So, the famous blue blur is 20 years old. Makes me feel younger in a way, since Sonic is the first thing I really remember about being a child, it feels like it’s my 20th birthday too. Meh, who am I kidding? I’m turning into an old fart. Sonic, on the other hand, is looking better than ever, and this title is the final return to full form that has been building now for the past few years.

The turn-around for Sonic came in 2008′s Sonic Unleashed. Moving away from pointlessly complicated storylines, overbearing new characters and glitch-filled gameplay, Unleashed showed us that Sonic could be cool again. It introduced the new standard Sonic gameplay which has been carried through to Sonic Colours, and now Sonic Generations:  apart from that nasty ware-hog business, Unleashed was amazing.

Then came Colours, taking the Unleashed daytime formula and making it even better – with levels designed around an interplanetary theme park, we saw a return to the crazy, colourful level styles of the original Sonic games. Not to mention Wisps, those guys are so cute.

Now we have Sonic Generations – which is the good, the bad, and the rather ugly outings  of the past 20 years rolled into one. On paper this sounds worrying, so, does the game correct the past 10 years of Sonic mistakes?

The answer is, sort of.

The storyline for this game is almost entirely absent, there is a vague plot that runs through the game about the “Time Eater” and whatnot, but there are 12 cutscenes in the entire game, and most of them are short and inconsequential.  In a way I’m a bit disappointed by this, since Sonic Colours had a fairly okay plot, that progressed the story and had lots of humor in it. There is humor in this game too, but there’s so little done in the cutscenes and they’re so few that, really, they feel out of place even being there at all.

The levels themselves are largely great. You play through one level from every major Sonic game, both as “Classic” Sonic (the cute round one) and “Modern” Sonic (The tall retarded one) – Classic plays pretty much 1:1 as he did in Sonic 1 through Sonic & Knuckles, while Modern plays as he did largely in Unleashed, with a few minor tweaks. The actual level designs are largely faithful to the originals with one or two little new bits thrown in, but overall, nothing substantially new here.

There are two main reasons to play this game;

1: Playing classic Sonic levels in awesome 2.5D
2: Playing Dreamcast & Sonic 06 levels with gameplay that isn’t totally fucked.

The further you get into the game, the more recycled things seem to become, with obvious reasons. Playing the classic levels was a total joy and you feel like these levels  have the most effort put into them. The Dreamcast era levels feel like they’ve been upgraded but, since the original versions where 3D already, you can’t help but feel it’s the same stuff presented in a much nicer way. The modern era levels, apart from Crisis City (it was nice to play this one in a less broken way, shame though, just shows Sonic 06 could have been decent) – just feel like harder versions of levels I’ve already played.

A nice touch is the fact that you can unlock music tracks to use in different levels – including remastered and remixed tracks from classic Sonic games. This adds some nice little touches, for example, playing Speed Highway as Classic Sonic with Starlight Zone as the music does feel like you’re playing the latter instead. There’s a few other nice matches in there, i.e. playing Toxic Caves from Sonic Spinball over Chemical Plant or Marble Zone over Crisis City. There’s also a ton of artwork to unlock which is quite a cool thing to have, as it spans the entire 20 year history of Sonic.

Each level comprises of one main act and five side mission acts for each Sonic. There are also rival battles between Metal Sonic, Shadow and Silver. We also have the Red Ring hunt returning from Sonic Colours – but despite all this, I am afraid this game is far, far too short. This game takes, roughly, from putting the disc in to completing everything the game has to offer, one weekend. Compared to Sonic Colours, this game falls completely flat in this department.

Infact, if you removed the nostalgia element from this game, it would be a rather poor outing when compared to Colours, which had far more to see and do. Each level in Colours had it’s own set of red rings to collect, and each level had 6 full acts and a boss to complete. The side acts in Generations are normally quite short, mission based and take place in the same level as Act 1, unlike colours where each act was completely unique and mostly of a decent size. Colours also had the Sonic Simulator for even more fun.

