Dr Dre isn't the only one who's strapped with Ghat

QUICK PLUG: Before I begin this particular review, I’ll drop some props to Colin Robinson and the fine folk over at GamerLimit who put this game up for grabs in their cover art contest. Many thanks!

Zeno Clash is a first person shooter style game produced by independant studio Ace Team. It’s a game very much in the vein of the BioShock titles, where the story elements, setting and visual-direction really set it apart from the rest of the genre.

The plot is a little difficult to describe, as Zeno Clash takes place in a completely original world called Zenozoik. Players take the role of Ghat, who regains conciousness after a fight in which he killed his family’s parent Father-Mother. He shows no remorse over the fact, so assumedly he had his reasons, but realises that he has to flee the city to escape his siblings’ vengence. Accompanying Ghat is Deadra, a female who assists his escape, and from then on assists Ghat in combat. The events leading up to the fight with Father-Mother are then retold in a series of flashbacks.  Many of the flashbacks also contain small clues to allow the player to piece together the full story.  Not everything gets explained, and the ending is rather open-ended, but it’s definitely well told.

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For all our Australian readers (Victorians in particular), this piqued my interest when I read it on Twitter: The crew over at OzBoxLive are helping to organise a fundraiser called “Xperience Xbox” to take place at the Victorian State Library.

All the proceeds are going towards the Royal Children’s Hospital. Entry is free, and raffles will be held through the night with prizes and giveaways.

Me and Mark already have our spots reserved. After all, of the many places we’ve played Xbox, could any of them be as classy as the State Library? The answer is no, of course.

The event takes place on the 17th of July, from 6.30 through to 9pm. Raffles and games throughout the night. To book your place, pop over to the event site, and we’ll see you there! As much credit as we can to OzBoxLive also, for helping to set up this shindig!

Even reading about Jack Russells, he's awesome

I’ve always been a great admirer of Matt Berry, ever since I saw my first episode of The Mighty Boosh. His bizarre sense of humour combined with his rich, expressive voice are a winning combination for the screen. But of the many projects I’ve enjoyed him in, I’d never have realised one of them would be a music album.

I bought Matt Berry’s Opium on one of the many recommendations Amazon seems to assault you with every time you log in to have a browse around. On this occasion, having logged on to see if Season 3 of The IT Crowd had been released on DVD yet, Opium was sitting on my list of recommendations.

Having seen Snuff Box (and loved every wierd-arse moment of it), I knew Berry was a composer and singer, but didn’t know he’d made an album. I love the theme to Snuff Box, it’s a mind worm of a song. You can be sitting anywhere and break out humming it. And while I’m loathe to validate Amazon’s many attempts at cross-promoting, it sounded far too cool not to buy. So about a week and half later (importing, eh?) it arrived and I’ve been listening to it this week.

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The last few weeks, y’all, I’ve been playing some real ol’ school classics.

Classics, damn you!

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News out of ArsTechnica suggests that the Playstation 3 console could be seeing a price drop by the end of the year.  By how much is uncertain, and the source is attributed to an industry leak from a mole with “an outstanding track record for accuracy”, so it’s definitely not a concrete thing, but it makes sense with the upcoming release of the PS3 Slim.

No idea if the descision has been effected by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick rattling a sabre or two, but I’d doubt it.  Ps3 Slim was on track far before Activision’s noise about boycotting the console, and I’d assume the new hardware would be a greater catalyst for price alterations than any amount of soapboxing.

What I’m hoping is that this push will leave the 80gig PS3 on clearance shelves around the country, much like what happened with the now out-of-production 40gig model.  Hell, if they manage to drop the price enough, I might even buy one of the suckers!  I’ve always admired the potential for the PS3 console, but with almost every major game being multiplatformed these days, and the prohibiting price tag attached, adding another current gen console to the collection has always been on the “After Miraculous Giant Inheritance” pile.  Plus, you know, I get cold sweats at the idea of abandoning my Gamerscore.

Still, all this is just rumour until we get something solid out of Sony.  It does sound convincing enough though, and you can read through the mole’s report here.

Spreading the word around: a little reminder that there is less than a day left to drop your bids on the case modded SNES PC.  It’s currently sitting around £350.  The Acer Aspire that runs the entire setup is worth around £200 on it’s own, so there is still a lot of room to move on this god-like sculptured testament to technology and nostalgia.

Head over to the eBay listing if you’ve got the scratch, or just interested in stickybeaking!  If they make themselves a decent turnaround for all their hard work, you never know what those clever folk from Asobitech could crank out next.  Crossing fingers for a Master System home server!

