendary weapons or you’re not having the doll!” ok I exaggerate, but the feeling I got before trying to collect all the dolls was that it would be hard work to prise them from their owners hands.

Actually it’s impossible to prise one from another Hero’s dead hands as you’re not allowed to kill another gamer’s Hero. Of course I wouldn’t kill another Hero even if I could. My hero is so good she even has a halo. Well she does now. She might have had horns, bad skin and evil green eyes at one time but none of us are perfect.

Anyway, I thought it was great that all the Fable 2 gamers I met online, yes all of them, were courteous, friendly and helpful. As mentioned at the top, I know there are still a minority that abuse Xbox Live and item trading in games. “I need hammer, lucien and theresa (someone just stiffed me for hammer, stole my doll)” is a recent quote from the Doll Catcher Thread on the Xbox forums.

But this is all about the good side and it has been very good indeed.

Many thanks to everyone I have traded with so far and also to those that tried to trade but couldn’t. In no particular order...

Penter2192 and for the co-op Companions achievement.
TalentFromGod
Lkf Remos
xCx PuP xJx
Sir Balin
Webizul
SJUVIP
TaMotha
Sent Seven
cuteyteena
alross13 who very kindly gave me the Back Flip Trick Book.

You’re all a credit to the Fable 2 community and to online gaming. I Belch, Victory Arm Pump, Dance, Fart and do the Sock Puppet thing in your honour.

If anyone reading this needs a Hammer doll just let me know and I'll try to help you out.

Now all I need is to trade something for the Hat, Headband, Moustache expression book and The Completionist Achievement will unlock. Help!? Help!!?? Gameov3r FORUM.

The Giraffe Returns From Space

The XBLA game Space Giraffe has just been released for the PC. The original was loved and hated in equal measures and I personally fell in to the 'loved it' section... once I actually knew what I was supposed to be doing! You can read what were my first impressions of the XBLA version here and if you join the GAMEOV3R forum, my review.

This version isn't just a straight copy of the original, although it is in there should you wish to play it as such. The graphics have been changed and toned down a bit to make it a little less overwhelming and there are now 100 additional levels. You can download a demo here and check out the llamasoft blog for more info.

Jeff Minter's next game, Gridrunner+++ should be arriving on the XBLA in April.

Do you have a fondness for furry creatures? Tell us about it on the Forum

Digging for Gold

Shovelware will destroy the casual market and it'll take the innovation that the developers claim to embrace with it.

It will you know. Just look at the amount of budget games littering the Wii section of every online and high street store. Many of these games have production values so low that absolute zero will feel positively cosy to them. Guilty “Developers", a word I'm reluctantly using to describe the creators of the Wii's dross, release game after game hoping that one or two will sell well enough to make a profit and cover the costs of the games that didn't break even. With so many Wii games out there this is a business plan that numerous companies are working to. But for how long will it work?

The number of Wii games released in the final quarter of 2008 was so large that game magazines and even internet review sites like CVG, Gamespot and IGN struggled to keep up. It proved impossible to review every game and so many appeared on the shelves without judgement. Sometimes review copies aren't sent to the media until the launch of a game has passed, we all know why that is, but the problem here is that there simply isn't enough time to play test all the releases. So the crap games slip inconspicuously onto the shelves. Along comes Casual Gamer A, picks up the case of Shovel ware 2000, reads the back and then hands over their cash.

Shovelware isn't solely down to large developers, although all us Wii owners have a special place in our hearts for Ubisoft. There are numerous smaller companies out to make some fast cash developing games quickly on the Wii's straightforward architecture. Making matters worse is that not only do the crap games surreptitiously appear but so do good ones.

One of the truly sad things about all the shovelware is that it makes finding that diamond in the rough so much harder. Not only do the crap games not get reviewed but some of the good ones, maybe even great ones, won't either. So they'll pass us by completely unnoticed. And the developer of this glittering yet invisible gem then has to run for their livelihoods chased by a very bad men from those very bad banks that don't pass on the interest rate cuts.

