SiD the Turtle » Xbox 360

Grand Theft Auto IV Spotify Playlists – Electro-Choc

Kieran — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:25:49 +0000

[Read this post for more information on Spotify]

Padded Cell – Signal Failure
Black Devil Disco Club – The Devil In Us (Dub)
One + One – No Pressure (Deadmau5 Remix)
Alex Gopher – Brain Leech (Bugged Mind Remix)
K.I.M. – B.T.T.T.T.R.Y. (Bag Raiders Remix)
Simian Mobile Disco – Tits & Acid (!)
Nitzer Ebb – Let Your Body Learn
Kavinsky – Testarossa Overdrive (Sebastian Remix)
Chris Lake vs. Deadmau5 – I Thought Inside Out (Original Mix)
Boys Noize – & Down
Justice – Waters Of Nazareth (!)
Killing Joke – Turn To Red (!)
Playgroup – Make It Happen
Liquid Liquid – Optimo

Grand Theft Auto IV Spotify Playlists – The Journey

Kieran — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:00:29 +0000

The Journey Spotify Playlist

[Read this post for more information on Spotify]

Global Communication - 8 07
Terry Riley – A Rainbow in Curved Air
Steve Roach – Arrival
Michael Shrieve – Communiqué ’Approach Spiral’
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygène (Part IV)
Philip Glass – Pruit Igoe
Tangerine Dream – Remote Viewing
Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Vol. II CD2 TRK5a
Ray Lynch – The Oh of Pleasure

Grand Theft Auto IV Spotify Playlists – Liberty Rock Radio

Kieran — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:07:38 +0000

Liberty Rock Radio Spotify Playlist

[Read this post for more information on Spotify]

GTA IV

The Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
Steve Marriot’s All Stars – Cocaine
Godley & Creme – Cry
The Sisters of Mercy – Dominion/Mother Russia
Stevie Nicks – Edge of Seventeen
Electric Light Orchestra – Evil Woman
David Bowie – Fascination
Q Lazzarus – Goodbye Horses (!)
Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell (!)
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Her Strut
Iggy Pop & The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog (!)
Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Genesis – Mama (!)
Hello – New York Groove
Queen – One Vision
The Black Crowes – Remedy
Joe Walsh – Rocky Mountain Way
The Who – The Seeker (!)
Elton John – Street Kids
Heart – Straight On
ZZ Top – Thug
R.E.M. – Turn You Inside Out

The Lost and Damned

Nazareth – Hair of the Dog (!)
Styx – Renegade (!)
Rod Stewart – Every Picture Tells a Story
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Saturday Night Special
The James Gang – Funk #49 (!)
Edgar Winter Group – Free Ride (!)
Aerosmith – Lord of the Thighs
Deep Purple – Highway Star
AC/DC – Touch Too Much
Foghat – Drivin’ Wheel
The Doors – Five to One
Alice Cooper – Go to Hell
Jefferson Starship – Jane (!)
Iron Maiden – Run to the Hills
Mötley Crüe – Wild Side
Saxon – Wheels of Steel
The Doobie Brothers – China Grove
Bon Jovi – Wanted Dead or Alive

Grand Theft Auto IV Spotify Playlists

Kieran — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:31:12 +0000

Spotify has become my main way of listening to music at home, though I’ll leave the discussion of that to another day. I’m also playing ‘The Lost and Damned’ addon to Grand Theft Auto IV at the moment, which has inspired me to check out some of the bands on GTA IV’s many radio stations (continuing the trend of my musical tastes being defined by what game I’m playing!). So over the next few posts I’ll be posting links to Spotify playlists for my favourite stations, with URLs that should jump you straight into Spotify.

The one downside is that a lot of the bands aren’t listed on Spotify so it’s not 100%, wherever I’ve not inserted a URL to a track in the post, it means I couldn’t find it in Spotify. If you can, let me know. Also, any track with a (!) means that the track in Spotify isn’t the original album track, but from something like a compilation album, again if you can find the original track in Spotify, let me know.

Lastly, just a note that the stations and the tracks are in the order they appear in the back of the manual, rather than Wikipedia or any other source.

Click on the logo of the radio station you want to listen to and jump to the relevant post.

[I'll be updating this post as I add more stations]

First Impressions of the New Xbox Experience

Kieran — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:41:28 +0000

Pros

It’s responsive.
Downloading games to the hard disk is a fantastic feature, making the Xbox 360 so much quieter.
The whole interface reminds me of the various media centre apps out at the moment, with context sensitive backgrounds and information.
The mini guide that appears when you press in the Xbox guide button is fast and actually useful.
You can delete 0 gamerscore games, bye bye old arcade demos and Perfect Dark Zero.

