Japanese Superman Poster - Mmmm Gosh

Wish this film would hurry up and get released...

Wratty and co will be there on day of release at the London Imax for their 20 minutes of 3D! JOIN US!

Rockstar's Table Tennis Is LOADS Better Than Top Spin 2

OK our 360 is still buggered from when we downloaded that demo of that rubbish driving game the other week. We haven't bothered to get it replaced yet. We keep meaning to but we just forget.

However we do get to play it in five minute bouts. Just enough to get a match of Table Tennis in.

It's really really good! We've had a crack and you can get some really intense matches going! Even against the computer. It's not over complicated and hard like Top Spin 2, and it feels more like Top Spin 1 did. Just with different rules.


Multiplayer was a hoot too, once we'd got past how to do all the different types of spin's and how to do that matrix slowy downy thing.

What also helps is that the game's under 30 quid everywhere you go! If you have a 360 you should get this, done.

As kevin pointed out the other day though, you won't be playing it forever - especially when Wii sports comes out!

PAC MAN THE MOVIE TRAILER - YES THIS IS WEIRD

Coming to somwhere near you, possibly...

GAME Have Gone MAD

They're having one of their "lets get people onto our website" days where they sell small quantities of really good stuff but at stupid prices...


They had 360's on at around lunchtime, 10 core packs went in under 3 minutes at £140 and later 10 premiums went just a quick for about 220 quid! 12 Months Live membership went for £20, but they've done that before.

The 360's going at those prices though were a major surprise. Congratulations to the 10 that got in there commiserations to the others who like us got caught up in dodgy shopping baskets that empty themselves, and a site slower than a herd of turtles lunging through peanut butter.

Keep checking every hour until midnight tonight!

UPDATE - OK! This is silly, just try ordering anything now - we dare you! The big remote control just went for a tenner in less than a minute! 30 items gone just like that!

We're Gutted We Didn't Go To E3 Because...

1) We didn't get to follow these guys to play with the Wii:

2) We didn't get to meet girl on left.


Which for Wratty is probably a good thing, anyone who knows him remembers what he gets like around the good looking brunettes.

3) We didn't get to witness Peter Moore's interview with a cartoon. It's funny, Moore seems to be making more of a name for himself now than J Allard - who seems to have gone AWOL.

4) We didn't get to meet girl on left.


Maybe it's not so bad. We've got exactly the same pictures that everyone else did of THAT girl, and this time next year we'll have our own Wii to play with. Possibly even our own booth babe...

We still can't get over the amount of bad press flooding the internet about the PS3 though. Right now we can't see a single person supporting it and wanting to buy one. Should be an interesting next gen "war".

UPDATE on the old "who likes PS3 front"
After parusing Major Nelson's latest comments about the mysterious "is it free?" ps3 online service, we noticed a link to this article. We're just wondering if they were actually at this year's E3...?

Tomb Raider Legend Was Great! Lovely Glossy Piggyback Guide Came In Useful!

We finished Tomb Raider and we didn't think we'd ever bother!
We didn't even think we'd want to play another Tomb Raider game again, but we gave this one the benefit of the doubt. We also gave Piggyback's guide a go too because as you know by now we are completely in love with them, and we buy everthing they do.

Tomb Raider is definitely back on form and we're looking forward to the possible follow up. The game mechanics are fantastic and as we played the 360 version in HiDef, we can definitely say the graphics are lovely. The tropical locations look lush, and the dark locations look dark. The sound was pretty nifty too, we were in a cave with electric lights buzzing from our rear left speaker at one point and we thought we had a rogue wasp in the room.


So yeah we recommend the game, but not at £50... We got ours from Amazon at £35, and we wouldn't really spend that much if we could help it, we expect most of you would be happy to do a "10 day job" on it at GAME.

The Piggyback guide did really come in useful. This guide differs to the one we reviewed the other day, the Dragon Quest one. Obviously because they are completely different games, but also because they don't require the same level of detail. There's no alternate routes in Tomb Raider so the walkthrough is pretty much all you need. It's clear, concise and full of lovely pictures to show you where you should be. We were also trying to get our achievements sorted so rest assured the guide does show you what needs to be done to get these precious points.