The bosses in this game are also stupendously easy to defeat, even on “hard” mode. The final boss was hard, but only because I was expecting something harder and was trying to figure out what I had to do – imagine my surprise where the aim of the final boss is to just boost, and thats it. Infact it’s completely fucking appalling, and that isn’t a phrase I should be using for this game.

The Good;

• Great graphics and music
• Great levels to play
• Gameplay is spot on in main levels

Tbe Bad;

• Storyline isn’t very in-depth
• Cut scenes are rather badly rendered
• Game is very short, takes no time at all to 100% it

The Ugly;

• Shockingly easy boss battles
• No real love or attention to the menu system compared to colours
• Online play is rather basic and suffering from the usual leaderboard hacking rendering it worthless.

Yeah, it’d be unfair for me to say I’m totally disappointed in this game, it does bring joy to the 5 year old who played the Classics, and the 15 year old who had a Dreamcast, and it brings some closure to the disturbed 20 year old who was forced to suffer through Bestiality and Silver the Hedgehog a couple years back. I’d be lying, however, if I said I didn’t expect more. This game is over far too soon, it leaves you wanting for more. God, I hope there’s more. I hope there’s some cracking DLC levels coming out for this in the future.

Sadly, however, I doubt this will be the case. Shame.

Lets focus on the positives first. The game is incredibly interactive, Duke can interact with almost any item in the environment, often with hilarious consequences. This isn’t just a gimmick, using items boosts your overall “Ego” (Duke has ego instead of a health bar) – the game starts off teaching you how to piss in a urinal and draw on a whiteboard (start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say. This is the level we’re working on here, folks).

Duke’s one liners are as classic as ever. All the classic lines are there, but a lot of new material is in there too, keeping funny. That’s about all the positives I can think of, though. The rest of the characters in this game are dull, lifeless and boring. They also have a tendency to look in one fixed direction when talking rather than facing the player. The non-playable characters in this game feel like they’ve been through several engine changes, a lot of them seem retextured several times. In fact, a lot of the textures in this game seem poor by modern standards, you can’t help but notice how pixelated and grainy they can be. Weather this is intentional or not for the “retro” feel, I don’t know.

The storyline isn’t exactly a classic either. Okay, I wasn’t expecting much in this department, but the storyline is neither engaging nor particularly funny. Duke’s lines are the only real source of humor, but the setting, situations and characters merely exist for the sake of it. In many ways this makes the game feel like it was born out of the 90′s (which it was) – games have moved on a lot since then, and this feels different from any game you’d expect to pick up these days.

For anyone looking for a classic style First Person Shooter, this game will be worth getting. It’s been a while since a decent FPS that was simple and fun to play like this was created, and the old mentality of levels that have small puzzles of where to go next and what to do next are something that you seldom get in games these days, which seem to increasingly play themselves with set pieces and cut scenes.  What this games does is bring nostalga value, and that isn’t a bad thing.

There’s one unforgivable sin, however, one that this game cannot and will not be allowed to live down – the loading times. When you look at games like Fallout, you see a game where you have massive scale environments and activity with minimum loading screens and loading time – this is the complete opposite. Levels are relatively short and loading times between them excessively long. This would be forgivable if it wasn’t for the fact that, every time you die, the entire level loads again. When you’re on a high difficulty setting, this means you can spend 30 seconds playing and 75 seconds waiting for a load. This is frustrating beyond belief.  There is no need in this day and age for a game to reload the entire level for a checkpoint.

All in all then, this game does not even remotely live up to the hype. It never could, but it falls a lot further flat than I ever expected it would do. As a famous reviewer once said, “Duke Nukem Forever is going to have to cure at least two different types of cancer to live up to the hype after all these years.” – crying shame. If only it were 1999.

It’s been 17 days since PlayStation 3 users across the globe were sent into the dark ages, and reports have been circulating that several of their users have now reverted into a pre-historic state. Run down estates such as Clifton and The Valley have decended into war, as those who can’t afford to pay for a proper service struggle to find anything to do except stab each other and burn cars.