If you're thinking this is a rant or perhaps just a little far fetched it's worth remembering the 8 bit days of computing when there were so many releases it was utterly impossible to keep up. Further back than that the Atari 2600, a console close to my heart, died because of shovelware. It drowned beneath a sea of unplayed black plastic cartridges. Its soul is probably buried next to all those ET cartridges in New Mexico.

Ok, so it's not possible for a Wii game to be coded by one person in their bedroom over the weekend but it is possible to churn out games every few months. There are a lot of companies doing just that and it's infinitely cheaper than trying to produce the next Mario Galaxy or World at War or No More Heroes.

People that have enjoyed gaming for many years already know what the industry is like and I, like lots of you, will check out what I buy as much as possible before I hand over any cash. The uninformed, casual gamer will often just trust the game they’ve picked off the shelf. Eventually though these people will realise they're being duped and they'll walk off into the distance. Well into the past anyway. They'll probably go back to playing monopoly or watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Gordon Ramsay curse the night away.

What of the casual gamers that do stick around? Two things. One, hopefully they'll start to research their purchases. If official reviews aren't available hopefully a good average score submitted by readers will be and they'll make considered purchases. Incidentally, I am currently encouraging my brother to at least flick though the pages of a game magazine if not to trawl the net for info on his games. He is indeed a new generation game player who purchased such games as GT Pro and Carnival Funfair. Two, they'll be doing exactly the same as the casual gamers that walked away. Only they'll be doing it on their Wii's. Until production values start to thaw.

Gameov3r's new game is available now at all reputable stores! It took a week to create and it’s game of fun, fun, fun! You dig a hole and then you fill it in again! The more you dig and fill the more points you get! Come on and join in on the Gameov3r FORUM. Game only £19.99*.

* Shovel not included.

New Outrun

Rumours are accelerating about a new Outrun game. The word is that Outrun Online Arcade may be arriving as a downloadable game in 2009.

XBLA or PSN? Probably both. The rumour isn’t without some substance as the name has appeared on an Australian classification boards website which lists THQ as the production company and SEGA as the publisher. Hmmm……

Right, I’m off for a game of Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast

Want more game news, chat and wishful thinking? Gameov3r FORUM

Hi-Ho Hi-Ho

I was back to work yesterday after having had 2 weeks off for Christmas and New Year. I don't ever remember two weeks going by so quickly. I managed to do most of the things I wanted to.... eat too much, drink too much, snack constantly, drink constantly, stay up too late and play video games, and yet I feel unsatisfied. I did spend one whole week away from home, staying with my parents, away from any consoles, and this may be at the root of this unfulfilled feeling. I’m certain that more gaming, throughout 2009, will correct this feeling and so my new years resolution is to play more games.

I did play some games over the festive holiday even managing to find some time while at my parents to play Final Fantasy on the GBA SP that mysteriously found it’s way into my travel bag. Have you ever had that feeling of other people’s eyes tearing into your soul while you bury your head further into a game or a book or newspaper? I have.

Once I returned home I quickly set about playing some of my favourite older games. Not older as in mature, I know where some forum members minds will be wandering too, older as in retro and games as in video. With time seemingly on fast forward I merely dipped into Daze Before Christmas on my Mega Drive and Monty's Christmas Special on the PC. Both games that I'll leave until next December now. I blew the dust off my C64 and played Infocom's brilliant game Suspended, probably my favourite adventure game, John Singleton's Lords of Midnight and Maniac Mansion just so I could microwave hamsters. It just never gets boring!

The disappointing Fable 2 occupied a lot of the game time in the evenings and early hours. When I could get away with staying up late that is. I saw 2am once. I think it was 2am. My eyes were so bloodshot and sore that I may have been looking at the cat food dish. Now I know I'm getting old.

So although I would have liked a little more pixel time this Christmas I still had a really great holiday. Especially being with my family and visiting family and friends back home in Cheshire. I guess that's the real reason that time went so quickly.

Happy new year!

Sick bags are in the seat backs in front of you on the GAMEOV3R FORUM