However we did find that the points guide at the end of the book is slightly incorrect - it lists more achievements than there actually are, and with the wrong values. If you want to find the locations of the secret items yourself you can do, the guide has separated the locations from the walkthrough, but does tell you when one is about.


Why bother getting this guide over using the free services? Well this time as well as getting the fantastic quality guide you don't get from everyone else, you get some really cool behind the scenes info too. We're talking character profiles, a detailed breakdown of the previous Tomb Raider games, a massive behind the scenes making of the game including stuff that got deleted.


For the ultimate Tomb Raider Legend experience we recommend both the guide and the game, Amazon are doing the guide for only £7.25!

Smash Brothers Brawl For Wii Revealed With Solid Snake And Farting Wario!

Nintendo didn't show this at the conference, apparently they wanted to give this one a whole separate briefing!


We're glad they've shown it now even if it's not going to put in an appearance to 2007. Let's face it they've given us a hell of a lot for this year when other companies have been throwing that 2007 date at us instead.

So what can we look forward to?


- SOLID SNAKE! Apparently Hideo practically begged for the inclusion of the character! He'll be knocking around in his cardboard box, we expect a style similar to Samus.
- Discussions with other developers to include their characters, so don't rule out the likes of Sonic and others!
- More characters from Nintendo - Pit from Kid Icarus, Zero Suited Samus, Wario and Metaknight from Kirby! We're expecting to hear of more too that will be unlockable.
- Interestingly enough this doesn't seem to be making use of the Wii controller, but it hasn't been ruled out. You will be using your old GameCube pads once more for this one. Apparently there's too much action for the Wii controller. In all honesty we expected this, we could never see how four people would be able to use the Wii controller and keep up with the action.
- It will be online and this is one of the primary reasons for making the game so expect a flurry of interesting battle ideas and mayhem! At the moment they haven't suggested how many players will be battling at once.
- New weapons like Nintendogs blocking the screen, Wario farting and more!
- Masahiro Sakurai (the director of the game) wanted to "change the atmosphere of the game" beginning with the introduction of a full orchestra conducted by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and Latin style lyrics composed by Masahiro Sakurai. (it does sound a bit Star Wars!)


Visit the Japanese site here to find out more, see the trailer and get the theme tune downloaded!

So Now What Do We Do With Our XBox 360?

WE GET HALO 3! (next year)

We saw nothing in game, but we didn't think we would really. In fact we won't be expecting it until this time next year. The trailer said 2007, we're expecting November 2007 - four years after Halo 2.


But what a trailer. We can't sum it up and don't need to, because the guy who does the music, Marty O'Donnell said it all for us on Bungie.net:

"I want them to feel pride and longing the moment Master Chief walks out of the smoke," says Marty. "I want them to get excited and perhaps even froth at the mouth when they see the Covenant Capital ship and then the incredible buried artifact. I want them to be left with that, 'I can hardly wait to play this game' feeling by the end with a slight, 'I wonder what she meant by that' aftertaste."

And we did do all of that. We even did it synchronised with one of our friends on the 360 headset, and they haven't even played the first two games. No it's not cybersex, it's just a little like it to the point where it's not wrong.

There's now people speculating that this is the last of the series because we see "finish the fight" at the end of the trailer. We doubt it. They'll always be making Halo games if they'll make money, we may just get spinoff's instead - "Master Chief goes Skiiing" for example.

So what are we going to do until then?

- Splinter Cell in September! In case you didn't know - we love these games
- Viva Pinata this year? But we're still not convinced we're gonna wanna play it
- HD-DVD player - again something we just don't care about
- Fable 2 is coming sometime, but we don't know when
- We'll be getting Prey and F.E.A.R soon. We held back on getting F.E.A.R on the PC for this reason.
- More fun with breasts in DOAX2. That's what it's all about really, if you look at that trailer you'll see how much bigger and bouncier they're getting. That's all thanks to the power of XBox.

aware of gravity

aware of the paparazzi

So there's nothing really great here either for the immediate future. But once more we're excited about possibilities, and we don't need to be sold on the 360 - we've got one. There are however new things to look forward to like this cross platform Live thing where we'll be able to do stuff in Vista to pass across to the 360 and stuff. We hope to learn more about this someday.