Few lucky enough to afford £5.99 a month have upgraded to a proper gaming network. Unfortunately this price is beyond that which the average PS3 user can afford, and as such I’m launching a new charity, “Live for Live”, to help get those suffering onto Xbox Live.

Please donate just £1 a month to help a starving and frightened young poor person onto Xbox Live. Your donation will provide;

• Clean servers for a child for an entire year, free of hackers.
• A reliable and functional online experience.
• The comfort that their online service will always be waiting for them when they get home.
• An online store that won’t loose their credit card details.
• Sanctuary from pointless law-suits, illegal data mining and privacy breaches.
• Access to a network run by a company that isn’t entirely incompetent.
• A gift bag and monthly letters from your adopted gamer.

You can make so much difference to a person’s life just by donating toward’s the Live for Live donation campaign. Thank you.

Now, my browser of choice is Opera. I find it functional, fast and stylish, and although I’m largely happy with the experience, the question remains, why does Opera have the lowest market share of the browsers mentioned above? Looking at the raw statistics right now, we see Firefox leading the way with 42.2% of users, followed by IE at 28.8%, Chrome at 20%, Safari at 4% and Opera trailing behind at just 2.5% of the market.

There are several possible reasons for Opera trailing behind. Certainly speed is not one of them, and it’s perfectly user-friendly, installing and updating is one of the easiest out there, and the interface is clean, simple and familiar. So let’s take a look at the possible issues holding Opera back;

Opera does not have the marketing budget to advertise on the scale of other browsers;

Well, certainly this is true. Opera haven’t got the resources to compete with Apple, Google or Microsoft, who have launched billboard and TV advertisement campaigns to promote their browsers. They also have distinct marketing advantages, Microsoft and Apple can offer their products pre-installed, while Google is perfectly placed to market Chrome as the alternative with google.com – but none of those companies are currently in the lead. Who is? Firefox. That’s proof that it’s perfectly possible to make a browser a success on a low to non-existent marketing budget.

Opera’s interface is too confusing;

One of the most common complaint’s I hear when introducing someone to Opera is that they simply don’t like it – and very rarely do I hear a specific reason, basically, they just don’t like the look or layout. Most people don’t like a change, especially in something they use routinely such as a browser. I’m not entirely sure this reason explains Opera’s lack of success though, as FireFox 4, the latest browser, as pretty much taken Opera’s interface and reproduced it like-for-like. FireFox 4′s popularity has yet to fully prove itself but overall, I don’t think this could be the true reason for Opera’s poor performance.

Opera isn’t compatible with XYZ

Opera did have a reputation in years gone past with struggling to cope with certain websites and plugins. The situation today is a lot better, I don’t find Opera to be incompatible with a whole lot. A lot of the problems come from major website developers intentionally ignoring Opera from their sites, a good example being Google’s “instant search” and “background” fuctionality, which is intentionally absent from Opera browsers. Of course, Opera can masquerade as FireFox or Internet Explorer to restore this fuctionality with a few mouse clicks, proving it’s the web developer and not the browser itself, but is this enough to hurt Opera’s reputation and prevent users from migrating? Possibly.

Opera was simply too little, too late.

FireFox didn’t burst onto the scene with instant success, it took many years for the word to spread and for FireFox to gain the market share it holds today. While that success was building, Opera was struggling in a few key areas; firstly, the interface, compatibility and performance was not as outstanding as it is today compared to it’s contemporaries, and secondly, Opera wasn’t free. That’s right, you had to pay for Opera or suffer a banner advert lodged into the interface of the browser itself. This for me is the main reason why Opera today hasn’t got the market share it rightly deserves;  while Firefox was going viral, nobody wanted to spread the word about Opera – why would you want adverts or to have to pay for something the competition offers equally as well for free? This, for me, is the major reason for Opera’s low performance. In the eyes of the general population, there’s simply no reason to go to the bother of switching from FireFox to Opera, and those who are content to stay on Internet Explorer are content to do so.

