Revealing Indoor Heroes

RPG-TV is changing. Once construction is complete the ugly duckling that was RPG-TV will emerge reinvigorated as IndoorHeroes.com. Expect the change towards the end of July/begining of August.

Rockband Euro Pricing...

... is a complete piss take. It actually almost sickens me. £180 for the full (read "proper") experience. I could buy a new XBox 360 and a new copy of Gears for that price and still have enough change to ride the merry go round and buy some penny sweets for the journey home.

I read the interview over at Eurogamer and I found myself cheering internally at the moxy displayed by Ellie Gibson. Check it out...

Eurogamer: Let's pretend this is Watchdog and I'm Nicky Campbell. We've had dozens of calls and texts, alright comments on the website, and I'd like to put some of them to you. One reader says, "If I wanted to spend EUR 240 I'd buy a real instrument and join a band."

Rob Kay: So they should. Go and do that, yeah... If someone wants to go out and buy a real guitar instead, that's awesome. More power to them.

...

Eurogamer: So if you weren't working on it, if you were a plain old gamer, would you pay GBP 180 for Rock Band?

Rob Kay: Yeah. Maybe I'd try it over at a friend's first, to see if I liked it or not. Rock Band is a fantastic game for playing at a party, so lots of people will get that opportunity, and maybe they'll want to take that opportunity before they invest the money. I wouldn't blame them; it's not a cheap game, it really isn't. But it's a game that delivers that much more in terms of its fun factor and the experience it gives you.

Eurogamer: Perhaps Eurogamer readers could pop round yours to have a little go and see if it's worth it?

Rob Kay: [Laughing] Yeah, give me a call...

RPG-TV Avatar Pack Series 2

I figured we were about due for another bunch of avatars. Here's the second series so to speak, use them as you wish (though forums and messenger are recommendations). Enjoy!

Impressions: Bully Scholarship Edition

I'm 0.81% through Bully Scholarship Edition for the XBox 360 which probably doesn't give me any right to discuss it's qualities. I'm going to anyway. So far the game is a melange of frame rate issues, graphical glitches, loading screens and just poor graphics in general. I hope this patch Rockstar are working on arrives soon because I only just bought the game and, while I can tell theres a great game under the hood, I just can't get to it underneath the completely off putting frame rate and wonky camera (during indoor sections anyway).

Right. I'm gonna jump back in and update this post once I've got more of a flavor for the game.

EDIT: Right, I refuse to play any more of this title until the patch hits. Just ugh.

A more in depth look at Amy

With Amy what we really want to do is create the ultimate girlfriend, someone who'll make the readers almost wish she was real, after all, hot girls that know their games aren't exactly easy to come across. Rather than just spit out another Lilah, that is to say any girl that also likes video games, we're trying to make her sexually aware and suggestive- but in a cool gaming way.

RPG-TV: New Character

We're going to mix up the character relationships a little with a new character, Amy, who will date Seth. Old school readers might notice a similarity to an old old character... Curious?

Back when we ran a survey to gather some feedback to improve the comic a couple things you guys kept asking for was more female characters and continuing story lines. Not ones to ignore our readers this is exactly what you'll be getting.

Gears of War Ink

A friend of mine from University got this Gears of War Tattoo a while ago so I thought I'd share with the group. What do you think? Anyone else got gaming ink done?

New features coming to RPG-TV.com

For those that read our Webcomic regularly (and according to our latest figures thats some forty thousand of you) you might be pleased to know we're implementing a couple of new features.

First up is a site skinner that will let you change the pattern/texture around the website so for those that fancy something a bit livlier than the current grey lines you're free to mix things up a little.

Secondly is a comment ticker on the right hand side next to the news posts so you can see new comments being added to archived comics. This means you can comment on an old comic and readers will know to check back and see what you had to say.

What do you think? Got any more suggestions? If so lay 'em on me in the comments below and they may make it into the next round of site improvments.

Another Mortal Kombat movie? Won't somebody think of the children!

As if the Resident Evil series and Uwe Boll's efforts wern't enough the brains in tinsel town think it's about time they try their luck at another Mortal Kombat movie. I am inclined to disagree.

