Xbox 360 Dashboard Update, First Thoughts

After just downloading and browsing through it, the update looks pretty damn good. Finally after years you can do private chat groups online of up to 8 people through a xbox.

The avatar system is essentially copying the miis but at least you can choose what they wear as well, and there does seem to be more options of customisation available. I was expecting to be alot of lag between pages since everyone is downloading it, but its running very smoothly, and much faster than the old dashboard.

Being able to download stuff off the marketplace while in a game is a very handy feature, and this can also be done while on the xbox website, perfect if your at work and have your 360 on at home and want to download that latest demo. They have also allowed people to add points to their balance on the website as well, which comes very handy indeed, as I found it a pain in the neck to change credit card details in the past.

From what I can tell you'll be able to use your avatar as your gamertag picture but it seems to be lagging right now, but mine should be up for the world to see soon!

Edit: or now!!!



Article by: William Stephen

Call of Duty: World at War Review - (Xbox 360)

I know what you are thinking: Why did the Call of Duty franchise go back to WW2? Well, I don’t know. I suppose the games roots are in the second World War. I didn’t mind because I have always been interested in the history of the war and the Call of Duty series has usually been fairly historically accurate. I got my copy of the game on Thursday with my early morning post. I opened it as soon as it arrived at 13:05 hours (Yes, I DID say early morning post, but we all know what a fine service Royal Mail provide!). I hastily ram the disk into my 360 and press start.

Thursday, 13:06 hrs: I will say that I was not disappointed. The graphics are good. The sound is good. And the music is good. Yes, I said the music was good. In fact, its so good I nearly didn’t realise it had changed. I first realised when I was flaming some Japanese soldiers and could hear rock music.

Thursday, 17:30 hrs:What? That’s it? No. There must be some mistake. There must be a second disk. Nope. Nothing. That really was the end of the game. 4 hours of game play. Wow. Well, after consoling myself with a cigarette and a cup of tea, I switch to multi-player mode.

Thursday, 17:55 hrs:I’m still in multi-player mode. Am I enjoying the multi-player experience CoD:WAW provides? I don’t know, because I haven’t played yet. I cannot get online. It keeps saying Checking Match Quality. I assume something must be wrong with my net connection. Nope. I do the usual Test Xbox Live Connection from the system blade. Nothing wrong there. Hmm. I checked online and it appears a lot of people are having the same issues. I’ll keep trying to get online…

Friday: Nope, still can’t get online.

Saturday: Still nothing.

Sunday:Finally managed to get online. Its quite good actually. I managed to play for 10 minutes and then get booted off. I try to connect again for another 30 minutes and still no luck. Bollocks to this.

Until they release a patch to fix the Xbox Live issues, the only way to extend the life of this game is to 1. Play through the game on veteran and 2. Collect all the offline achievements.

The game is an excellent extension to the CoD series. It’s shorter than CoD:4 (at least it feelsshorter) but the storyline is good; the Russian campaign is fantastic and the ending is as good as any war film. A few new weapons are introduced in the game, the best (and funniest?) by far is the flame thrower. I don’t know if you can bring the flame thrower into multi-player because I only managed to play for about 10 minutes online. Following on from CoD:3, this game reintroduces vehicles into the multi-player mode, which should prove interesting.

Go and buy this game. If you have enjoyed the other games in the CoD series, you will not be disappointed. Once the Xbox Live problems are solved I will post an updated review because I don’t think we will see the best aspect of the game until we get online.

Review by: Kai Gohegan

Editor's Note: Xbox Live seems to be suffering outages globally and not just in this game. This does not seem to be the fault of Activision or this game itself. We will have more news about this issue soon but please E-Mail us if you experience anything strange yourself.

I guess it's back to system link and SP for us all eh?

...

2nd Editor's Note: Live is back online and has been for a while, so I will add some comments about the Multiplayer. Co-op is fantastic. 4 Players taking on most of the levels ruins the story and tension but can be funny as hell, especially as you can unlock challenges which rank you up in versus online modes. The regular multiplayer is basically COD 4 with WW2 weapons, a few new perks and a pack of angry dogs instead of the helicopter death squad. It's still just as addictive and following your dogs into the lair of the enemy and watching as they tear them to pieces is awesome. It's fun, but no points for originality here.

Another new MP option is enabled once you finish the game, Nazi Zombies. This will probably offend a few people (as will the INCREDIBLY harsh SP storyline) but games are meant to be fun first, and anything else second. You and three friends can hold off the undead in a small farmhouse spending the points you make on new weapons until you die. It's very similar to the Horde mode in GOW2, which is no bad thing.

The game is fun, but really nothing new. If you like WW2 and fancy taking a shot at the Japanese instead of the Germans (their suicidal tendencies make them very different to fight) as well as enjoying some co-op, this game is for you. If you are tired of the gameplay of COD or WW2 in general, avoid. This game remains a silver, but it really earns that score.

