Labels: Blizzard, WotLK, WoW

Lewis O'Brien will be posting much less than had been possible before as his computer has crashed under the weight of a "ton of viruses".

He will begin posting as soon as the problem can be resolved, or when he can get internet access at college.

Also - it is worth repeating that the reason behind Linford Butler's lack of posting is because of an unfortunate ISP changeover that has stopped his ability to post at home. He is, however, using his local library's computers to post as much as he can.

Matt

Labels: Matthew, Matthew Meadows, Misc.

A demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was recently released on PSN/XBL and as a big Star Wars fan I jumped at the chance to try the eagerly anticipated LucasArts game.

One thing that I picked up whilst watching ‘making-of’ videos of SW:TFU was their intent to let players “kick ass” with the force as much as possible. And boy does that intent get through. Within five minutes of the start of the demo (which stands at a meaty 1.6GB) I was able to pick up and throw a TIE fighter at those pesky rebel troops.

What was disappointing though was the lack of strength of the lightsaber had, most notably when compared to one of my favourite games of all time, PS1 epic: Star Wars: Episode 1 Power Battles. I never really felt the need to use the series’ iconic weapon when I could do so much more damage with the force powers given. But maybe in the full game there will be combos available to make fighting with the lightsaber more fun.

Also a disappointment was the voice of Darth Vader in the game. I guess after watching the original trilogy more than thirty times I was probably going to pick up on every little inaccuracy in the voice. But the voice acting isn’t so bad that I was disappointed by what was a very fun, if short demo.

Matt

Writer’s note: Mace Windu is awesome.

Labels: Demo Impressions, Matthew, Matthew Meadows, Star Wars

OK, so I decided to make a personal blog so you can get to know more about me and probably more about the rest of the team. I'll be posting some non-video game related stuff about movies, books and my undying love for My Name is Earl. Find it at www.matthewmeadows.blogspot.com.

Matt

Labels: I have no shame, Matthew, Matthew Meadows

The source was in fact true the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic was unveiled at the Leipzig Gaming Convention. The chilling cinematic shows the once human Arthas walking the icy plains of Northrend in his cursed armor and wielding the mighty runeblade Frostmourne. He kneels down and wipes the snow from the ice and then drives his blade into ground. I won't say any more but you will need to watch it your self.



Grimmy

Labels: Trailer, WotLK

D-Pad Magazine got an interview with Pro Evolution Soccer producer "Seabass". He talks up the game pretty well, but I won't believe what I see in the video until the disc is in my console.


If you're interested in the new game then tell us why in the comments.

Matt

Labels: Interview, Matthew, Matthew Meadows, PES 09, Video

I thought it would be nice to know where all of you readers come from - so I set up a poll to find out just that. The findings won't be traced back to you or used to gain a profit for the site (well... not much of a profit).

Can I remind GGTL Editors not to vote please.

Matt

Labels: Matthew, Matthew Meadows, Poll

For all the Warcraft fans out there, rumor has it that Blizzard will be unveiling the cinematic for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion at the Leipzig Games Convention tomorrow. Blizzard will also have hands on game play of Starcraft II and WotLK as well as a Q&A panel for Diablo III.

Grimmy

Source - Maxconsole

Labels: Leipzig, WotLK, WoW

• New PSP model - the 3000 - is announced. But....but I only just got my PSP Slim :(
• PSP 3000 will have better LCD quality, in built microphone an will launch on the 15th of October in Europe for €200
• 80GB model to be released in Europe for €399, special 160GB version will be also come out at €449 with €70 worth of downloadable content (by the way sorry about having to price this stuff in euros, but I don't want to get the UK/US/Canada price wrong)
• Play TV to launch in Europe on the 19th of September
• LittleBigPlanet to be released in Europe on the 29th of October
• New Sixaxis keyboard addition announced; will look something like this
• New EU music service called VidZones. On demand music streaming free of charge. Will be released in '09
• You can now put PS2 iterations of the Singstar franchise in your PS3 and all of the songs from them will be added to the PS3 version via a firmware update
• New Disney songs coming to Singstar
• PS3 pets game coming - compatible with PSEye
• Heavy Rain shown, seems impressive, all in real-time, exclusive to PS3, will arrive in 2009
• LittleBigPlanet will have trophy support and 50 pre-made levels

Matt

Labels: Heavy Rain, Leipzig, LittleBigPlanet, Matthew, Matthew Meadows, Singstar, Sony

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your eyes for this retro review!