"mink says the project isn't so much a sequel as it is a “re-envisioning(if that is a word) of the Mortal Kombat franchise from top to bottom. Todays audience is a savvy involved group so the film must be A plus plus in every area in order to capture the magic of the first film. It is taking the entire concept to the next level across the board in every area visual design, story, cast, FX, photography and most importantly the fighting scenes. The original Mortal Kombat game was born a child of many visual loves by the creators at midway so this latest version borrows heavily from that pioneering spirit and must be thought out and executed at the highest level in order for it succeed in today's market place. This is no overnight task.''

And yet I suspect the movie will end up looking rather like it was an overnight task, and heres why. Mortal Kombat is a game that looked outstanding, that is to say, it looked outstanding back when it was first released. The appeal of the original titles has long since been drowned in a sea of medicore visuals and archaic gameplay mechanics to the point where only the avid MK veterans even give a shit about the franchise. I don't believe I'm incorrect in that statement?

Mortal Kombat is a relic of the nineties, and like most relics of the nineties, it doesn't look too pretty in the cold harsh light of modern times. At least Transformers had a collosal budget and some big names attached to it. More than can be said for "mink's" take on this old arcade brawler.

You know what grinds my gears?

The lack of a button lock for the PSP's music playing functionality. I'll be swanning around London with my PSP in my pocket playing whatever happens to tickle my fancy and some moose cock bumps into me, WHAM he's knocked my PSP, the L button was depressed and my song is reset to the begining. After 4 consecutive instances of this event I am litteraly ready to smash somebodys skull using a rolled up LondonLite (free paper) and then kick a bin over. Thats right! Bin kickery has become involved!

And thats what grinds my gears.


EDIT: Okay I found the button lock, I can't believe I never knew the power switch doubles as a button lock. Sweet.

Zero Punctuation reviews COD4... Uses actual Cod fish as graphical joke.

Watch and enjoy the latest animated rant by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw as he takes COD4 to task for being a bunch of American willy waving. Good times.

The tortoise and the hare (or Sony and Microsoft)

EA have stated that they expect the PS3 to outsell the 360 in 2008. How can this be? The PS3 has had the slowest launch in history as far as onlookers are concerned with a starting retail price placing the console out of the budget of everyday gamers and high calibre exclusive games being few and far between. Meanwhile the 360 has massively grown it's install base, brought online gaming to the masses and enjoyed numerous award winning exclusives including Halo 3, Bioshock and Mass Effect.

I'm not sure what EA based their predictions on, however as a consumer I'm starting to look at the PS3 and 360 a little differently than I did say 4 months ago. The PS3 price has dropped a couple of times and is now bundled with a number of quality titles including Drakes Fortune and Ratchet and Clank. On top of this Blu-Ray is looking stronger and stronger each week as the fortune of Toshiba and HD-DVD dwindles. This, I don't believe, is enough for Sony to pull up alongside Microsoft in this 3 man horse race, at least not yet.

What's really got me tempted to change teams is Microsoft's shoddy attempt at quality control. Almost everyone I know who has a 360 (and thats a lot) has experienced technical problems with it. A little while ago some guy came forward claiming to be a technician or something for Microsoft and basically detailed the reasons for the high 360 failure rate. I believe him. As far as I'm concerned Microsoft has shown gamers no respect at all by producing and continuing to produce a faulty console, mine has already red ringed once and within weeks of getting it back I'm seeing the red lights flash up occasionally, like a warning that the damn things on it's last legs already.

It's not just the bricking issue though is it, lets be honest here. The 360 is a pretty damn unreliable beast. Sometimes I'll call up the guide menu and then press B to send it away and it'll stay there, frozen for upwards of 2 minutes while the machine, like Vista, sits and has a think. Owning a 360 has tried my patience and while I love the console and it's games, one day, and one day soon it's going to push me too far and I will send it back to Microsoft with a polite note that reads "Fuck you, I'm buying a PS3... See what you've reduced me too!?"

Conflict: Denied Ops = Captain Blands Monotonous Adventures

Yesterday I downloaded and played the demo for a game I'd never heard of called Conflict: Denied Ops, a first person shooter for the XBox 360, although it may well get excreted onto other consoles as well. The opening "cinematic" was the first of many indicators that this game was clearly made with all the care and precision of an autistic ice sculptor with no hands and black and decker drills attached to the end of his stumps. The character models were abysmal and the overall graphical feel just fell completely flat, it's neither bad enough to feel stylized nor good enough to be labeled realistic.

