If you have Vidzone for the Playstation 3 and has recently booted it up, then you may have noticed that the software has changed its look somewhat. That is because the video streaming service has received a user interface upgrade to allow a better way to enjoy the 1000s of music videos in amazing full-screen quality. Navigation isn’t the only update for the service. As a whole, the service has received an upgrade to allow a more simpler way to find your favourite music track. The upgrade comes with new features, such as:
Zones: Instead of browsing through thousands of videos, users can go straight to a Zone that suits them most. Zones categorise music videos by genre or theme and direct users to the type of videos they want to see the most – making is easier and more fun to discover new videos or artists – Rock Zone, Pop Zone, Hip-Hop Zone, Party Zone or Live Zone are just a few examples.
My Zone: Create a completely customized experience with the new My Zone feature. Music video lovers can add all their favourite playlists or TV channels and start building a library of only the music videos they love the most – then jump straight into the content from the VidZone home screen.
V-Mix: This smart playlist generator will play music videos by artists similar to what the user is watching at that time.
Social Connectivity: Confessing your love for a music video is simple. With Facebook integration users can share all their recommendations with their friends and with a few simple clicks they can invite PSN friends to join them in VidZone just as easily.
Optimised Search: Completely updated, VidZone now offers up-front shortcuts to the most popular content, as well as a redesigned search function including ‘similar artist’ functionality that makes finding videos quick and easy. Brand new progressive search instantly displays results of artists / videos by just typing a few letters. The more letters typed, the more defined the search.
Vidzone is available for download on the Playstation Network. If you already have it, then the update will have already be done, so just boot it up and enjoy.
Who the heck said mobile gaming was for casual gamers? Not all of us are n00bs, and Electronic Arts knows that! EA have been one of the leading publishers in IOS gaming for a while now, providing some of the most highest quality games on mobile devices and catering to the hardcore market in multiple genres while many are afraid to even attempt it.
This weekend, EA are celebrating this with many hit franchises such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, Fight Night, Mortal Kombat and Command & Conquer on for sale at really, really, cheap prices-up to 80% off! Check out the full list below to see what’s on sale.
Dead Space™ (iPhone)
Dead Space™ (iPad)
Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2 (iPhone)
Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2 (iPad)
Command & Conquer™ Red Alert (iPad)
Fight Night Champion (iPhone)
Mirror’s Edge™ (iPad)
NBA JAM (iPad)
NBA JAM (iPhone)
Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit (iPhone)
Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit (iPad)
Reckless Racing (iPad) – 60% off
Rock Band Reloaded (iPad) – 50% off
Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed™ (iPhone) – 67% off
Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed™ (iPad) – 60% off
TRANSFORMERS™: DARK OF THE MOON (iPhone) – 67% off
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (iPad) – 60% off
Many of these awesome titles are as cheap as 99 cents. So be quick, sale ends Monday!
Independent developer Casual Box Studio have announced that their point-and-click adventure game, Age of Enigma will be receiving a Special Edition for the Mac App Store in early December, with an iPad version soon to follow in January 2012. For those who missed out on the original release on Windows, Age of Enigma follows medium Ashley Reeves through exotic locales ranging from ancient Egypt to classical Japan to pirate-filled seas as she helps six unrestful ghosts find peace.
Combining a mixture of puzzle solving, mini-games, and an intriguing mix of casual and adventure gameplay, Age of Enigma offers a more story-driven experience in casual mode, and also a longer experience with more freedom in adventure mode. With a haunting soundtrack (which you can buy on iTunes here!) and striking cartoon artwork, this ghostly Special Edition will include an additional mini-game, brining the total to an exciting 26 mini-games!
These releases will be fully localized in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, and Portuguese. The Mac App Store version will see an early December release, with the iPad version seeing an early January 2012 release. For more information, check out the official website here, or simply watch the trailer below!
Kill3rCombo has just released its latest content patch for Elsword. The patch for the manga inspired MMO includes an increased level cap to 50; an enhanced PvP system allowing players to enter PvP battles anytime in the game with new and improved auto matching capabilities; the opportunity for players to earn more experience points by raiding dungeons with friends and purchase over 400 new equipment using Arena Points; and the highly anticipated release of the final two levels of Velder.