Smackdown vs Raw 2009 Review - (Xbox 360)

Over the last few years wrestling games have pretty much just came from one source, least for Western countries anyway, and that was the WWE smackdown games, made by THQ. Now with TNA releasing a game a few months back which has the potential to become a serious threat, THQ have decided to layeth the smacketh down on Midway with Smackdown vs Raw 2009.

Im an avid wrestling fan, and in the last few years I have been really disappointed with the Smackdown series, because they often make very few updates each year, much like FIFA until recently. Just like EA however, THQ have added quite a few updates this year, which have led to some really good bits, and some stupid bits as well.

First off is the roster, while they can never get an up to date roster as someone always leaves or gets fired, it’s still a lot of wrestlers this year, but this doesn’t make that much of a difference because more often than not, most will never be used by one person. The usual story mode has been updated to 2 different parts. Road to Wrestlemania follows one of 6 stories with 7 wrestlers, and you progress through it like any other story mode game. The storylines are better than their WWE real life ones, so why they were never used I don’t know, would certainly make better TV. Career mode has replaced the general manager mode, something which many people enjoyed last few years. Basically you’re picking a wrestler then fighting opponents to gain up ratings, once you reach a high enough rating you challenge for a title. Then repeat over and over again. Its tiresome and boring after 5 minutes, and is the only way right now to boost up stats for a created wrestler, which can take 10 hours just to get them up halfway.

Game play has been left virtually untouched. Replacing the awful modifiers last year, are the better system of abilities, which include dirty pin, springboard moves, kip up, possum pin and more. Broadening the abilities from last year means that there’s more strategy involved in choosing a wrestler for certain match types. A ladder match suits a wrestler who has the ladder match ability as they can reach the belt faster and take it off its hinge. When a wrestler has full momentum, they may store it to keep for a signature move, of which just like finishers, there are 2 of for each wrestler. This adds a bit more strategy as to when to go for a pin, especially during fatal 4 ways. Other good subtle features include changing the background music whenever you like at the touch of a button.


AI has been improved a tad, but it is still very easy to beat them, even on higher difficulty levels. You can still win a match in less than a minute in no problem. A typical match against the computer is basically, running grapple, stomp, mat grapple, stomp til they counter and get up, running grapple, stomp, mat grapple, stomp til they get up, kick to gut, finisher, pin. Online is pretty much the same with players rarely ever attempting strong moves and just sticking to small moves to win a match, but this has been going on since day 1.

But with every good thing THQ does every year, they seem to always take a step backwards at the same time. Take the new create a finisher mode. While it’s been desperately wanted for years, and while it is a welcome addition, it is rather limiting, and some of the damage some moves provide can kill a wrestler in one move without anything else being done to them. They have added a new match type, inferno, but removed buried alive. They have also removed the ever popular trading of created wrestlers, and as mention before, trying to up their stats is a boring process. There are also plenty of bugs, some of which THQ haven’t been bothered to fix since last year, including well known ones. One bug in the elimination chamber mode stops anyone from using the turnbuckles at all, something that wasn’t there from the beginning, so why is it there now?

It is a breath of fresh air for the franchise, while it still isn’t as good as the classic games of No Mercy or even Smackdown Here Comes the Pain, it’s getting there. Let’s see how midway do with the sequel to TNA impact, next year… hopefully if they aren’t dead by then.


Review by: William Stephen

Mirror's Edge Review - (PS3)

Well, I was asked to review this game by the guys at Parental Guidance so I blew the dust off my PS3 and booted it up. Hmm, what’s this, cell shaded graphics? Oh man, please not another XIII style game. I was pleasantly surprised as it turns out only the cut-scenes are rendered in the cartoon style; the actual game play is the usual clean 3D style we’ve gotten used to over the last few years.

If you are into Parkour (Free Jumping), you’ll love this game. I however am not in the least bit interested in doing a rather poor impression of Batman by thrusting my body about town, so I didn’t find this game particularly appealing. To be honest though, when you are chased by Police or other enemies, I must say this is where the best element of the game comes out. Although the game is fairly linear in that you are on a fixed path, when you are being chased you do feel that you are thinking on your feet, looking for the next object you can jump to.

I don’t like giving away the story line in reviews, so I won’t here. However, the story behind the game feels fairly familiar; a kind of been there, done that sort of thing. The voice acting is crap, frankly.

The game is worth picking up and playing, but to be honest, the only game I will be playing on Friday 14^th is Call of Duty 5. If this game was bundled with your console, or came in some other deal, you wouldn’t be disappointed, but I don’t think I will be spending £40 on it. As I said earlier, if you are into Parkour, you won’t be disappointed to find this in your Christmas stocking but for couch potatoes like me, it doesn’t hold much appeal.

Review by: Kai Gohegan

Want free console? Join Gametrailers!

This has been happening for a while now but I wanted to make sure this looked permanent. Gametrailers.com is a site that shows clips of games. By watching the videos you earn GTD, and the more videos you watch, the more GTD you receive. Now this used to be capped at 50 videos a day (though you can earn GTD from other methods such as posting blogs) but from my experience im receiving 50 GTD every 12 hours, maybe even less, which is 100 GTD a day.