Cons

The majority of the tabs are advertising. Spotlight, Inside Xbox, Games, Movies etc.
The friends tab is completely unusable if you have more than a handful of friends. It has gone from a list to a side-by-side lineup of everyone’s avatars, which is slow to load and looks awful. I have 99 on my list (which guarantees that there’s someone out there playing the same game as me!) and it looks a mess. Thankfully the mini-guide has an old school friends list.
The whole marketplace is slow, slower than the old one. Though I’ll put this one down to the NXE only being out for a few hours.
Old themes are almost useless now as the majority of the dashboard is taken up by a grey background. Remember people, no refunds!
The Miis – er I mean avatars appear to be a piecemeal attempt to tempt some of the illusive casual Wii playing market. So far I can’t see the point of them. Also the level of customisation is in fact less diverse than the lower fidelity Miis. Why can’t I have a blue shirt? Because it was only developed in green. Go figure.

So I sound quite negative. However installing games to the hard drive is such a great feature, I’m willing to put up with all the cons!

Microsoft’s ‘Live Your Moment’ Marketing Campaign Rolls Out

Kieran — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:56:30 +0000

With more details of the New Xbox Experience (NXE) trickling out as well as the first sightings of the ‘Live Your Moment’ advertising campaign on TV and online, it seems the marketing juggernaught at Microsoft is on the move and trying and steal some of the lucrative casual market from Nintendo.

Firstly we have a trio of adverts, which I do kind of like as they get my attention, aren’t completely off the wall (This Is Not Living) and aren’t sensationalist like the old ‘cradle to the grave’ Xbox ad. When I first saw the Rock Band one I thought at first it was going to be an advert for Orange, it just kind of had that ‘vibe’. The simple statements like ‘Music Games on Xbox 360′ feels a bit like the Apple iPod adverts that state ‘iPod + iTunes’.

Rock Band/Rock Band 2

HD Movie Downloads

Lego Batman

Next up with have the Xbox.com UK site (http://www.xbox.com/en-gb/default.htm). The whole front page at the moment is a massive Flash advert (hey Microsoft, I thought we were all supposed to be using Silverlight now?)

Like the massive Christmas campaigns for the 360 over the last couple of years, I hope this campaign gets people who would otherwise dismiss games as toys for kids to join in the fun. The questions are, will they go too far and end up alienating the core fans – the hardcore – like Nintendo seem hell bent on doing and what will Sony and Nintendo come up with in response?

Rock Band 2 in the UK – November

Kieran — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:29:45 +0000

EA is known for reaching new levels of diabolicalness with their extortionate prices for Rock Band 1 in the UK and releasing Rock Band 1 in other parts of Europe and Australia only now even though Rock Band 2 is out in the USA and was going for a a third by keeping silent about when Rock Band 2 would be reaching UK shores. Now an Xbox 360 TV ad has answered the question we were all asking: when is Rock Band 2 being released in the UK?

Answer: November!

Videogamer.com has the advert online: http://www.videogamer.com/news/25-09-2008-9474.html

10,000 Gamerpoints and Counting

Kieran — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:54:47 +0000

I spent today burning through Gears of War on insane difficulty with my brother, which was quite an fun way to breach the 10000 point barrier.

Regarding Gears of War itself, there are only two observations I have- firstly the cooperative AI is too daft to play the game on insane difficulty solo, and secondly you can’t stop the Cole Train, baby.

E3 2008: Mirror’s Edge

Kieran — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:46:57 +0000

Genre: Action adventure
Platforms: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Developer: DICE (EA Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release date: “Late 2008″

Mirror’s Edge comes from the Swedish developers DICE, most famously known for the Battlefield series. It’s nice to see them producing something very different from their recent games and I’m sure it’s a refreshing change for the developers themselves! The game stars Faith, a runner delivering packages in some future dystopia fighting to save her sister.

The gameplay features true first person gaming, in the sense that as you run you can see your arms and legs flailing about- I did feel queasy the first time I saw the trailers – and seems to heavily feature parkour. Speed and momentum appear to be key, with weapons being a secondary, optional element to the game.