In the world of Elsword, the El Stone is a huge gem that was in the center of a miracle that gave life to the once barren and desolated continent now called Elios. With the stone apparently weakening in power, it has been stolen and now it’s up to Elsword’s gang to get it back! Join Elsword, the fast and swift knight; the elven Rena, whose great marksmanship can defeat monsters before they even realize they were in battle; Aisha, a mage of the highest order, specializing in destructive elemental damage; and Raven, a metal-clawed fighter; in their journey through the land of Elios to rescue the beloved stone. For more information on Elsword visit http://www.elswordonline.com/
The Sims 3, currently the best selling PC game of all time, has recently announced that it would allow any gamer a chance at a free-of-charge 20 minute trial. The demo includes the following of The Sims 3 add-ons:
The Sims 3
The Sims 3 World Adventures
The Sims 3 Ambitions
The Sims 3 Late Night
The Sims 3 Generations
The Sims 3 High-End Loft Stuff
The Sims 3 Fast Lane Stuff
Whether you are interested in talking to ghosts, traversing through Egyptian pyramids, or dancing with a group of vampires, The Sims 3 is the best choice for a full fledged fantasy life simulation.
Who wouldn’t want to try out a full game for free? The Sims 3 demo is available for free (HERE).
It will come as no surprise that Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception sold a small country worth of copies on it’s very first day of release.
On day one alone 3.8 million units of the game were sold worldwide, making it one of the biggest selling titles of 2011 (within 24 hours of being on sale!). To put this into perspective, Uncharted 2 had sold 4.9 million units by October 2011- two years after it was first released.
Head of Communications at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Nick Caplin had this to say about the game’s astounding success:
“Uncharted 3 is a blockbuster and these incredible sales figures reflect that. Consumers are clearly as eager to play the game as critics were to heap praise upon it, and the team at Naughty Dog deserve this fantastic reception at retail. The Uncharted series, exclusive to PlayStation®3, has redefined the third-person adventure genre and is now one of the leading franchises available.”
It’s an incredible achievement for Sony and the development team at Naughty Dog. Uncharted 3 will probably walk away with multiple game of the year trophies – as well as one for ‘highest ever use of superlatives in critical reception’ – and has already proved it’s worth in sales figures. Uncharted 4 anyone?
EA Sports will release a second, rather significant patch today for Xbox 360 and PS3 (PC/Mac patch already released). The patch extends through many areas of the game, including general gameplay, Career Mode, FUT, and online. The list was pretty substantial (seriously), so prepare for a long, yet promising read. Here’s what they fixed:
General Gameplay:
Issue when a user would call a second player to take a quick throw in, resulting in the game recognising it as the ball re-entering play.
Occasional problem where Manual crossing setting would reset
That wonderful misalignment of legs, albeit much more common in the demo, it still surfaced for a very small number of people in the full version.
Career Mode:
Weather conditions are now able to be chosen before a match
Salary suggestions for players will remain consistent when exiting and re-entering the negotiations screen.
Youth player salary returns to budget after releasing them from the Youth Squad
Fixed the problem when following through with a purchase option for a loan deal if it caused you to reach the maximum squad size.
No longer possible to sign a Youth Player with wages higher than your available budget.
Addressed a few rare situations where specific actions caused the controller buttons to become unresponsive.
When playing as a Player in Career Mode, your manager will be more likely to sub you off if your player is getting too tired
Fixed a strange situation where the commentary wouldn’t show up when playing a League Cup match involving Manchester United
Issues when editing and saving player positions and the subsequent console hang.
Removed the issue where your player’s team could enter a new season without a goalkeeper or the minimum squad size.
Resolved the issue where a player’s team would record a win despite the match being fore-fitted due to a lack of players
Recently signed Youth Squad players will enter negotiations with an accurate, consistent “Current Wage”, meaning they’ll be picked up more easily by CPU teams.
Game hanging issues when entering two controllers into a Career mode and then backing out.
Fixed the apparent random crashes experiences by some in Career Mode, where players would appear with a zeroed price
Made physical attribute growth more realistic, resulting in much more steady progression. (Neymar stamina issues anyone?)
Offer a new contract to a loaned out player who is on their last year of contract, instead of them just disappearing into free agency.
