Shawn Elliot sums it up nicely.
I was literally screaming at my iPod listening to this week’s 1up Yours podcast. I think I spent half an hour venting to my brother about it and Metal Gear yesterday. I should have recorded it because I am struggling to write it up here.
Suffice to say Shane Bettenhausen and Ryan Payton don’t get it. They are in a bubble that resides up Kojima’s arse.
I find it hard to read game reviews these days, not just for the appauling hyperbole Shawn points out, but for the whole meaningless nature of scores and the subsequent arguement that ensues. MGS4 just highlights the immaturity of the entire enthusiast press be it Edge, IGN or whoever.
Play the game, critique it, done. Your scales and scores are meaningless.
As for MGS4, my opionion can be summed up in one sentence. If I wanted to watch an overly long and overly complex movie I’d go do that, I don’t need a game to do that for me.
Here is my progess so far. Been hitting it hard 
I have been saving this rant since last week due to the blog issues. I still think it’s relevant.
When I read this blog post by the BBC’s Darren Waters last week I started to get very angry. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it I can make a cool rational judgement - something I suggest Mr Waters tries.
“The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”
I don’t care which side he is on but the fact is that he and the BBC should not be taking sides. It’s all very well to brag about how amazing your online video service will be on the Wii but it’s another thing to shit all over Nintendo’s competion. It’s called impartiality buddy.
Now to the techie meat of the issue. Any browser that supports the latest flash can play iPlayer content. So that’s why Wii and PS3 support is on the way - they have browsers. The catch is that this is the low quality version, the high(er) quality video must be downloaded. Unlike that BBC blogger I have a PC connected to a large screen and attempted to watch Doctor Who via the flash player this week. It looked horrendous. I couldn’t watch it. The same video I couldn’t watch will be what is offered on the Wii and a download option can never be implemented that platform.
People don’t mind watching YouTube videos on their PCs in tiny windows but when you stretch it out on a huge screen they will not be impressed.
Warning! This review of Mario Kart Wii might be considered pretentious, overwritten, unreadable and harmful to your health.
Bad Journalism! As written by Edge Magazine.
It’s Mario Kart people, not Bioshock.
[via Andy via IM]
The Vista-capable lawsuit is finally yielding some facts about Nvidia’s record of horrendous driver support for Microsoft’s latest OS. This is of particular interest to me as last year I switched over to ATI after many months of problems with my Nvidia card under Vista (which worked flawlessly in XP). This caused me a lot of wasted time and my wallet was significantly lighter by the end of it. According to the newly released documents they were responsible for 479,000 crashes making up 29% of the total logged!
17.9% are Microsoft’s fault, those are the crashes that made me switch back to XP even after shelling out for the OS and new hardware for it.
If you are not already excited about the imminent release of GTA 4 I highly recommend you checkout Edge’s in depth interview with Sam Houser that covers the development of the entire series and where Rockstar are headed in the future.
The one thing that hasn’t been covered to date by the official PR channels are the multiplayer portions of the game. Aside from magazine leaks much of the detail is going to be discovered when the game ships and gets into people’s hands. Make no mistake about it, 16 players in Liberty City is a huge deal
Thinking back to first 2D GTA games which had network multiplayer on PC I remember how fun it was due to the variety of ways you could take the fight to your enemies. Shoot a rocket at their car, car jack them and back over the splayed out body and so much more. Then the GTA 3 trilogy came about sans multiplayer but that didn’t stop enterprising modders from trying to get some kind of network play going. Through all the bugs and glitches I played Multi Theft Auto with many a university house mate and everytime it was clear - this could be a gem of an experience if done properly by Rockstar.
I am more intrigued by this than the main game in a lot of ways. Crackdown, while a great co-op experience, was unfortunately limited to 2 players leaving me a few times having to pick between friends. The technical challenge involved in getting 16 players synced up in an open word environment must have been hard to overcome and I will be blown away if the online experience is smooth.
The secondary issue is the split player base. My friends who know a lot about games own Xbox 360s. My friends who are less well informed own PS3s (or intend to). From everything published the 360 version is looking to be the best in terms of performance, online play and exclusive downloadable content. Those three facts won’t make a damn bit of difference in the UK as GTA is associated with Playstation very strongly over here. As such I won’t be able to play with everyone I know.
Hopefully some fresh information will come out in the next few weeks. Hard to believe it’s only a month away. This time things will be different!
Checking out the new content released by Microsoft during GDC this week hamered home that the Xbox dashboard and Live in general is getting rather complicated to navigate. Looking at my games folder it has 92 games in there including Live Arcade, demos and XNA stuff. Getting to what you want can be tricky and it’s not always obvious in which area the thing you are after will be located. Added to this many similar functions yield different interface concepts, just compare purchasing and running a Live Arcade game versus an Xbox Original game - completely different and sends my HCI alarm bells ringing.
Of course while I’m thinking of this comes the news that MS are looking to double Live’s user base and completely redo the way the content is presented. Maybe they should take a page out of Apple’s handbook on this one? I do like the new Apple TV interface.
Managing the sheer amount of content is daunting and MS don’t exactly have the best track record in UI design. I’ll be impressed if they even go ahead and completely refresh what they have now, its gonna take some big balls because the backlash from some parts of the community will be enormous. Good luck!
After announcing it here over a year ago and having to endure a bit of crap about it from various people (including Bioware), Mass Effect has now been officially confirmed as coming to the PC in May. This year. Yes its a 6 month delay. Thanks for being honest from the start Bioware!?!
The time was right for a new venture so here it is, my new collaboration with Andy Griffiths is a site dedicated to Steam news and information that we like to call 
![Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61THJCbOxwL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]")
![Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511PW90lDhL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]")
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