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Show Notes
——————–
Opening Song (Innocent Primeval Breaker – Ys Seven OST)
-A look at Intelligent Qube

Get some MW3 game time at GAMEfest...

So, when will we get to see MW3 for real and have a go on it?

Glad you asked.

16th of September 2011 at GAMEfest in the Birmingham NEC, UK.

There, gaming news can be so simple sometimes!

Oh and you can get more info about, or indeed buy tickets for, GAMEfest right here.

- Richard “Rax” Burley

Ok, so why not wait 3 days till 11.11.11? Does Skyrim have SCAR-Ls we don't know about??

It goes without saying that any new Modern Warfare game is going to be huge news. Having said that, many feel that Battlefield 3 will give it a very serious run for it’s “shooter” money in the second half of this year, if not over-take it in this iteration of the franchises.

2011 could well be the year that the FPS fight swings decisively towards the Battlefield franchise, but with Modern Warfare 3 & Black Ops out in the same year, Call of Duty is certainly not going down without a fight…

Sound familiar? A little too familiar, perhaps?

Think about a game you want. Maybe it’s a new game, out today, piled high in towering stacks across the country in every supermarket and games shop. Everywhere you look you see it in its blue, white or green box, mocking you, watching you, waiting for you to reach into your coat pocket and draw out your wallet.

You need this game.

Perhaps the game you’re thinking of isn’t even out yet. Is it a sequel to a game you’ve already played and loved? Is it a game you know only from screenshots and previews, or videos on GameTrailers? Maybe you haven’t seen or read anything about it because perhaps the game you need hasn’t even been announced yet. That would be crazy, right?

The Elder Scrolls V. You need this game.

In case you haven’t placed it yet, that voice is yours. It lurks somewhere between your conscience and your imagination, thriving on rumours and gossip, and when it whispers, its words become thoughts. The thoughts become impulses, and the impulses become purchases.

You need this game, so go and buy it.

If only it was that simple. If only the only thing prompting you to buy the latest games was some hobgoblin Jiminy Cricket perched on your shoulder. Because you’re a smart guy, right? You’re in control of your own destiny. You have some self control.

OBEY.

Marketing, ha! Don’t make me laugh. You snort derision at those extravagant game launches that owe more to old time Hollywood blockbuster premieres than amusement arcades. Jason Bradbury plugging Modern Warfare on The Gadget Show? JLS playing GoldenEye 007 on adverts for the Wii? Pathetic. Marketing budgets are wasted on you. Ant and Dec show up on your doorstep brandishing Wii Fits and Kinect cameras and you remain unswayed. You are untouchable.

(You need this game.)

Maybe it’s reviews and previews. Maybe it’s something you’ve read in a magazine or on a website. Did you see that feature on Eurogamer? The developer intervew on Gamespot? The game sounds pretty good, right? Lots of new features; lots of stuff they’re still not ready to talk about, but man, they sound pretty excited about it, don’t they? It’s enough to get the old anticipatory juices going.

Remember back in the good old days when you’d see a preview in the magazine of your choice, and you’d turn the page and there’d be a classified advert right there in front of you, selling you the game? The Game Club. Software First. Something like that. All the latest titles at bargain prices. Games that wouldn’t be out for a month, for a year, right there in print in an advert for some seedy games-by-mail company, beseeching you, bewitching you, whispering and promising, and because you didn’t have a credit card and couldn’t order the game yourself you slapped it on your Christmas list in the vain hope it’d be out by December and it’d end up in your stocking.

You’re older now, and not so prone to falling for pranks intended for impressionable young minds. You wouldn’t be fooled by the promise of codes for a naked Lara Croft, and you won’t be fooled by this. Previews, while interesting, won’t make you buy the game. You’re smarter than that.

CONSUME.

So are your friends. You’re all cynical twenty- or thirty-something gamers who can tell if a game is going to be any good from a mile away. Marketing, previews, and press releases all fall by the wayside because the only thing that’ll sell a game to you these days is good word of mouth. I mean, you can’t trust reviews, can you? Everyone knows publishers pay for those. Or they bribe reviewers with loot, and luxurious trips out to meet the developers in their studios. And even if they didn’t, who’s would give a game a bad review that sours their reputation with the publisher? Reviewers daren’t give a game a bad review for fear that their supply of new games might dry up – the cowards.

But word of mouth – you can trust that and you can trust your mates. Rob says the game is great and Dave agrees, so you should probably get it. Then you can all play it together online. After all, when you look at your Xbox Live Friends list you can see that pretty much everyone’s playing it, and you don’t want to feel left out, do you?