Rome: Total War is the third installation in the RTS Total War series and is arguably the best. Like the first two Total Wars –Shogun and Medieval- the campaign uses Turn Based Strategy on the campaign map and Real Time Strategy on the battle map. The RTS side of the game is obviously where Creative Assembly has concentrated their improvements. A significant change from Medieval to Rome is on the Heads Up Display of the battle map. During the course of a fight your forces will often spread across large areas of the map, in previous games (especially Shogun when you couldn’t tell your troops from the enemies) you had to pick through the battle looking for a dozen men who, quite often have become a dozen dead men by the time you do find them. In Rome, all your units are listed on a bar on your screen as unit “cards”, simply double click a unit card and you will be taken to the that group of soldiers. The graphics have also been greatly improved and you can now zoom in on the action to take full advantage of the graphics that were for the time of the games release, beautiful and unique.

Creative Assembly haven’t forgotten the campaign map however and changes here are also exceptionally good. The “chess board” style of the map has been abandoned, when you move one of your armies, the leader of the army will march to the desired location and if an attack is needed will lunge with his sword at the enemy before the game gives you a choice of auto-resolve, fighting manually or withdrawing. If you get bored of sending your generals all over Europe and Asia stabbing other commanders then you can simply double click the left mouse button to fast forward your generals move time which comes in handy if you’re moving lots of armies to far off locations.

To start with you can play only as one of three ruling family factions in Rome, the Julii, the Brutii or the Scipii families all of whom are allied to each other and the SPQR (Latin for the Senate and People of Rome) a non-playable faction that controls Rome and gives varying missions to all three Roman factions. To a first player of the Total War series the vastness of the campaign map can be daunting and because of the nice folks down at Creative have given you the option of a short campaign as well as the long one. The short campaign changes from different factions but usually involves taking over roughly 15 settlements to win the game whereas the long campaign orders you to take control of Rome, conquer 50 settlements and destroy one of your rivals.

When Rome: Total War was first released in 2004 it surpassed the exceptionally high standards many people had set it and left RTS fans hungry for Medieval II which was released in 2006. Rome: Total War set an example for future RTS games and created a large and loyal fan base for the Total War saga.

9/10

Lewis

Labels: PC, Retro review, Rome, Total War

Loads of new Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 information was released via a MySpace bulletin from the game’s official profile today.

I have picked out the most interesting nuggets of information considering the amount that was released. The full list can be found at http://www.winningelevenblog.com/.

Labels: Matthew, Matthew Meadows, PES 09

Ever since the release of EA’s The Sims franchise, the release of unusual extension packs has been par for the course. Take the Ikea version, for instance. But unusual doesn’t mean bad – in fact, quite the opposite. EA’s pure brilliance was shown in a PS2 release a while back. Welcome to The Sims 2 Pets.

Pets saw the addition of animal companions to the series; feline and furry friends to keep a lonely Sim happy on a cold night; and it worked fantastically well. Alongside the realism which made the original such a hit, animals gave the game a really fun and lighthearted feel which made young and old feel broody.

This addition to the Sims family implemented a direct control approach to living the life of your Sim. The classic, mouse pointer controls were still there for any die hard fans of the original, but the idea of controlling your Sims directly by using the analog sticks to make them walk was pure class.

Graphically, particularly considering that this was a PS2 release, Pets was absolutely astonishing. Cartoon style graphics were combined with an element of real life graphic effects to create something really special – imagine your artistic, cartoon Sim painting a realistic looking lake in the distance. That’s what I’m talking about.

The one thing that let Pets down – and don’t get me wrong, it was only a tiny niggling thing – was the music. Repetitive would be the perfect word to describe it. Annoying would be another. Luckily enough, however, this music was only heard on menu screens and the pause menu, making it bearable enough to not spoil the gameplay experience.

The Sims 2 Pets had to be one of the best PlayStation versions of The Sims ever released. EA finally pulled it out of the bag and produced an absolute gem of a game with Pets, and hopefully the successes of this one will spur other The Sims games on consoles. If you are a PS2 owner, make sure this one is in your collection – you’ll absolutely love it.

9.5/10

Linford

In the last hour, the full soundtrack for EA's upcoming FIFA '09 was unveiled in an EA press release. The game, available in stores from October 2nd, features 42 songs from 21 different countries across multiple genres to keep all fans happy.

Flying the flag for Britain are Leicester lads Kasabian, the bestselling Welsh singer Duffy and hit indy band The Fratellis.