If you did watch 100 videos a day, then within a year you would earn enough to get a DS lite, and less than 2 years for a free PS3, yes FREE. Who knows how long they'll keep it like this, but if you want to take advantage I suggest you do so now!

Sign up here! (Yes its a referral link, if you dont want to click it then click the first link.)

Article by: William Stephen

Dead Space - A Second Opinion (Xbox 360)

As you may have gathered, we do things a little differently here at Parental Guidance. We all play games and we all have our own opinions, yet only one of us writes a review and usually they only focus on one format. We all still want to talk about a good game and we all play on different systems, so it is only fair that we tell you about the differences and thoughts we have on the game. Expect to see more 'second opinion' pieces about major or interesting titles on the site especially when important multi format games get released on several systems at once.

Today, I want to talk to you about Dead Space. We reviewed this recently on PS3 and gave it a 'Silver' award. I'm happy with that grading and as such I won't be challenging it. I did however, request the 360 version from EA so we could compare the versions and have a more open debate about the merits of the title.

Dead Space is a good game, yet it is only one of dozens out this Christmas so you might be wondering why I am bothering to come back to it when we have even more games to focus on in the near future. The answer is that at heart we are all fans of games and Dead Space whilst not perfect, is definitely individual and as fans, we wish to vent our opinions as much as you do.

So, what do I think of Dead Space? Well you already know I think it is good. What I haven't mentioned is how scary this damned game is. Resident Evil is no longer scary - I only jumped in a few sections (usually when regenerators were involved) in Resi 4 as it plays more like an action game these days. The regenerators were scary, but random village peasants were not. Fun to fight against yes, scary no. Dead Space takes survival horror back to basics and focuses on just one thing: Fear. There is no respite from it. Usually a horror game waits a few minutes before it throws monsters at you, giving you a tutorial and a gun before kicking you out of the plane. You don't get that in Dead Space. The introduction is all done with the in game engine and before you know it you are faced with monsters, but with no gun. Running for your life you will quickly appreciate how much this game WILL make you crap your pants.

I'm a grown man. I am 23 years old. I will only play this game in daylight. I imagine you will find this the case as well, unless you are so jaded by violence you no longer care. Whilst violent, (it's easier to kill enemies by sheer dismemberment and head shots do little in this game, to buck the trend) violence is not the focus here. Fear is. You are not a super powered space marine. There is no BFG to protect you. You are not empowered and you are most definitely vulnerable and alone.

The game-play could be described as similar to Resident Evil 4, but that's not really fair. Yes, the controls work the same and it is a 3rd person shooter, but Dead Space really is a totally different atmosphere. It's more like the GameCube Resident Evil 1 remake than any other Resident Evil title - fear is ever present and the entire focus of the game. Sure there is a tacked on romance sub plot but it really doesn't matter here. Sometimes the scares get predictable - you just know a corpse in a room is going to jump up and get you because that is the 'scariest' thing that could happen. This doesn't stop you tiptoeing around the corpse and hoping it won't jump up, so despite this predictability flaw you are still scared and in Dead Space, that's all that matters.

How does the 360 version stack up against the PS3 one? Strangely they are rather similar. Despite a history of inferior PS3 ports over the last few years EA seem to have nailed parallel game design on both systems. Games like Fallout 3 are often a lot worse on PS3 than 360 these days (just look at the lack of anti-aliasing on the PS3 version compared to the 360) and that goes back to the early days of the console war. The PS3 is not an inferior platform but it IS harder to program for and this shows often in any serious comparison with the same title. Even back at the start of the PS3's life cycle the port of Rainbow Six: Vegas told us we should be worried. It is good EA have actually taken this to hand and decided to do the right thing and put the extra effort into the PS3 version to keep it at almost the same quality as the 360 version, doing true justice to the PS3.

There are minor differences though. The Xbox 360 version does seem to be a little brighter than the PS3 version which can be good or bad, depending on if you prefer to see colour or nothing at all in your survival horror. The only real problem is the frame rate, which drops at times in both versions of the game but drops to a slightly lower level on the PS3 at times than the 360. This is only a small niggle but if you have both consoles I would have to recommend the 360 version over the PS3 one but only if you pushed me. Other than the lighting and frame rate, the games are practically identical. Whichever format you get it on, as long as you enjoy horror you will be scared and you will have fun.

To surmise: This game is basically fear incarnate, and very good on both platforms. If you think you can handle the scares this game throws at you, it is very much worth a purchase especially as it is a new franchise in a season full of sequels. If you don't enjoy being scared though, keep far away from this one. This is definitely not a game for children or people with weak hearts.

Article by: Edwin Jones

Super Obama World?

According to the BBC, Barack Obama has his own Super Mario style video game on the net.

"The game takes a satirical look at US politics, with Obama collecting flags and dodging lipstick-wearing pit bulls, lobbyists and Sarah Palin. "

You can play the game here. It isn't half bad either. If you've followed the recent american election you'll see alot of parodies and similarities to what happened during the election.

Article by William Stephen