And you know, they’re not going to play it forever. A month from now no one will be playing it – they’ll all have moved onto some other game, something newer. Maybe they’ll have traded this game in at GameStation or Tesco. Everyone sells second-hand games these days, and most places have some kind of store credit trade-in system for the latest releases. Trade in last week’s game and get this week’s game for only ten pounds! Sounds like a bargain, right? So you might as well get this game, play it with your mates, then trade it for that game when it comes out.

That game will probably be better anyway. Better graphics. Better gameplay. ‘Cause it’s newer, innit?

And you know, six months from now it’s not like you’ll be able to buy this game. You know what it’s like: Even acclaimed titles are condemned to second-hand shelves within days and bargain bins within weeks. A few months from now you’re not going to find it anywhere because it’ll be old by then. Who wants old games?

Unless those old games are really good old games, in which case the prices will go up again and they’ll be sold on E-bay – L@@k! R@RE! So you should buy it now. Right now.

Because you need it.

And it doesn’t matter if the price goes up or the price comes down. It doesn’t matter if it vanishes off the face of the Earth, or it’s re-released ad nauseum in as many different Game of the Year editions as the publishers can brainstorm. This package has the new DLC! This one has ALL the DLC! This one comes with an exclusive magical talisman so long as you buy it from this shop!

The bonuses! The extras! You’ve got your collector’s edition, your hardened edition, your special edition, your pay-one-hundred-quid-more-and-get-a-remote-controlled-car edition. Every retailer has its own exclusive virtual item, so you might as well buy it five, ten, a hundred times over. All of a sudden you’re collecting magic talismans and bonus outfits like they were Pokémon, but damn it, you need this game.

THIS IS YOUR COD

And the guys on the podcast are making fun of that one unfortunate chump who hasn’t played anything new this week, because – Jesus, can you believe it? – he’s still having fun with the game he bought last week, the game the whole damned planet’s moved on from. I mean, is he really that poor? Get some new games, fella! I don’t listen to your crappy podcast to hear you talk about old games!

And the forum thread you started on your last purchase has been bumped back to page two. Nobody’s going to read it now, because nobody’s interested in old games. You need this game. It’s a page one game if ever there was one. Everyone will be talking about it, and oh God, that means SPOILERS! If you don’t get this game right now someone’s going to give away the ending, or a vital plot twist, or tell you how to find a secret you want to discover on your own, and then you’ll be forced to go on a MANIC CAPS RANT to put that trolling son of a gun in his place.

Okay – it’s okay. Cool your hooves, hoss. Take a deep breath. You need this game – I understand that, but it’s okay. There’s still time. There’s still time to place your order and sit opposite the front door every morning until it arrives. You can’t go to work – what if it’s too big to fit through the letter box? And you can’t go upstairs or downstairs, or leave the room, or turn the TV on, or listen to some music because what if you can’t hear the doorbell ringing, or the postman knocking?

Assuming your postman is trustworthy, that is. You hear so many stories. Surely the game should be here by now. What if he’s stolen it? What if he’s one of those postmen you see on the news who fills entire rooms of his house with undelivered parcels? Maybe you should call the post office. Maybe you should call the shop you bought the game from, to make sure they sent it. Hell, maybe you should re-order it from another shop, just in case they can get the game to you a little bit faster.

You don’t want to think about what happens if they don’t. You don’t want to think about what happens when all your friends have the game and you don’t. You don’t want to think about what happens if the game turns out to be rubbish but the shop won’t take it back – or worse, if the game turns out to be amazing, but still hasn’t turned up on your doorstep. You don’t want to think about what happens when the game’s surpassed by an incremental update scant months down the line, or when it’s trounced by a bigger, better franchise, or when you get tired of it and let it gather dust on your shelf with all your other gaming must-haves.

All you can think is:

You need this game.

So you buy it.

@kamiza

“I think I might be buying #codblops today because I feel I should rather than because I want to. Peer pressure marketing?

. . . Sounds like a perfect @campfireburning article”

- Campfire Burning

Pure Football (ps3/360) 

£17.93 Free DeliveryBioshock 2  - ps3 / 360

http://bit.ly/dailydeals8june

If this were the practice in any other industry, there would be a number of lawsuits flying about the place, but not in our industry. As such, The Newb Review thought it was time to honour five titles that have contributed the most to the realm of videogames over the past decade.

So, in no particular order, let’s get this party started.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Game: Halo: Combat Evolved
Format: Xbox, PC
Developer: Bungie Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios

When Microsoft’s first foray in to console gaming; The Xbox, was released, there was only one title that made the machine worth getting at launch. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved (or just plain Halo to the kids). But what exactly was so revolutionary about this first person shooter?