“We have exceeded our annual challenge to create videogames’ preeminent international soundtrack,” said Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music and Marketing at EA.

“No other game has been as influential with regards to new music, and FIFA 09 truly raises the bar worldwide. We’re excited that Brazilian fans of Curumin will hear Spain’s The Pinker Tones and Norway’s Datarock. We’re proud that Canadians who love Chromeo will discover Ladytron from England and Junkie XL from Holland.

"We want fans throughout France, Mexico and Germany to find that their favourite new song is by Señor Flavio from Argentina, DJ Bitman from Chile or Jupiter One from New York. FIFA 09 will take music globalization to a whole new level.”

The full line up and the press release can be found here.

Linford

GGTL is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Blizzard and a clothing company called SwapDog have come together to start creating custom T Shirts on their website, its not available to buy yet but will be soon. You can fully customise the shirt with your characters details, including Name, Server, Battlegroup, Faction, Race and Class. You also need to include your Guild details, including the Tabard colour and Emblem.

This seems to be pretty cool but its only a good idea if you are planning on staying in a Guild that is stable or that you know wont disband so you wont have wasted your money.

Grimmy

Thanks to WoWInsider

Labels: Geeky but cool, WoW

It’s been a while since we saw a Star Wars game released on anything other than hand-helds, in fact The Force Unleashed will be the first to be released on the next-gen consoles. LucasArts is being very secretive with TFU and little information has been released until recently.

The game engine to be used is one developed by LucasArts: Ronin. It integrates the Havoc, Euphoria and Digital Molecule Matter psychics engines. This gives characters exceptional bio-mechanical AI. Say you force push a storm trooper; in previous Star Wars game the storm trooper would be pushed away, but in TFU he can grab onto his surroundings to stop himself. Finally, evil minions have the will to live.

The story follows Darth Vader’s apprentice, Jacob Nion or “Starkiller” as Vadar affectionately refers to him as. Starkiller is taken by Darth Vader and trained to become a Sith, given missions to hunt down the last of the Jedi after the Great Jedi Purge at the end of Episode III.

It has been rumoured that, like the Knights of the Old Republic series, your actions will affect whether you stay with the Sith or seek redemption and turn to the Jedi. This will be a difficult feat to pull off successfully, as it will mean LucasArts will need to develop two completely separate main story lines. After all, a good Jedi couldn’t be an apprentice to a Sith. KotOR managed this as the story could be completed as Sith or Jedi. If your alignment can change, this promises to be a very open-ended game.

Unlike other Star Wars games your character will begin Force Adept, having already mastered basic force abilities and, instead of learning new ones from scratch, you improve the few you do have. Force Push improves from the ability to simply push an enemy away to allowing you to send enemies hurtling back as if they’ve just been hit by a bus.

Force Grab allows you to pick up enemies and dangle them upside down, shake the life outta them or use them as bowling balls, the choice is yours. However, as with force push they don’t like being used as human projectiles and will try to grab a hold of anything to get their feet back on the ground.

The final confirmed force power is the stereotypical Sith power, Force Lightening. As with the other two force powers you can do more than just one thing: charge an enemy full of electricity then send him at a distant target as a human bomb, use Force Lightening on your lightsaber to add extra power or zap a power generator to overcharge it, creating a satisfying boom.

The Force Unleashed is due for release on September 16^th for both North America and the UK and will be available on the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS and PS2. However only the 360 and PS3 versions will have access to the Ronin engine.

The Force Unleashed looks like an exceptionally strong game and LucasArts will be expecting it to do well, but with the release of other eagerly awaited games like Gears of War 2 around the same time, could TFU end up having its Force Lightening stolen?

Lewis

Labels: 360, Hype Train, PS3, Star Wars, The Force Unleashed, Wii

Rather than send my 360 off for repairs I've bought a core system on ebay as my hard drive is still working and hasn't been corrupted. I'm hoping to get to Wales to pick it up rather than having it posted and should be able to game again within a week.

Lewis

Labels: 360, RRoD

I'll be starting to post again on the 9th of August. I know you all missed me.

Oh yeah, by the way, Canada is totally rad - you should go.

Matt

Labels: Canada is totally awesome and i know ill never use this tag again but who cares - you only live once eh, Matthew, Matthew Meadows

I'm getting my ISP changed in a few days, and as such my posts are going to be affected. I will still try to post as much as I can, but the PS3 posts will not be as frequent as usual.

I will be offline for about a month approximately. However: Matt, Grimmy and Lewis should still be posting as usual.

Linford.

Labels: Writer's note