IainYesterday spelled payday for me and in my mind payday translates to “how much cash can you waste in 24 hours day”. Among other, not so essential, items such as food and a new toothbrush I managed to nab a few new games, a red and black 360 controller, a new router and a pose-able Ryu figure. The item that I’m most impressed by though is the Xbox answer to Sony’s Eyetoy, the Live Vision Cam.
Oh the fun I had taking hundreds of stupid pictures for my Burnout Paradise license before finally settling on the “startled cat” look I currently have, then building an army of Chewnicorns in Viva Piñata: TiP by constantly scanning the same Piñata card.
There’s still so much I have to do try out with the camera, like taunting people I take down on Burnout Paradise with a photo of my cheesy grin. Scanning my handsome visage into Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 so people know it was me they shot down for the 100th time. See how well my poker face holds out in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em and of course, get drunk with some friends and create awesome films in You’re in The Movies. I can see me and the Live Vision Cam being friends for a long time, even if it’s just to send stupid pictures to my friends over live.
The Xbox Live Vision Camera is currently bundled with You’re in The Movies for £14.99 in store at Gamestation or £14.98 online at game.co.uk (compared to the £35 – £40 for a separate Live Vision Cam in most stores)
To quote Gloria Gaynor, first I was afraid, I was petrified but unlike Miss Gaynor I was more concerned by the living dead eating my insides than a man walking out on me. But will I be able to survive with the new downloadable content that was released for Valve’s award winning Left 4 Dead?
April 21st, a date that zombie enthusiasts and co-op loving gamers alike have been waiting for. For those who haven’t played Left 4 Dead, the premise is simple. You play as one of four survivors (Zoey, Louis, Bill and Francis) of a zombie apocalypse, with the other characters being played by either AI, friends or random people online. There are 4 campaigns to choose from which are all unlocked from the start and feature the sort of locales you would expect to see in classic zombie flicks such as stand offs on a hospital roof, chases through cornfields and battles in a deserted airport. On paper, and indeed playing on your own, Left 4 Dead does get very repetitive but play through it with friends and L4D is endless fun.
And to think people used to worry about ants at their picnic...
Now onto the Downloadable Content. The first, and not so major, addition is the inclusion of the two previously omitted campaigns (Dead Air and Death Toll) in versus mode. While this addition adds a fair bit more variety to versus modes, it really should’ve been included on the disc. The best part of the DLC is an entirely new mode entitled “Survival”. This mode pits the four survivors against hordes of zombies in a constant stand-off at a variety of locations, including a new area that’s never been seen in L4D before. The pace is extremely hectic with only a few seconds between hordes to grab ammo or heal, special infected quickly build up until you find yourself facing two smokers, a hunter and a tank all wanting your brains for a midnight feast and on the whole matches only tend to last around 4 minutes. The emphasis on team play and communication in Survival mode is particularly strong compared to other rounds as you constantly have to watch each other’s backs for special infected. Overall the DLC is very good and as it’s free there’s no reason not to download it. The only thing I would’ve liked to see is achievement points for lasting certain amounts of time etc. but the lack of new achievements doesn’t detract in the slightest when you actually manage to last long enough to receive a medal.
Well it’s a new day and a new month, yes I know it’s halfway through April but I’ve been busy. March has come and gone and with it, the celebration of my year’s Xbox Live subscription renual. A year’s subscription pretty much wasted as the only games I ever played online in the first nine or ten months were Call of Duty 4 and the occasional scrap on Soul Calibur IV. This year’s subscription, on the other hand, brings about a new and improved me. If the old me was a Live virgin, this year’s already leaving so many notches on my gold account bedpost that it may be mistaken for severe case of woodworm.
Let me start by saying that online gaming isn’t a new experience to me. I’ve played many a PC game online and had a lot of fun doing it but my first live experience, which involved me and a small group of either 12 year old boys or 30 year old eunochs who thought they were being clever by camping for the whole match and resorting to racism and rubbish insults whenever they were killed, was an entirely different beast. Now as you can imagine, this isn’t the best way to be introduced to a service you need to pay around £45 a year for, but this is the man who has over £100 worth of Rotostak caging for one dwarf hamster. The months that followed my plunge into the live community were strictly single player affairs, only leaving the comfort of one man’s mission to blow things up in interesting ways for the occasional COD4 battle with a few friends. That is until January. Cue dramatic music.
In January I was introduced to a site called ready-up.net through an advert for new staff writers. In January I joined the forum of said site. In January, dramatic pause, I discovered the fun side of Xbox Live gaming.
