In summary, an MMOFPS, on Xbox360 and Playstation 3, based in the Eve Online universe, and linked to the Eve Online MMORPG universe on the PC. Those playing Dust 514 fight for control of the planets within Eve, whilst those playing Eve Online continue battling over space.
The best bit…. the two games are linked to each other so Eve Online players can hire Dust 514 players to take planets for them to profit from within the Eve Online world.
If there is one thing that has gotten this site more hits than any other topic, it is the billing problem described here when moving from one country to another with an XBox Live subscription. After two years of inaction from Microsoft, it’s time to take it the top! continue reading »
One thing that still never ceases to amaze me is the addictive nature of the simple feature called ‘Achievements’ on the Xbox 360.
Let me begin by saying I pretend to not care about gamerscore, that arbitary number attached to my gamercard that indicates nothing more than how many games you have had, and then played enough to achieve a gazillion goals set by the developers of the games. I know it has no relevance to the universe, it doesn’t indicate ability in any way, and has little kudos attached to it even amongst gamers.
Yet I find myself chasing these achievements relentlessly, I have bought Xbox Live Arcade games purely because they had easy sounding achievements, I have fought for hours in RS6 Vegas with a sniper rifle on maps totally unsuited to sniper rivals in order to get that 50 headshot kills achievement, and worst of all (and my moment of realisation!) was last night buying up all the French and Korean cars in Forza 2 for achievements that give 1 damn gamerpoint!! Thats a new level of insanity… I would never buy a korean car in real life, and definitely never a french one. Yet here I was hungrily gobbling up cars not worthy of pissing on if they caught fire with my hard earned in-game money.
Despite the relatively high number of games I have played, despite the endless hours I have spent chasing these imaginary successes, my gamer score stands at a pitiful 11,000 something! Yet I am so attached to it I refused create a new gamertag to ease my payment issues with having a UK account and a swedish credit card, which would be understandable if my gamerscore was great… but it’s not.
There are one-handed, one-eyed, deaf, dumb and mute 8 year old girls with better gamerscores than me after having played less than half the games I have! But then as the next time that little grey rounded rectangle pops up on my Xbox 360 game saying I have achieved 12gs for ‘Shooting someone with red hair whilst the wind was blowing in a south-westerly direction’ proves again and again… achievements are an elixir of gratification that are unexplainable to any normal rational (non-gameplaying) adult.
Well the demo of Forza 2 landed and joy was mixed with outrage for many of those who have sampled it.
Joy that the wait was over, joy that the game plays as smooth as butter, outrage that the game fails to live up to the screenshots graphically. Of course I am using the words of others when I use the term ‘outrage.’ There are many more important things in life than the graphic quality of a racing game. Wars are outrageous, poverty is outrageous, refereeing decisions in favour of Manchester United are generally outrageous. But dissapointing is a term I might use for the graphics on display in the demo.
Generally speaking… the game looks great. unfortunately (in the demo at least) they seem to have removed all traces of AA and AF on the cars (of all things!). Lets face it, the focus of your attention in such a game is the cars. The environment generally shoots past in a blur, but we spend hours admiring our beautiful beasts and to skimp on processing power there seems daft to say the least. I suspect that this is a Demo-Only problem.
I have seen it before with MotoGP 06, and TDU only to find that once you get the full game the full rendering engine is effect and things look great again. I guess they wanted to keep download sizes down, and even if it was released looking like the demo it is still on a par with most competing licenses and it wouldn’t stop me buying it on release. But I am sure I have seen the marketing material (admittedly not the most of reliable sources usually!) boasting that upto 4xx FSAA would be in use so lets wait and see. And as for the important bit (the racing!) its fantastic!
So, literally any minute now, petrol heads, racing enthusiasts and general fans of all things car-like across the world will see the demo of Forza 2 drop onto Xbox Live.
You have witnessed my obsession with a game I haven’t even played on these very pages, it seems to be contagious as people who I didn’t even know were gamers have been talking about it today at work. The post on the www.forzamotorsport.net forums that announced the demo release was coming got around 200,000 views within a couple of hours! Here’s hoping the demo whets the appetite rather than dissapoints!
Now to try and talk the girlfriend through downloading it for me whilst I am at work!
I have never been so excited about a demo, especially one that is single player only, but still this will be the taste of the greatness that is to come on June 8th in Europe (earlier in lucky bastard locations around the world).
My speculation is that we will see it released along with the dashboard update… but then I make a career out of being wrong a lot May I suggest we spend the time waiting by harrassing the Luckiest Guy in the World??
Is there a special school people go to in order to learn to speak at 300 words per second like this guy?
Anyway this seems to be a genuine leaked/released video showing off the new features of the XBox 360 spring dashboard update (apparent release date is 7th May).
Some nice features include real messenger integration with Xbox live, a dedicated Marketplace blade, a low power download mode which also switches of the box when all downloads are complete, and more information on those treasured achievement pop-ups such as which achievement you got and how many points it was worth.
May I suggest we spend the time waiting by harrassing the 