For now however we're happy that we got a 360 and look forward to looking at people through the camera's and hope that more girls buy XBox.

So Now Do We Want A Wii?

Well in truth we always wanted one, this is the one thing we've truly been excited about since day one. We remember seeing the console this time last year and thinking "ooooh" then we saw the remote at TGS. When we saw that remote we felt something we hadn't felt since we unboxed our N64, something great.


We've been reading about people's disappointment with the conference, no pricing, no GUI, bla bla bla. But we've sat here thinking we've got a lot more than we expected, and we're still so very very excited. It seems that the people who are able to go to E3 these days are spoilt, they expect too much and fail to see the half full glass with everything that happens.

So the Wii...


- Miyamoto comes on and conducts, its just wonderful.
- Reggie comes on and talks, this is also just wonderful. He even joked about the name and how it isn't liked.
- We SEE Mario, Wario Ware, Excite Truck, Golf, Tennis, Baseball, Pilot Wings and Metroid. We see the stuff and we really want to play, nothing there is not interesting and exciting.
- We SEE them play Zelda which is utilising the controller fully, it looks amazing. We're actually excited about just sitting there fishing with it!
- Red Steel is demonstrated, you can barge doors open, and slice people up!
- The speaker feature on the remote is highlighted, hear the fishing road string tense in Zelda for example. Brilliant!
- The WiiConnect 24 stuff is talked about. You'll always have the machine on in a low power mode so the console is always accessible. This could be updates, or simply soneone visiting your village in Animal Crossing while you nap! We've always wanted something this great! We're sure this will also attract MMORPG makers. Warcraft fans - imagine spellcasting, fighting etc with the Wii-mote!
- Loads of others shown like Sonic, Madden, Tony Hawk etc


They certainly know how to put on a show, and we're completely happy. We weren't expecting prices and dates and stuff. We know we're getting it this year, and we know it's going to be cheaper than the 360 and that's OK with us.

This is enough for us. We've said we're not getting a PS3 because we're just not interested, and we seem to be coming under fire a bit for that! We'll probably get the same again because we're not really justifying our reasons for getting the Wii apart from saying we're completely excited about everything that it's doing and bringing to us.


We're really interested to know what you think though, are you excited in the same way we are? Or are we going mad?

We Broke That Test Drive Demo - TWICE NOW!

Well we thought we'd nip onto the 360 Marketplace to see what all this E3 fuss is about, looked for the Lost Planet Demo, couldn't find it and settled for Test Drive. While the game looks nowhere near as nice as Gotham, we did like the freedom.

We drove like maniacs around the place and wondered what a head-on collision would do. It seems that when you die you die for good because our XBox 360 stopped working.

it looks NOTHING like this

UPDATE - Yeah we just crashed the game again, went for a drive off the road and it froze

So Now Do We Want A PS3?

Well lets look at the evidence...

- Gran Turismo in HD, 1080p, HD, HD! 3 times bigger than something and 12 times bigger than something else
- EyeToy thing does Pokemon style fighting stuff when you put cards in front of them
- New SingStar showed what the UI will possibly look like and how the marketplace will work
- Formula One game shows you can use the PSP as a rear view mirror!
- Heavenly Sword which is looking like Ninja Gaiden and looks pretty cool, you kill loads of stuff
- Loads more rendered footage for some games that seem like good ideas like that Eight Days and an in game demo of Resistance: Fall of Man
- New Metal Gear 4 trailer shows all the characters, nothing in game
- Warhawk shows how you can use the new motion sensor controller to move an aircraft


They also gave out the base price of around £340 (when converted from the euro price they gave for the base unit) and the release date of November 17th, the same as the US!

Right so we watched this all unfold last night using the power of the internet, and we were pretty much underwhelmed until the Metal Gear trailer appeared. We just didn't see anything that looked exciting and new and fresh that had that "oooooh" feeling that you get from seeing a console maker bare its newborn to you. We thought the audience were quiet too until Metal Gear, so maybe it just wasnt us?

So do we want one? Short answer? No. There's nothing there to make us warrant spending over £300, nothing excited us unfortunately.