Seeing the acrobatic character, weapon-less gameplay and clean visuals I was reminded of an old Bungie game called Oni (yes they have on occasion made other games besides Halo), as well as the character YT – or Yours Truly – a young Kourier in the seminal Cyberpunk novel Snow Crash.

If you haven’t seen the game in action before the first video below features the game’s first trailer which has been floating around for a while now. Following this is the second trailer that was released recently and puts to rest my concern that the entire game world was going to be very white and very bland. Finally the last trailer features footage of the EA conference where the game was demo-ed. In this walkthough they mention that they are following ‘one of the possible routes’ in the game, however I am concerned that this may be a very linear game with limited replay value, but as always I reserve judgement until the game has actually been released. This is one game where you’ll want to watch the trailers below in high definition if you have the bandwidth for it.

1000 Gamerpoints: Assassin’s Creed

Kieran — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:44:05 +0000

I just killed my last Templar – quite stylishly I might add by countering his attack and sticking my hidden blade through his neck – netting me 40 gamerpoints bringing me to the full 1000.

I got Assassin’s Creed back when it was released in November 2007 and looking at my achievement history I completed the whole game in 5 days, 165 points short of the full 1000. Assassin’s Creed is an entirely single player affair so what were these missing points if they were not of the ‘kill 1000 people in ranked multiplayer’ ilk? Collectables.

Collectables have been around for a long time, hidden items squirreled away in games rewarding the inquisitive gamer (or the gamer who bought the strategy guide) with extra ammo, a secret level or unlockable extras. As mentioned in a previous post, Tomb Raider: Legend is my idea of well thought out unlockables (and achievements for that matter). There are only a few artefacts to be found on each level and are often in plain sight but a challenge to get to. Putting the effort into getting them rewarded the gamer with unlockable outfits, concept art, character bios and cheats. Assassin’s Creed has no less than four hundred flags (touch to pick up collectables) to find and sixty Templars (footsoldiers of the game’s villains) to kill throughout the game’s world.

Finding at a guess 90% of these is not a challenge- there are so many of them you run into them when simply bounding from rooftop to rooftop when evading the city guards. The problem comes when you have found most of the flags and Templars in a city but are missing one here or there. It is not a challenge to reach those scattered about the rooftops and streets – Assassin’s Creed’s much lauded parkour-esqe gameplay makes this easy – but instead it is finding those hidden in a shadowy corner where you would never venture, or in winding alleyways that you are often flying over rather than travelling through. Yes in games of old I would be saying that I was being rewarded for diverging from the path to the level exit and exploring that side corridor- but in such ‘living world’ games exploring every street would take an inordinate amount of time and wouldn’t be very entertaining. It is an exercise in endurance in the face of boredom, not a smart addition to the core gameplay. In fact after going through the entire game world again trying to find the half dozen remaining flags and Templars (online guide in hand, check out the very useful assassinscreed-maps.com) I had to admit defeat and accept that I had missed them somewhere, forcing me to restart the game again from the beginning so that I could grab each flag and Templar methodically. I can only surmise that the flags were an artificial attempt at extending playtime beyond the core game, an incentive to buy the strategy guide or an afterthought. Though it is wrong to assume that everything you do in a game should be directly rewarded there is absolutely no benefit (save gamerpoints- I would not have bothered if I was a PS3 gamer) for collecting the flags or killing the Templars.

In my opinion any sequel should feature far fewer flags, all of them easy to spot but placed on the top of the tallest and hardest to climb structures, rewarding the player in some fashion for collecting them. They would also be flagged on the map once picked up so that the gamer isn’t forced to retrace their steps later in the game to work out which flags they are missing. That way the gamer would face a challenge in getting to the flags but then be rewarded with both unlockables and a sense of satisfaction.

Despite some negative backlash from gamers shortly after the glowing praise from professional reviewers on release, Assassin’s Creed is a good game and worthy of a play. Graphically it is simply beautiful: from the first time you ride in to Jerusalem on horseback to when you climb the tallest church in the game and survey your surroundings, it is quite a masterpiece to look at. In terms of technical merit the vast, detailed cities that make up the majority of the game are impressive, as are the visceral, action-packed sword fights and the ability to climb just about any surface in the game accurately (the protagonist reaches for handholds rather than simply moving across a wall texture). There is an argument to be had that in creating such a beautiful, technically brilliant game they forgot to put in the gameplay- it is quite repetitive and simple to play. On balance though, it is worth playing both as a piece of entertainment and as a milestone in games development, just don’t expect to be picking it up again for another play after the end credits roll.