So why should people switch to Opera?

Well, this is a personal decision, but Opera is the fastest browser out there right now. Opera’s always led the way in browser technology, and you’ll find features in Opera that Firefox will no doubt acquire in the coming years, such as Opera Turbo. Compared to Firefox, Opera is a faster, safer browser that has all the functionality and compatibility of Firefox. On a more technical level, Opera’s rendering engine, apart from being a lot faster, is also a more standard’s compliant, you’ll find Opera leads the way on compliance tests and support for emerging standards such as HTML5 and CSS3.

So, if you’re willing to give it a try, head over here.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding this game, some of you may be aware of it, some may not, but to briefly set the scene, Sonic the Hedgehog has had a veritable smörgåsbord of bad games since his last 2D outing in 1994. Sonic Adventure, while generally considered a good game, did have it’s flaws, while every 3D adventure since then has been bogged down with pointless gimmicks, broken gameplay, and annoying characters – yes, I’m looking at you, Shadow.

This all came to a bit of a head in 2006 with Sonic the Hedgehog, a game that held high expectations for many fans - only to end up suffering from extremely broken gameplay, more annoying characters, beastiality, and loading screens an Atari Jaguar would have been proud of.

Sonic Unleashed attempted to address these issues with a simple plot, returning to th e core characters, and coming on leaps and bounds in terms of gameplay - unfortunately a certain warehog and a man that resembled Morshu from the Phillips CDI Zelda games ment that unfortunately, this game wasn’t the one to restore Sonic to his throne.

It’s understandable then, that after being force fed a game that ranked only 20 places away from Big Rigs Racing, fans and general gamers alike are sceptical of Sonic 4 – expectations for this title are exceptional, and no matter how good it actually is, for some, it will never be good enough – but the question is, objectively, how good is this game?

This is a tuff question to answer. I have my own opinions on the game, largely positive, but what about the average joe who may never have played a Sonic game since 1994?  I tried to find out.

The first person I forced into playing this game was Dave – now Dave is, as anybody who knows him, easily bewildered by video games. He did have a Sega Mega Drive and the classic Sonic games however, so he seemed an ideal choice for a random test. His verdict? He found it simple and fun to play, enjoyed the fact it only had one action button, and surprisingly, he’s actually not that bad at it, either. He also found the special stages a lot of fun, aquiring a chaos emerald!

I also had my brother have a play – his first words where “woah, this isn’t sensitive enough” – but after a few moments he got into the swing of things and, surprisingly, quite liked the game, even though he hates the old games (crappy graphics and annoying sound, he says).

There’s no point hiding from the facts when it comes to this game – the gameplay is not a 1:1 of the Mega Drive games. Now, the issue has been blown somewhat out of proportion by the Sonic faithful, but anyone expecting to pick this title up and play somthing that feels like Sonic 1-3 will find themselves in for a surprise. Wheather that surprise is good or not is entirely down the player.

There are some physics oddities in the game, and these tend to crop up if you try to play the game like a Mega Drive title. Yes, you can make Sonic stand on a wall, and yes, he does uncurl when going up ramps, and yes, when you jump, he does loose momentum when you let go of the direction button, all things that the old games generally did not do, however, once you get past the fact that it’s different to play, you start to realise that it’s not nessasarily any worse to play.

Sonic’s moveset from Sonic 2 is present, including the spin dash, however, the homing attack from the more recent games (first introduced in Sonic 3D Blast for Sega Mega Drive) has also been included. Sega’s PR machine has been trying hard to push the homing attack as “optional”, and insist you can completely ignore it if you choose – but trust me, this just isn’t the case. The game will force you at a number of points to use the homing attack to proceed, and in general it feels much more natural to use it, as jumping simply isn’t accurate enough,  due to the loss of momentum when letting go of the directional pad.