After watching the opening cinematic in which some scenery gets a good destroying courtesy of a graphics and physics engine that can only be described as "budget" I found myself playing as one of two characters who fall just shy of "so lame that it's cool" and end up being just tiresomely lame. The controls were acceptable but I'm loathe to use such a positive comment, note well that I'm not saying the controls were good, just that moving my character didn't make me feel like a drunk coma patient walking through nipple high water.

Within 60 seconds I found flammable barrels and gas canisters arbitrarily placed around the level by some level designer who clearly still had "L" plates attached to his Dev kit. Oh yeah; these barrels had flammable stickers on them! As if we didn't already know at this point that a red barrel in a generic FPS will explode/catch fire when shot. Anyway so I walked around and shot a few goons noticing how unbearably weak the sound effects were in the process, honestly I've reloaded spud guns that sound more impressive than these things.

I can see why Eidos and Pivotal Games have decided to brand this as a "casual first person shooter", anyone who's played a similar game before will instantly label this as the most underwhelming experience of 2008, meanwhile anyone who's never played a FPS before is likely to stay away from this monstrosity because the box art isn't exactly appealing to the kindly old grandmas that are picking up "Princess Peach Window Shopping 3" or "Wheelchair duck feeding" on the Wii.

If there is a God this game will sell no more than 10 copies and those will be to the family of the developers, just like when a shit band plays a gig and only the bands girlfriends turn out to watch.

Subway warms my heart

I make no secret of my almost obsessive attitude towards Subway and their particular sandwich's. A foot long Italian BMT is just what I need for a lunch time pick me up or indeed as a pick me up between Italian BMT's! I just got back from town and devoured such a sandwhich but while I was there I saw a man feeding his baby a Subway! It warmed my heart to see the little tyke clench a single piece of destroyed lettuce and struggle to put it in her mouth. Obviously she couldn't clench the whole sub her hands were about as big as a POG but I could tell she wanted to eat the whole thing. Bravo.

RPG-TV animated short...

I wanted to get this up here just because it's nice to have a little video content once in a while...

Digital distribution andProduct placement in movie content

I was thinking today about the advances in digital content distribution we're seeing these days, specifically with apples new TV service and movie downloads across XBox Live and the impact this might have on the value of product placement.

It may not be a big deal but for advertisers looking to get their moneys worth out of product placement this new digital renting model may take away some of the inherent value. The best way to explain it is with an example. Say you buy Transformers on DVD, this is a movie rife with product placement, the first one springing to mine for me is the iPod the army guy is holding in the helicopter scene right at the beginning (iconic white headphones especially visible). Now you own this DVD you have paid probably £8 - £12 or around $15 for it and it therefore stands to reason that you'll want to watch this content multiple times across the entire lifetime you own this product.

With services like apple TV you would instead download this movie, watch it within the allotted 24 hours (or whatever the time restriction happens to be for the service) and then the content would automatically delete from your hard drive. Are you likely to pay to rent this movie again? I would say this is unlikely.

If in fact we are heading heading towards a future where digital distribution becomes the standard is there a likely hood of movies being watched less regularly? If so, for company X paying to have product Y featured in a movie this surely becomes a less valuable source of brand exposure as consumers are watching the content only once (maybe twice) instead of the repeat views we've historically had with traditional distribution.

Obviously I'm overlooking TV and the role it plays in all this, I'm just committing my thoughts to blog and now I'm tired and ready for bed. If anyone has any thoughts please comment, I'd love to hear them.

My gaming setup

I figured I'd throw up a picture of my gaming setup because a) I'm rather proud of it and b) because it might be interesting to one or two people who are into this kind of thing...

I'm really proud of that Halo point of sale display that I got off a friend through a trade. It hammers home the gaming theme, you know, in case the 360 wheel, GH II controller and XBox 360 weren't enough of a clue. The TV is a 40" Samsung, since the photo's I've also acquired a 5.1 system also Samsung. OO! Also the Beanbags are SUMO Omni's which freaking rock! I strongly reccomend them.

First post and a wallpaper for the PSP XMB

So this is the first post of my new blog, how frequently it updates remains to be seen but it'll be nice for me to have a space to keep my thoughts and photo's.

I created this PSP wallpaper the other day as a thank you to RPG-TV readers for taking a survey that really helped me out at work. I'll throw it up here...