There were three things we did like, in order of preference:

1) Metal Gear 4 (but we knew this was coming and already saw an equally pretty trailer)
2) That Formula One 2006 with the rear view mirror PSP thing (but we still haven't bought a PSP - for the same reasons as we're not excited about the PS3 - there's nothing great on it)
3) That Ninja Gaiden a-like called Heavenly Sword looks really good fun

So they're the things we're going to keep an eye on, hopefully some more stuff will pop up soon but it looks like we're just going to borrow someone's PS3 (and PSP) when these titles appear in the coming years, instead of buying one.

Amped 3 For £17.99 - The Cheapest XBox 360 Game YET!?

We've just ordered our copy of Amped 3 from Play.com - purely because it's under 20 quid. We weren't actually going to bother grabbing this title, but well.... its cheap!

Get em while stocks last!

Piggyback's Dragon Quest Guide Is Their Best Yet

Recently we haven't found ourselves with much of an excuse to play on our Playstation 2, apart from the likes of Buzz and Singstar. These however, only appear when we are honored with guests and feel the need to challenge their minds or punish them with our singing.

So when we noticed Piggyback were bringing out a guide for Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King, we realised a few things. If they're doing the guide for it then it must be worth a go, and if it's 238 pages long like the press release states - then it must be a massive title!


Piggyback don't make just any guide for any game, and they're not any normal type of strategy guide. Looking at their past portfolio of guides you'll find the Metal Gear and more recent of the Final Fanstasy series, as well as the Gran Turismo's and Wind Waker. It's likely that if you've played one of these games you will probably have picked up one of these guides. If so you'll remember that they're wonderfully finished and contain the best information and the prettiest of colours. Aaaah.

We love them! In fact we have probably everything they've done! This newest addition just shows that they haven't let up over the years.


You can begin by throwing out the manual the came with the game, you don't need that rubbish! The guide tells you in detail how you need to get prepared with detailed control information and some early hints and tips for getting around the game. Then you can get tons of info on the characters you'll be controlling - they've all got their good and bad points, and to be honest there's some stuff here that we didn't even realise we could do within the game.

The good thing is that you don't have to flick through the walkthrough to find information about a specific weapon or item and where it's location is. This is separated into a table, you can easily find out what the point of the item is, who to use it against, how much it's worth etc. They've done the same with the monster's guide, each monster is pictured with full detail about it's HP, EXP and even a little info of how it may act in-game.


As for the walkthrough itself, this weighs in just under a hundred pages - half of the entire book. We've tried not to use it as much as we can, but it's hard not to when trying to play so many games in such little time!

We first used it around the Waterfall Cave section as we had a special moment and couldn't figure out what we were doing, and arriving at the boss we decided to use the guide to help us best him quickly.


We haven't yet finished the game because it is huge and while the guide is helping us get through it quicker - THE GAME IS HUGE! Kudos to Square for making another great RPG.

The guide is beautifully presented in full colour and you can tell the guys spent over half a year putting this thing together, it's just incredible. In the days where you have freedom of this sort of information at Gamefaq's you wonder why you need to buy a guide, but here is your reason. You have all the information at your fingertips and you knows its accurate. The walkthrough's are clear and illustrated, and if you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of that sword, or that creature - it's all there, indexed.

So in a nutshell, we're once again in love with the wonderful guys at Piggyback. Their commitment and attention to detail shines through in this guide yet again, and we're sure it's a bargain at £12.99, especially in the days when Prima throw out their guides at the same price. Amazon.co.uk are selling the guide for £8.97! Woo!

If you are still thinking to yourselves why bother getting this over using a free option like a guide on the Internet, well check out the free 13 page sample at Piggyback's website.

If you've got Dragon Quest you NEED this. If you haven't got Dragon Quest yet - why are you waiting? Don't tell us you bought the Fifa World Cup game...

Our Halo 3 Theory

We're always thinking about videogames, almost more than we think about women. This worries us sometimes.

We think about our special games, the one's we play more than any others. For Wratty this is Halo 2, or Geometry Wars, Mario Brothers 3, Animal Crossing, Ninja Gaiden, Dizzy or Uno.

We've been thinking recently about these Halo "Forerunner" rumors. Most of the time there is some speckle of truth in every rumor you read, especially those one's that pop up very often and on the more reputable sites of the internet.