The homing attack is well implemented and fun to use, however, as long as you’re comfortable with the fact that it’s there and able to accept it as a much more substantial change to the gameplay than Sega would have you believe – it’s not a bad gameplay mechanic, but it’s different.

The gameplay feels much more natural during the second half of the game, as Lost Labyrinth and Mad Gear provide many more platforming challenges suited to the new control system, and these levels do give you that same satisfaction you felt when playing the previous games. During these levels, the niggles are practically gone, whereas Casino Street and Splash Hill’s loops and curves, combined with it’s relative lack of platforming challenge, only serve to highlight the differences.

As for the levels themselves, they’re a bit of a mixed bag – Lost Labyrinth and Mad Gear are the superior of the four main zones, featuring the most unique elements and challenge. All of the stages in the game are brand new, but they do borrow heavily from previous 2D games. Splash Hill is quite clearly supposed to be your typical Green Hill Zone – and frankly, who would have expected anything less? This level delivers as a nice dose of nostalga, and adds freshness to a familiar setting.

The Splash Hill Zone boss, however, will give you a sense of Deja-Vu, as it is pretty much exactly the boss from Sonic 1′s Green Hill Zone. The boss battles are probably the biggest let-down in this game for me, they’re all rehashed from previous bosses, and although they feature new attacks as you get towards the end, by the time Robotnik starts doing these new and exciting moves, you’re only one hit or so away from victory, and that makes it rather pointless.

Casino Street is probably the closest level in the game to a previous one, as it more or less looks exactly like Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2 . Casino Night was the most popular game possibly of all the 2D games, so it seems natural that a casino-themed level be included in Sonic 4, and Casino Street does bring enough new level layouts and gimmicks to keep it fresh, again while providing that nostalgic value. It’s a good comprimise between reliving the old days in HD, and also getting somthing fresh, it really is a nice ballance that, to be fair, is a hard line to walk. Xbox 360 and PS3 gamers will esepcially enjoy playing Casino Night’s music while playing Casino Street for an extra High Def nostalga kick. Act 2 is also especially enjoyable, with an interesting card gimmick that’s fresh and enjoyable – and flying through the sky on a deck of cards? That’s awesome.

Lost Labyrinth is where things start to get interesting. While this level clearly takes ques from Labyrinth Zone, much like Hydrocity from Sonic 3 or the axed Hidden Palace from Sonic 2, graphically, Lost Labyrinth’s design is the most unique. The background art on this level is simply amazing, depicting a lost underground civilisation, with the light shimmering in from above. There are several new gameplay mechanics in this level, including the falling bolders, some of which you have to balance on as you run along on top of them, and some of which you have to run away from. Act 2  is probably the most unique level in the game, and possibly of any 2D Sonic to date, as you use a flaming torch to find your way in the dark and light dynamite to blast through walls. Act 3 is very much the underwater level of the 3, which is good news, by the way, as by the time you got to Act 3 of Labyrinth Zone on Sonic 1, any hair you did have was on the floor.

Lost Labyrinth also has the most original boss level, where a completely new boss mechanic has been devised – hurrar! This zone is, quite easily, the best overall level in the game. Oh, and it has Orbinaughts. Those are awesome.

Finally, we have Mad Gear, the obligatory industrial zone and home to some of the most annoying badniks in the history of the universe. This level is quite clearly a take on Metropolis from Sonic 2, and sure enough, those Slicers and Shellcrackers will have you screaming at your TV before very long. There’s not a great deal of originality to this zone, but it does offer the best platforming and some awesome level music, making it a pleasure to play.

Speaking of music, the soundtrack to this game is sumiseable in one word: awesome. The retro samples really take you back to what made Sonic music great, and the tunes are memorable and catchy . Playing Splash Hill with Green Hill’s music or Casino Street with Casino Night’s music, however, does highlight one thing – we do remember the old music with rose tinted glasses. It seems apparent to me that the music in the new game is of no less quality – or cheesyness – than the old tunes, it’s just they lack the nostalga value right now, and I think that’s why some people do find them hard to accept and enjoy.