SOMEWHERE OVER 19 HOURS LATER: Apparently £350 it is.  Congratulations to the winning bidder, I’m jealous!
SOMEWHERE OVER 19 HOURS LATER STILL: And now, apparently due to a fall-through bidder, it’s relisted.  Hmmmmmm.

I always knew Veronica Mars was an assassin sympathiser!

Firstly, if anyone is yet to visit, There’s Something In The Sea (the viral promo site for BioShock 2) is continuing it’s updates steadily, and if the game is going to be half as well written as it’s promotions have been, then we’re in for one cracker of a game.  It’s well worth your time to check in with Mark Meltzer’s progress every couple of days to see what progress he’s made.  I’ll say it now, I’m certainly going to be quite if Meltzer doesn’t find his way into the game somehow.  Cameo, recovered audio diary, whatever.  They’ve created such a wonderful strong character, it’d be a shame to consign him as a simple promotion.

Secondly, talking of games that worked hard to make awesome viral, how mother-folkloring awesome does Assassins Creed 2 look?  I’m trying not to post too much on it as it’s mostly just screenshots and promos at this point, but as more and more details make their way out of the woodwork, it’s sounding like a very strong sequel.  The fine folk over at AusGamers published their E3 video interview with associate producer Vincent Pontbriand recently, and to put it subtly: shit sounds amazing, son.  You can watch the video (and read the transcript) here, but what piqued my interest is that you’re finally going to get some details on Desmond.  Although I adored Assassins Creed, one of the things that I wanted more of was Desmond’s back story and the whole power play going on inside Abstergo.  I also loved the metric buttload of secret messages scrawled in blood that you can read after you complete the game inside the Animus machine room, so I’m keen to see if any of that comes into play.

Two big sequels I’m guaranteed to be keen on!

Okay, okay… I know this may seem off topic, but hear me out.

Web design is kinda my thing; its a moderate chunk of what I do.  I have even built rather successful mobile sites for big players in Australia and the UK, and I learned how to do it the same way anyone learns anything: the internet.

So, here is a summary of how to build a successful mobile based of another already popular site properly:

1. Take a successful site people want to read the content from. This is key. Then, take a look at the content.
2. Reformat this content, but keep it in full where you can. Some images may need to be smaller, videos in different / smaller formats, etc… But all the content. This is key.
3. Read steps one and two over and over again until you know them by heart. Then read it again, to be sure.

So, where am I going with this? I read Matty’s post on Army of Two on my iPhone, as I was away from my computer.

The site includes the usual set of rules and regulations: the weapon must be at least feasible to the current era, be able to be implemented into the game and not include any trademark material.

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There are times where I’m proud to be an Australian, with our national sense of humour and mateship, and then there are times like these where I think we truly must be one of the most backward countries on earth.

He's going to hit your interwebs from his epic mount for critical damage

So under the new government proposed internet filter, supposedly to be installed at ISP level, further to not being able to access the most vanilla of porn we’re now also told that apparently we can’t see or purchase any game that’s not suitable for 15 year olds. Seriously? 15 year olds? To put this in perspective, apparently this means Australians shouldn’t play a game targeted for anyone older than HALF of the average gamer’s age.

This is a simple extention of the filter’s denial of anything that’s been “refused classification” under our archaic classification system. Since we lack an R18+ rating, this means any game over MA15+ will be blocked by our filter.

Still don’t see the fuss? Well think about this: Australia as a country has refused classification to MMPORPG games. So if the filter is installed, Australian players of World Of Warcraft can forget playing ever again as the filter bans access to servers.

The saddest thing of all, of course, is that the implementation of the clean feed doesn’t actually mean ANY of these things. As the filter can be sidestepped by any twelve year old with access to Google and the word “proxy”, I feel even more shame about our country that we’re idiot enough to install such an expensive waste of time and resources. In the middle of a global recession of all times.

The article is right, however, when they say this is going to cause backlash of even greater proportions. Hopefully if nothing else, this highlights the need for an R18+ rating in Australia.

Prepare for a waffling!

WARNING: This post contains Matt rabbiting on, some pixelated pretty pictures and not much else! Hope you didn’t get enough waffle at breakfast!

Once the staple of home PC entertainment, adventure games have seen a steady decline ever since the second half of the 90′s. This, perhaps, is one of the few bad points ever to come out of our increasing fascination with multiplayer gaming. It probably also suffers from the immediate 24 hour support line that we know and love as the internet. Gone are the days that if you hit a block with a game you’d just have to wrestle your brain around it (or worse, BUY A HINT BOOK). These days, and I’ll admit to this myself, if a puzzle takes more than half an hour to figure out, it’s off to plunder the internet for solutions!

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