More noticeable progression and improvement for loaned out players
Most mid-week matches will be night-time lighting conditions
FIFA 12 Ultimate Team:
Using an outdated “Take Me There” link in the trade feed FUT hub will no longer result in your coins not being returned if you lose an auction.
Trade feed notification for a newly signed GK Coach will no longer cause game hanging.
Fixed disconnection issues when creating a new squad then immediately deleting an old one to apply an item.
Real-time information will be displayed during active auctions to prevent you being unknowingly outbid.
Fixed crash issues experienced on Match Setup before games
EAS FC XP and news feed will update after playing a single-player or play-a-friend game
Fixed struggle issues when paging through auction pages
Fixed various crash issues including the situation after downloading the latest FUT update after creating a Virtual pro, or when not signed into a gamer profile on the download page.
FIFA 12 Clubs
Camera settings will be saved for subsequent Club games after changing.
Penalty kick taker can be changed via Team Management
Accomplishments are now fully tracked in online matches.
AI difficulty has been decreased to Professional in order to stop people from not fielding defenders in order to let the AI do the work for them.
My Live Season, EAS FC and FIFA 12 Online
Injured or suspended players will now be automatically moved to the reserves rather than the subs bench.
Stopped the game from making too many calls for Support Your Club information upon entering the EAS FC hub.
Functional issues with the back/select button when returning to the EAS FC hub.
Enhancements made to loading in the pre-match arena before a EAS FC Challenge.
All Career Mode activity will now display correctly in the EAS FC news feed.
Fixed the occasional problem saw users fail to match up online due to mismatching squad files, despite re-downloading the online squad file.
Resolved stat tracking issues for Online Friendlies.
Creation Centre:
Crash problem when downloading a PNG image over the maximum file size.
Issues when trying to enter the CC Gallery after bookmarking numerous items to download.
Rare occurrence where your CC team would have a man missing on the pitch.
Changing kit sponsor images will no longer cause problems on the console.
Improved the way FIFA 12 handles large numbers of CC downloads in order to increase performance in the team-selection screen.
EA Sports Arena:
Enabled private sessions within the EA SPORTS Arena.
Turned on our in-game podcasts. You can access our regular five-minute chunks of audio news and information by turning the option on in the Game Settings > Audio menu. [English only)
Fixed loading and disconnecting issues for people with many save files on their hard drive.
[PC only] Corrected a problem where, after scoring a goal, custom music would stop playing for around two minutes. Also have added an option to the FIFA 12 launcher to disable some Windows settings, improving the framerate for people with lower-spec PCs.
BANG! Developer: SpinVector and Palzoun Publisher: DVGiochi Platforms: iPhone, iPad (reviewed), iTouch, Atom Netbook and PC Release Date: 21 October, 2011 Multi-player features: 12 November, 2011 Price: $3.99 – Available Here
Overview I’ve never played Bang! as a boardgame, although I can’t think as to why that would be because anything titled ‘spaghetti western’, ‘best-selling’ or ‘board game’ is usually pretty high on my purchase list. Still, I got the chance to fix this grave error, and got to do it on an iPad! So all is forgiven, self. There’s a certain love and delight which I believe should come with board games, its why I adore them, and why I am a sore loser. So lets see if Bang! managed to translate that to the mobile screen.
Gameplay
You have to play the tutorial when you first install which is good because if you don’t know the rules you will be as clueless as I used to be when I was a kid playing hearts and just moving whatever could be moved in the deck (referencing another classic card game just cos I can). If you already know the rules, just tap through and you can complain about that 1.4 seconds of your life that you wasted later. The tutorial takes you through a game that has clearly been set up to show you situations and its pretty awesome because it doesn’t feel like a tutorial half the time. Instead of taking you by the hand and pointing at things from afar, they let you do your own thing as well.
The default setting of five characters has two outlaws, one renegade, one deputy and a sheriff. Your goals differ depending on whom you play as, but unless you’re the deputy pretty much you just want the sheriff dead. Cue Bob Marley. The sheriff is revealed to all the players and then cue the tactical shooting and whatnot.