Special Stages in this game are also a lot of  fun, they’re very similar to the Sonic 1 special stages, so if you’re comfortable with them, you’ll be comfortable with this – the only difference is this time, you control the maze, and frankly, it’s much more fun this way.

There are some other fun things to do with this game, including achievements / trophies (a few of which are quite hard, makes a change from the Sonic 1-3 achievements) – and leaderboards, which at the moment seem to be suffering from the usual spot of cheating (can someone explain to me how The#1SonicFan has not been banned yet?).

So, how do I summerise my judgement of Sonic 4? Well, I don’t. I’ve not played it all yet. This is merely the first part of a much larger game, and while things are subject to change, I won’t make a final verdict on a game that’s only mid-way through development. I will however say that Episode 1 is a good start, and although dissapointingly short, it does leave me wanting for more and looking forward to Episode 2. It delivers a lot more than it misses, and once you get used to some of the changes, you do realise that this is the best Sonic title since Sonic Adventure.

Danny’s “Retro” Rating:

It’s quite surprising, then, that I’ve titled this post the way I have done. When the third installment in the BioShock series was announced, I took a few moments to consume what I was seeing, and I immediately expressed concerns. This has surprised a few people, but I’m going to take a moment now to explain just exactly why this game, or rather, it’s title, is a mistake.

Rapture, the setting of the previous two titles, is a very distinctive world. It’s been very carefully thought out by Ken Levine and his team, and it’s probably the most impressive playing environment I’ve ever experienced. I’ll be the first to admit that most FPS games are the setting and storyline equivalent of a very poor B movie, with notable exceptions, but if BioShock was a feature film, it would probably be one of the best of all time (there is actually a film adaptation in the works, but it remains to be seen how it compares. I don’t need to bring up the disastrous track record of game to movie transitions).

The game is set in the floating city of Columbia.

The one thing that does strike me about the universe, however, is that it seems somehow plausable. I know the concept of an “underwater city” built on 1940′s technology is impossible, but it does somehow feel believable.  Suspension of disbelief comes naturally to Rapture, at no point have I ever questioned it’s setting. It feels natural and, I suppose if you had unlimited resources, I’d go so far as to say it’s plausable. Infact the idea that there might be a secret city in the ocean like Rapture is very alluring.

This new title is set in a city called Columbia.  Apart from being a pretty unimaginative name, there is one major detail about it that is in total contrast to Rapture. It’s floating in the sky on giant hot air balloons.

This is a problem. It’s completely implausible on many levels; it makes no sense to fly a city in this way, the ammount of fuel required to keep such a city in the air makes no sense. Bad weather would destroy such a city in a moment. Everyone’s going to know it’s there because you can see it from the ground. It’s just bonkers in every single way.

The idea behind Columbia is that it’s a sort of “death ray” – fine, but you wouldn’t build an entire city. It lacks that feeling of “hey, you know, this kinda feels real” that rapture gives you, and that is the mistake. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is going to be a bad game. I’m not even saying it’s a bad setting, or a bad storyline, but the problem is this: BioShock Infinate.

Now if the game had been titled something else, I wouldn’t be typing this. I’m a fan of steampunk and, stand alone, I like the concept. But, even if the stories are not linked, the titles are. By putting this city in the same universe as Rapture, the former has now been tainted. I’m worried that this game will take away some of the magic Rapture gives me, by shattering the illusion, and that would be very sad.

When it was first released with Vista, it was actually quite impressive, however, a worrying amount of time has passed since Vista went RTM (I really, really feel old) and, as Opera demonstrated to me this past week, Internet Explorer has fallen behind again.

There are three key things I look for in a browser, appearance, functionality, and speed. You may question appearance as something trivial that isn’t important, however, the web browser is the one application that is open on my screen more often than any other, by a mile. If I’m going to spend a fair chunk of my day with something, I want it to look good.