Those of us that are old enough can cast our minds back to the early days of console first person shooters, with titles such as Goldeneye, Medal of Honour, or the various ports of Doom or Duke Nukem. As great as they were, they do not exactly stand the test of time.

Halo, however is still infinitely replayable, as it has effectively defined the console first person shooting experience.

A revolution... Vehicle Combat that is actually fun!

Major innovations:

 Gigantic open levels: While the opening act of the game featured typical corridor based shooting, the game completely changed once the ship crashed on the Halo world. Remember the exhilaration of venturing out of the escape pod and finding a massive world for you to explore? It was mind blowing.

 Vehicle combat: Sure, plenty of games had vehicle sections in them, but more often than not these seemed like an afterthought. Where Halo differed is that the vehicular combat actually felt like an integral part of the game. The smooth controls you associate with first person shooters were successfully transferred over to the vehicles, which made coming across an abandoned Warthog something to look forward to, rather than dread.

 Recharging health: Before Halo if you were unfortunate enough to get shot then the only way you could recover was by using health packs. Not only did Halo introduce the recharging shield, but they also introduced the idea of recharging health. You know the drill. Shot up? Crouch behind cover and wait for your health to come back. It was, and still is, an empowering thing of beauty.

 Intelligent enemies: Gone were the days of enemies simply charging at you down a corridor. No, the artificial intelligence was astounding; enemies would regroup together, hide behind cover and even discuss tactics with each other.

 Incidental character dialogue: Every character that you came across, be they friend or foe, had their own voice and dialogue. Sure a lot of the time it would just be generic military jargon related to the mission, but compare that to the dialogue in previous first person shooters. Perfect Dark’s infamous “why… me?” springs to mind.

Game: Grand Theft Auto 3
Format: Playstation 2, PC, Xbox
Developer: DMA Design (Now Rockstar North)
Publisher: Rockstar Games

It is hard to believe that the Grand Theft Auto series was anything but a 3D open world game. Yet it wasn’t until the fifth game in the series, GTA: 3, that we saw the arrival of the ultimate 3D open world game. A sprawling environment full of people in which you could do anything you wanted. Is it any wonder so many other titles took inspiration from it?

The epitomy of freedom.

Without GTA:3 it is likely that we would never have seen games such as Saints Row, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, The Godfather, Spiderman 2, or Crackdown.

Major Innovations:

 Absolute Freedom: Playing as the nameless and voiceless thug who escapes from Prison after being set up by his girlfriend on a bank job, you could do almost whatever you wanted. You did not have to do the missions, you could just wander the streets taking in the atmosphere. Or, you know, you could just fire off a ton of rockets at passing traffic.

 Celebrity Voice Acting: While subsequent games have had big names such as Sam Jackson and Dennis Hopper lending their vocal talent, GTA 3 started the trend by hiring actual actors, such as Michael Madsen, to bring the characters to life. What a difference it made.

 Unmatched Atmosphere: Liberty City actually felt like a real breathing city. The streets were populated with people, and there were always cars on the streets, even late at night. Every street in town had its own feel, and after a few hours driving around it became easy to navigate your way around town.

 Licensed Music: GTA:3 featured an unprecedented number of real world songs on the in-game radio station, which was pretty much unheard of at the time. I’ll never forget getting in to my first car and being treated to Paul Engemann’s “Push it to the limit” from the movie Scarface. Pure. Genius.

Game: Shenmue
Format: Dreamcast
Developer: Sega AM2
Publisher: Sega

Technically, Shenmue was originally released in Japan in 1999, so it is slightly outside our time frame. However, the European version of the game did not appear until December 2000, so we’ll let it slide.

Playing as Ryo Hazuki, you were on a quest to discover the identity of your father’s murderer, and to get revenge. The game itself revolved around walking through town and asking the residents questions. If GTA:3 is the representation of western inner city life, then Shenmue is the embodiment of a quiet sleepy Japanese town; slow and dreary for some, but a real gem to others.

Press A to jump, or alternatively you can just watch Ryo stymble over the boxes.

Major Innovations:

 Quick Time Events: Love them or hate them, without Shenmue we would not have the quick time event. A symbol flashes on screen, giving you a few moments to press the corresponding button or face disaster.

 A real working town: The town of Yokosuka was populated with dozens of characters, each with their own voices. Sure, some would brush you off if you tried talking to them, but they all felt like real people. They even had their own schedule that they stuck to, so you wouldn’t come across kids playing baseball in the streets at 2am for instance.