The controls are extremely simple, you select a card and drag. That didn’t stop me from doing things I didn’t mean to do like stealing the wrong card because while I was dragging I brushed past the top of another card, or accidentally shooting the sheriff when I was the deputy and was only trying to innocently pass my turn. The sheriff then thought I was an outlaw and proceeded to try and kill me for the rest of the game. I guess that is one of the downfalls of this game, shooting people accidentally.
Another downfall that I’m only picking on because this is based on a real-life game, is that I can imagine in the original version most of it is based on bluffing. Playing a game with your friends, looking around the table, trying to make them smile or laugh as you make that final decision about who to shoot. Playing Bang! online, or by yourself, is like playing online poker. A key component to the game is missing, and its great for people who are good with probability but for those of us relying on charm and good looks, it ain’t gonna work out so great.
There is also a play and pass option, but it just isn’t the same! Plus, if you’re playing and passing you don’t get the chance to see some of the gameplay that might be of important tactical information. Also, I don’t like other people touching my stuff.
The best solution I can come up with is setting up an online game on portable devices and then sitting in a circle and playing like that. But then, the online connection isn’t super stable so you might experience some drop outs from the person sitting across from you.
Putting bluffing issues aside, Bang! does in fact do a great job at bringing on the interest and involvement. It isn’t too fancy so that it tries to pretend it wasn’t a card game, and it’s just fancy enough to make it suitable for online play. Plus, the amount of platforms they’ve brought it to is quite impressive, so if you do like playing online there are definitely plenty of people for you to play.
Visuals The visuals are certainly stylised to Spaghetti Western, the characters all scream Western, from the well-dressed Southern gentleman, to the cowboys, to the belles who look like they could kill you while smirking seductively. Like I said before, there are animations, but they’re not over the top. There aren’t any cool-but-gets-old-quickly cut scenes to skip through, in fact a lot of the animations for things that happen are there for a second or two and then are gone. The developers seem to have had Gen Y in mind when they were designing this game.
Audio I pretty much always play on silent, so it’s a huge compliment to the game when I can’t play on silent because I feel like something is missing. The audio for the game almost completes the game, it isn’t just some soundtrack that they’ve thrown in or thought was just about there, it is the game. The Western soundtrack that just brings the game to another level, the sound effects, everything is perfect for it.
Overall In Bang! I have discovered a great, fun game. The rules of the original game stand well on their own, and this virtual version do bring some improvements in the way of well-placed animations and awesome sound effects and soundtrack. Multi-platform has really been brought to another level in this game, and that is definitely a huge credit to those who are into playing anonymous strangers on the internet (or friends, if you have them). The only downside is one that can’t be helped, it is the medium rather than the game itself.
EA Sports unveils the third and final installment video for SSX’s Massive World. SSX Creative Director Todd Batty and Environment Art Director Geoff Coates describe the intrinsic design for its varied environments. Whether you are snowboarding down the volcanic slopes in Africa or avoiding deadly drop-offs in the Alps, SSX will engulf you in inescapable beauty.
While exploring the frozen slopes of an Mt. Kilimanjaro, your only light source is an attached head lamp and the glow of bubbling magma. The excitement soon becomes very real as the darkness envelopes the screen.
If grinding down powerlines gets your blood pumping, the Rockies will be a definite joyride. Additional to powerlines players will also be able to coast on the ruins of abandoned trains. With a challenge course aptly named “Trees”, you will have to avoid smashing into the abundant Douglas Firs.
The third description covers the Alps. Old trainrails and expansive bridges cover the vast landscape. With half-buried houses, you are left to wonder why people would make a chairlift up these mountainsides.
SSX Massive World will be made available on February 16, 2012 in Australia as well as February 17, 2012 in New Zealand and Europe. North America will receive an earlier release on February 14. Get ready for the joyride of your life.
Remember a few weeks ago when we learned that there was a certain mode that would allow you to play as Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s final boss Galactus? Well now we know exactly how you can unlock that mode. Now this mode, which is inventively being called Galactus Mode, will not be available at the start but can be unlocked extremely easily.
Anyone who has a save file from Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds will immediately unlock it, while those who don’t must earn 30,000 PP. This means you will likely be able to quickly jump into a mode where you can literally wipe your opponent off of the map. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 comes out next week on November 15 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