Internet Explorer delivered this, using the Windows Aero interface to great effect. FireFox has never really hit that mark for me, although it is functional, it’s a slow and fugly browser, and even though it’s skinnable, slapping a coat of paint over a dog turd is still a dog turd. Chrome is a quick and pretty browser, however it’s functionality is severely lacking. Internet Explorer was a nice middle ground between functionality, speed, and looking cool.

I was convinced to give Opera a second chance this past weekend, and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. I have used Opera as my main browser before, many years ago, and while it was a decent browser, at the time it wasn’t free, and wasn’t quite up to the level of FireFox at the time.

Opera today however, particularly this 10.60 beta version, hits all the spots perfectly. It’s interface is very pretty, using Aero glass to great effect, and making efficient use of space to create a logical interface that is very easy to navigate. The program is also skinnable, and various excellent skins exist including the “Z1-Glass” skin, which makes even better use of the Aero Glass interface and makes Opera possibly the prettiest browser I’ve ever used.

It’s not all eyecandy though. Opera is serious about speed, and this latest build has had it’s code streamlined so well that it outperforms Chrome by nearly 20%, making it offically the fastest browser available right now. It’s speed is really impressive, and you really do notice a difference compared to other browsers. With a small system footprint, quick page loads and excellent rendering, there are no complaints in this department either.

Finally functionality. Opera has always been a functional browser, innovating many of the features that FireFox is wrongly credited with introducing. Opera actually comes with more useful tools as standard than any other web browser, yet still manages to maintain a clean and minimalist interface. Some of the best features of the recent versions are the Sync feature, which allows you to keep your bookmarks, speed dials and settings across not only all your computers, but your handheld devices running Opera.

IRC chat is built in as standard, as is a spell checker, advert blocker, “Widgets” (Opera’s answer to Sidebar Gadgets, which stay open even after Opera is closed), a notepad, a fully fledged download manager, an e-mail client, and some impressive social networking tools.

In conclusion, Opera is most definitely a serious contender in the Browser Wars and anybody wanting to try something a little bit different, I urge to download Opera 10.6 and see for yourself just how good a browser this thing is.

So, Bioshock 2 came out last Wednesday, and as I’m now on my second playthrough, I have to admit, this game is just as good as the origonal. The story is class, the character development still there, and the atmosphere and attention to detail in the underwater world is just, well, amazing.

So the single player portion delivers in buckets and spades. The gameplay upgrades feel natural and enhance the game from the previous title, and the new weapons and plasmids are pretty awesome.

Couple things wrong with the single player mode though; there seems to be a Gene Bank station on every wall;  and as such there are a lot of Gathers Gardens around too. One of the challenges of the first game IMO was coming across these things. There are also Ammo Bandito machines sprinkled liberally, moreso than the first game, where they weren’t very obvious at all. The Circus of Values were always all over the shop, so that’s no surprise though.

Health stations suffer from the same problem, actually. There are also aren’t a great deal of security cameras, auto-turrets or other electronic defences compared to Bioshock 1. Multi-part quests don’t even pop up until the very end of the game. When a box pops up to teach you a gameplay element during the final boss, you know it’s been underused.

Big Sisters on the other hand a goddamn hard and fun to fight. There’s nothing better than a nicely sculptured female body in a diving suit doing extreme parkour and using telekanisis to throw doors at you.

The multiplayer element, though, is not so good.  The fact that everyone essentially spawns in the same room at the start of the match, and subsequently respawns in the same room 90% of the time, means that the fighting generally concentrates in one small area, with large bits of map not very inhabited in smaller games.

This also means that this game is a camper’s dream. Just sit in the corner with your granade launcher, and wait as person after person appears in the same general area.

The idea of having to use research on bodies to do well in multiplayer battles, and the story driven level based gameplay, is actually a fresh idea that I like. But unfortunately the sides are let down by the core product.

The spawn points need spreading out. Like, srsly now.

But all in all, a brilliant game that I really can’t fault. A 9 out of 10.

Now, Sonic & Sega All Stars racing…. the demo for that game is pretty awesome. I’ll be picking that up next week too…. stay tuned.

