I rented Legendary recently and managed to play it all the way through, whilst I enjoyed the game, there were many glaring problems with it, most notably the untapped potential. It seems like a trend lately, developers seem to do some things right but other things so terribly wrong. So I’ll start off with the good rather than the bad…

The graphics in Legendary whilst not ground-breaking are what you would expect from this generation of games and they do the imaginative world justice. The weapons are varied and pack the right amount of punch. Most of the enemies are a little different from your run of the mill run and shoot enemies, you’ll be fighting flying enemies which levitate items at you, werewolves that regenerate unless you chop off their heads and giant Minotaurs hell bent on bashing your skull in.
The story too is great, Pandora’s box has been found and opened and it has unleashed an army of mythical beasts that are completely tearing the world to pieces. And your character is linked to the box with the signet on his hand. Read more…

Also available on Youtube.

After playing Tetris on the PSP for hours I’ve become addicted to it and have been playing every version I can get my hands on. Mainly I have been playing on Tetris Friends which has some great online versions of Tetris including a remake of GB Tetris. I wrote an article some ago on Tetris for another website which has long since deceased, I discovered many forms of tetris ranging through 3D, 4D and beyond. I figured since this year it’s Tetris’ 25th anniversary I’d write another. Read on for more. Read more…

Finally the PSP gets a version of the classic Tetris, it has been a long time coming but by god it’s actually worth it. Tetris is available via PSN only (for a measly £3.99) and is labelled as one of the new PSP “minis”. From the moment I clapped eyes on it I was in love, the graphics are sharp and colourful, the music is great too, kind of techno remixes of the old Tetris songs. and of course the original mode will still gives you enjoyment but with this version the “variants” are where it’s at.

Each variant is a twist on the original formula, some that I’ve played before (like gravity where dissociated blocks drop down in the spaces below) and some variants I’ve never played, some are more challenging than others but the game will make you play them in order to unlock more. In every variant game you have only to score 40 lines and after that it’s over, but you get more points for finishing quickly and more points for the more “Tetrises” you get. So play your cards right and you can get some nice times and/or scores. My favourite variant is “Treadmill”. every time you drop a piece the whole screen moves to the right by one block and pops onto the left hand side, it’s confusing but fun. The hardest I think is “Split” where the playing field is split down the middle and each side is independent except for when scoring lines.

There are a few extras in the game too like the master replays, which will show you some fantastic times and scores and lets you watch their entire game as they played it. There’s also a glossary if you’re a nub or like me didn’t have a clue what a “T-Spin” was. That’s about it really, I would have to say that personally I think it’s the best Tetris game I’ve ever played 😀

Oh and here’s a quick video (music is not from the actual game):

Also available on Youtube

This is probably the biggest release of the month and the most awaited release for Halo fans. Personally I was very excited about the launch, the trailers were fantastic, the hype (as usual) was great.

To quickly summarise how I felt about the game I would have to say that the campaign portion was short, boring and annoying. But firefight is extremely enjoyable. I guess the campaign felt more like a training exercise than an actual part of the main game. Especially since campaign will probably take you 4 or 5 hours to complete from start to finish, your average firefight games will be over an hour each. Spent over two hours playing a single game last night, the only problem with this model is that I’m less likely to play consecutive games that last two hours as it is a major investment. I go more in depth after the break.

Read more…

I’m a big fan of free legal music online, or at least music that tries to be legal. Spotify is great but to be honest has a much more limited music library than Grooveshark. I’m always there when I can’t find what I’m looking for on Spotify and it’s ok as a music playing tool but lacks a lot of features.

Thankfully they have been hard at work behind the scenes at Grooveshark to build “Grooveshark 2.0” or a new version which should hit the mainstream soon. At the moment it is only available to paying “vip” members and I figured it was worth £2 to see what it’s like and from what I’ve seen I am pretty impressed, but take a look for yourself (more after the break):

Read more…

I’ve been thinking lately, how much different technology has made our lives in the past decade. In particular the mobile phone. Mobile phones not only allow us to communicate verbally with other people they allow a whole plethora of possibilities from taking photos to querying Wikipedia.
Read more…

This is Noby Noby Boy, a quirky little game released on PSN. It was created by the same mind behind Katamari. However it is a lot more relaxed and much more random. Firstly there is no real challenge in Noby Noby Boy and conceivably all levels will be unlocked without you lifting a finger.

Firstly I’ll point out that “Nobi” means “stretch” in Japanese. The basic premise of Noby Noby Boy is to stretch yourself (you are the “Boy” i think) as long as you can and then submit this score to the “Girl”. Then your score is added to the total score for everyone who has played the game and over time the length you have added will allow the Girl to reach other planets or levels. Each level is a small floating square with buildings, people and random objects scattered around.

You can also eat the people and objects that appear on levels though I’m not sure what this accomplishes except for the comical screams of the inhabitants and the pretty amusing speed at which people fly from your poophole.

Your “Boy” is controlled by using the analog sticks, the left analog stick moves the front end of your wormy, stretchy thing and the right analog stick controls the arse end. You can also fly the respective ends by pressing L2 and R2.

So in short the aim of the game is to stretch your “Boy” until you think he’s long enough and then present your length to the “Girl” where you score…. !!! I can only assume that this was somehow intentional, nobody could be that suggestive accidentally could they? Either way it’s a novelty to play and can be relaxing too.

This is a compilation of the worst crimes against the facebook world. People should keep their profile pictures relevant on most of all the picture should be of you! Full image after the fold.

Read more…

Got bored again and as usual coded some completely random an useless piece of php. This one basically lets you input the url of any image on the net and then outputs the image on 4 different shades of background from black to that lovely chequered “transparency” image.

It took a little while to perfect everything, and as usual I kept adding bits when I thought I had finished it already, not to mention the ballache I had trying to get it to look exactly the same in IE as it does in FF. Probably completely fails in other browsers but FF and IE are basically everyone. The other issue it took a while to get around was the transparent background as usually it makes what’s in the cell transparent too I used transparent PNGs to get the effect of transparency without coding it in HTML.

I also added the ability to look at a sprite on any background colour of your choice, thise outputs a different page with just the transparent image and the image on top of the HEX colour of your choice 🙂

http://chaoti.csignal.org/transparency_thinger/