So let us present you with the theory.
Halo 2 allowed us to control another character within the franchise, the Arbitur. Bungie know that a lot of people didn't like this and most found it boring. (Wratty blindly loved it!) What this did however is allow for a different method of story telling - how best to get out the story from both sides.


We believe that this time you'll be able to do the same thing again, however controlling a character from a different, not a concurrent timeline. Pictures this - Halo 3 begins exactly where the last took off, you're aboard that big ship you stowed away on and you're working your way through it to try and stop them getting to earth. You fail and you end up on earth, (Let's face it, they'll take you back to earth because they were the most enjoyable levels in Halo 2) or possibly the moon. Either way the story will most likely continue the prophet's mission to activate the ark, which is believed to be at one of these places. If not part of, or the ship itself.

Then the action switches to somewhere in the past - something mirroring what is happening right now in the future, but something relevant to the forerunners themselves. Who you would control we don't know. Perhaps an actual forerunner, but this narrative will once again to help deliver the story and fill in the missing pieces.


You'd find out what the forerunners looked like, why they couldn't stop the flood and instead created the Halo rings and why they vanished. Hopefully the biblical references will be explained with the relation of the flood and the Ark, we may find that if the Ark is indeed located on Earth, then we could in fact be the forerunners and wouldn't that be interesting for the remaining Prophet?


There you have it! Remember this isn't us giving out "insider" news - we don't know anyone inside anywhere. It's just a bit of fun so tell us, what do you think chaps?

The "WE'RE AT E3 BUT YOU'RE NOT" Taunts Begin

We were going to make an attempt to go to E3 this year, but realised we couldn't afford it. We were going to start up a donation scheme or fool you all into buying time shares in a french villa, but we were already in enough trouble for everything else we've done.

So we're stuck here in the UK and Wratty has come down with Chicken Pox, and no it's not best to get it when you're past your teens. Yeah it hurts.

So what can we do while we wait for the floodgates to open? Well we can look at everyone else's stuff because lets admit it, you may as well flaunt it while you got it.

There's SPOnG sounding like your typical student rich kid "we got drunk lots cause we don't know what else to do and it pisses off mummy and daddy" but we hope they'll bring their usual exclusives 5 minutes before the rest of newsnow.

We've got bastards all over flickr now tagging their pics with "E306" showing off their passes and the huge posters all over the convention. Still no one has got any amazing insider pics like they did last year - remember the voip DS stuff people snapped early? Ah well.

an industry "bastard"

Have a good time lads. We intend to mug every single person from Paragon when they get off the bus in Bournemouth.

the FPS is 14 years old today.

yes yes, it's another post based on information we have taken from the wikipedia, but i don't see you writing anything better! eh! At least we haven't made any wii jokes this week.

Anyway, 14 years ago today Wolfenstein3D was released.

the end.


mein gott in himmel

New Superman Trailer Is Out!

Yippeee!

GET FOLLOWING THIS LINK NOW!

This film cannot come quickly enough

Look Brando didn't die!!!


Neither did Reeves!


FUCK!


Awwww


WOOOOH!


Go get em Supes!

Today Ladies and Gentleman, (and of course the Internet) let it be known the Wratty has learnt how to cry once more.

So Channel 4 Has Run Out Of Ideas Then?

Apparently so.

We've just be interrupted during our dinner by the telly session by an advert during Friends on E4 for this new program:


Boys will be girls - where we take a load of rubbish ex boy band members and try to pass them off as a girl band instead.

Next we'll probably see the BBC retort with Graham Norton host Strictly Come And Have Sex Change Live.

Mr T Is Back On TV With Reality TV Show "I Pity The Fool"

Maybe the value will increase of our Mr T keyring now...


We're loving the idea of seeing Mr T help out those in need; "In "I Pity the Fool," Mr. T will help everyday folks from car salesmen who need to meet quotas, to parents who need chaperones for their daughters"

Check out more from Variety.com here!

New Superman Footage! Okay It's From A Coke Advert BUT YOU CAN SEE HIM FLY!

We don't need to say anymore...


CHECK IT OUT!

THIS CAN'T COME QUICKLY ENOUGH!