Saints Row: The Third Preview

Saints Row: The Third plays very much like the other Saints rows games with both on foot and driving controllers feeling very similar which is definitely not a bad thing, the big change in the series is the graphics that look a lot more realistic than previous games.

The customization looks to have been improved with loads of new clothes that would make anyone look stupid. The ability to buy shops featured in the demo and the activity's will also be making a return. Weapons feel similar to the other games but the melee combat has greatly improved From the very short time I am very impressed and will be buying on launch in November.

Oh BTW there's a new trailer featuring one of the new gangs called "The Deckers" a gang that look very tron like and from the trailer looks like the Saints will be under attack from these guys online as well as off.

Game Fest

So on Friday I went to "Game Fest" (a convention organized by the UK retailer Game) with my good friend James. The convention had a great number of games on show from Battlefield 3 to Just Dance. Predictably the big games such COD and Battlefield had very large queues so we decided to keep to some of the smaller titles, than just to play a couple of big games. I really enjoyed Game Fest and met gaming personality's such as Dan Maher aka MrPointyHead from inside Xbox.

The show in all was really good and we got to play I fair few games and get lots of freebees in the process. I will be uploading more in depth previews of the games we played in the next couple of days, other than that I really enjoyed the show and I wouldn't call a money spinning venture, although this is certainly not the last we've seen of Game Fest as it has been confirmed for next year and will probably grow year on year.

The Angry and Cranky Podcast

 Hi everyone some of you may know that me and my friend Kurt have been producing a gaming podcast called The Angry and Cranky podcast. The first episode of which is up on thegamerstudio.com the podcast consist of gaming news our thoughts on the latest games and old games that we recommend playing. The podcast will be released a biweekly and I will be updating when it's released on my twitter page. Hope you like it and enjoy listening.

Mac Gaming

 

As some of you may know I own a imac, I primarily use it for video and photo editing for uni where I use specialist programs. Although I use my mac mostly media I use it occasionally for gaming, I started with games from the humble indie bundle, as almost all these games work with mac. Games such as braid and penumbra work very well and look great on the imac's high res screen, I really enjoyed penumbra and decided to purchase the 2 sequel's, the penumbra games are first person adventure games so no skill is involves just puzzle solving.

More recently I downloaded TF2 for my mac, the main reason was to see how it ran compared to my aging PC that was getting around 10fps when there was any kind of action. TF2 on my mac run reasonably well with me getting around 30fps in heavy action and about 60fps out of action.
 
The issue I have with playing TF2 on my mac is the fact that I have only the standard keyboard and and the dreaded magic mouse, the the mouse is definitely not built with gaming in mind with the mouse being one large surface that detects both both mouse click and stroll wheel, technically impressive but very hard to game with.

In short mac is getting more and more games released for it and is more than capable of handling them although at the moment PC's and consoles are better platforms for gaming.

Driver San Francisco Demo

 

In the last week 2 demos have been released for the upcoming game Driver San Francisco as I am fan of the driver series having owned the previous 5 games I fell well prepared to give my opinions on both the multi player and the single player demos of Driver San Fransisco.

The single player player demo was the first one I downloaded it includes 3 different missions of varying in type. The first mission called "" sees you trying to convince your partner that you have the special ability called shift, this ability allows  you to shift in to the body on an other person allowing you to therefore drive their car. The mission is the convince your buddy of your power by using it to manipulate a driver and cause him to do very unusual things such crashing in to police cars. The shift mechanic is fun to use and this first mission is just to show the simplest of its capability's.

The second mission in the demo sees you using the using the sift mechanic to help a father, daughter race team win in both first and second in a race. The mission see you using shift to keep both the races in the top 2 positions by jugging back to forth in each car.

The last mission in the demo is a getaway mission at the start you shift in to the car of a criminal driver where your goal is to earn the respect of your passenger by losing the cops.

The single player missions all very enjoyable but short as you expect from a demo. One criticism I have with the demo is the driving it's self, I feel that the handing on the cars was very difficult and I found my self using the the hand brake a lot to get round corners, it seem the devs have gone for a realist approach with the player having to slow down a lot before turning a tight corner although when 5 police cars are after you slowing down is the last thing on your mind.

The demos are definitely worth a download and I will most likely be getting the game once it has gone down in price a little.  

It's Over 20,000!

 So today I passed the 20k Gamerscore mark a achievement that has taken me also most 3 years and somewhere around 30 games to complete. The game that pushed me over the 20k mark was Splinter Cell Conviction where the achievement was for completing the final mission and the game on realistic difficulty ( yes I'm hardcore lol). Splinter Cell Conviction is a really solid game, one that I really want to play co-op.

So how do I feel about about this milestone, honestly not a awful lot at the end of the day they are just numbers on a screen and do nothing to show how much effort you put in to getting the achievements in the first place, so really am not that bothered, although I do like to be ahead of my friends a little =).

     

Battlefield 3 leaked Screenshots!

First it was the turn of Activisions best selling fps franchise MW3's information to be leaked now it's the turn of Battlefield 3. Although no-where near the scale of  MW3 leak, screenshots of Battlefield 3 alpha have been released.

A user that goes by the name 'GOLD.i3DGwendoline' on the tek-9.org forums has posted a number of screenshots of the multiplayer alpha. As these are alpha screenshots this is not what the game will look like on release but it gives us a good idea of what we can expect Menu and HUD wise.

 

The game still has long time to it's release in October and by that time the game with no-doubt look alot better. We will be seeing more test footage of the game when the public beta is released for medal of honor owners in September.    

 

Looking at the HUD the left corner features map and the mission objective's but also a compass, something that was missing in Bad Company 2. There also seems to be both the vehicle and player health displayed in the right corner, whether this will feature in the main game is still unknown.   

What do you think of these screenshots and will you be getting the game in October tell me in the comments below.