So, Bioshock 2 came out last Wednesday, and as I’m now on my second playthrough, I have to admit, this game is just as good as the origonal. The story is class, the character development still there, and the atmosphere and attention to detail in the underwater world is just, well, amazing.

So the single player portion delivers in buckets and spades. The gameplay upgrades feel natural and enhance the game from the previous title, and the new weapons and plasmids are pretty awesome.

Couple things wrong with the single player mode though; there seems to be a Gene Bank station on every wall;  and as such there are a lot of Gathers Gardens around too. One of the challenges of the first game IMO was coming across these things. There are also Ammo Bandito machines sprinkled liberally, moreso than the first game, where they weren’t very obvious at all. The Circus of Values were always all over the shop, so that’s no surprise though.

Health stations suffer from the same problem, actually. There are also aren’t a great deal of security cameras, auto-turrets or other electronic defences compared to Bioshock 1. Multi-part quests don’t even pop up until the very end of the game. When a box pops up to teach you a gameplay element during the final boss, you know it’s been underused.

Big Sisters on the other hand a goddamn hard and fun to fight. There’s nothing better than a nicely sculptured female body in a diving suit doing extreme parkour and using telekanisis to throw doors at you.

The multiplayer element, though, is not so good.  The fact that everyone essentially spawns in the same room at the start of the match, and subsequently respawns in the same room 90% of the time, means that the fighting generally concentrates in one small area, with large bits of map not very inhabited in smaller games.

This also means that this game is a camper’s dream. Just sit in the corner with your granade launcher, and wait as person after person appears in the same general area.

The idea of having to use research on bodies to do well in multiplayer battles, and the story driven level based gameplay, is actually a fresh idea that I like. But unfortunately the sides are let down by the core product.

The spawn points need spreading out. Like, srsly now.

But all in all, a brilliant game that I really can’t fault. A 9 out of 10.

Now, Sonic & Sega All Stars racing…. the demo for that game is pretty awesome. I’ll be picking that up next week too…. stay tuned.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the iPaper.

It’s a new, ultra-soft, lightweight toilet paper, that looks really pretty. It’s exactly the same as our larger rival’s silky-smooth bog-roll, you know, the one they released four years ago, except it looks a bit prettier. It also fits on less toilet roll holders than our competitors, and it’s kinda restricted to people with an arse the size of a cat’s, but don’t worry; the price tag won’t let you down!

The new iPaper retails for just $599USD, that’s nearly $598 more expensive than our nearest rival!

So, the new Apple iPad. I had the chance to see one of these things in the Apple store the other day, and I really had to restrain myself from kicking the nearest dog. Or Apple store regular.

For you see, the iPad isn’t a “new” or “revolutionary” idea either, folks. I appreciate that nobody who orgasms over these stupid things will listen to that, and they’ll just drink Steve Job’s kool-aid until it makes them giddy. Frankly they can do, there’s nothing wrong with the iPad as a product in theory. Infact, it’s very good. It’s stylish, functional, and it does the job it’s designed to do very well.

The problem is the fact that one, it’s mis-sold, and two, Applefans are going to find every Windows laptop owner in the land and wave their iPad in their face like a spack, not realising that Windows users have had tablets for years now.

As you can see, this Tablet PC here is exactly the same size as the Apple iPad. It’s about half the price of the iPad. And it actually runs a proper operating system, the full version of Windows, bells and whistles, rather than some limited iPhone interface derivative, that probably only exists so you can spend money on downloadables.

Oh, and it came out four years ago now.

I really want to know what this fucking revolution Captain Job’s is waffling on about actually is. I really don’t understand how you can just take existing technology, not even make it that much prettier than what’s already there (lets face it, the Tablet PC pictured is pretty sexy) – then just slap a stupendious price tag on it and watch the kids and middle aged people like Stephen Fry lap it up like Jelly Babies made from pure platinum.

Now, bets until one of these things sets someone on fire, anyone?