 Life as we know it: Ryo felt like a real living person. He had to eat, sleep, and even get a job. To some, this was a headache that got in the way of the quest, but to me it really made me believe that Ryo was an actual person.

Game: Gears of War
Format: Xbox 360, PC
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios

Another flagship Xbox title, although this time a flagship title for the second Xbox, the Xbox 360. Taking on the role of Marcus Fenix, a grizzled rectangular pile of man meat, you must fight against the underground menace of the Locust; an equally burley, pale race of beasties that are trying to wipe out humanity. So far so generic, but what Gears of War lacks in terms of narrative it makes up for with some truly influential gameplay.

Meet generic space grunt 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Major Innovations:

 Cover: Do I need to say anything more than duck and cover? Sure, Gears of War did not invent the idea of a cover system, whereby the character you control ducks behind an object and uses it to shield from enemy fire, but it certainly popularised it.

 Burly Space Marines: It seems every game these days has burley space marines covered from head to toe in generic looking armour. Thanks Gears. Thank you very much.

 Co-op: As our consoles have become more and more complicated it seems developers have favoured leaving out a once mandatory feature: split-screen and local co-operative play. Not Gears of War; as well has having two player split-screen co-op throughout the entire game, you could also team up with a friend over Xbox live. Before Gears it was rare, now it is an industry standard.

Game: Resident Evil 4
Format: Gamecube, Wii, PC
Developer: Capcom Studio 4
Publisher: Capcom

Capcom’s fifth console Resident Evil game (The Resident Evil Survivor series don’t count, thank you very much) Resident Evil 4 saw the franchise getting a major overhaul in terms of gameplay. Gone were the static camera angles, rigid controls, and ammunition conservation and in came a new over the shoulder camera angle, and a plethora of amply supplied weapons.

This was a good thing too because we no longer had the shambling zombies of days gone by. In their stead we were given Los Ganados; frantic, deadly and all too human. Not only did Resident Evil 4 breathe new life in to the flagging series, it also reinvented the third person shooter.

Shooting the heads off of the Spanish has never been so easy

Major Innovations:

 Over the Shoulder: Before Resident Evil 4, the camera angle in third person games tended to be squarely behind the protagonist’s head, which often made fast paced combat situations difficult to say the least. Now, with this shifted camera angle, combat could become more manageable.

 Wii Motion Controls: When Resident Evil 4 was re-released on the Nintendo Wii and came with all new motion controls. Before this point the Wii did not have a decent third person shooter, and some speculated that it was impossible. Resident Evil 4 not only demonstrated that motion controls worked perfectly well in an action game, but may very well make the gameplay even better.

And there we have it, our pick for the Five Most Influential Games of the Past Decade. Of course, with any such subject there are bound to be a few titles that we felt were incredibly influential but just did not quite manage to make it past the finish line in time.

Let us present our Runners Up:

Game: Jet Set Radio
Format: Dreamcast
Developer: SmileBit
Publisher: Sega

This game inspired the likes of XIII, Borderlands… Wacky Races. Ok, so it wasn’t exactly revolutionary, but the first cel-shaded game certainly caused quite a stir and goes down as one of the greatest Dreamcast titles of all time.

The game follows a gang of “rudies”; young people who skate around town spraying graffiti as a form of self-expression. Along the way, you can bolster the ranks of your gang with new members by completing skating challenges against them and ultimately uncover a plot involving a mystical vinyl record with the power to summon demons.

The life of a street punk is a glamourous one

I know it sounds crazy; kids on roller skates graffiti-ing up the place whilst being chased by cops and gangsters, but that’s exactly the point. This is charming, Japanese fantasy, superbly implemented and incredibly fun.

Rumours of an XBLA release have caused quite a storm on the forums and especially amongst the staff here at The Newb Review. If this doesn’t get the re-release we all want it to, I strongly recommend you pick up a second hand Dreamcast and a copy. You can thank me later.

- Tom “tom01255″ Wallis

Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Format: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision

Modern Warfare presented the culmination of a growing relationship between the once loved publisher and Infinity Ward. Seemingly grasping the Holy Grail of simultaneous critical acclaim and astronomic sales, it was clear that this game was something special.

Infinity Ward’s legacy seems to be entwined with this title; whenever anyone mentions the COD series, it’s inevitably the Modern Warfare franchise they talk about over any of the World War II based outings.

One of the most successful (and imitated) games of all time.

The story was short, but epic; placing you in the shoes of several different operatives involved in a war against Russian terrorists. The narrative also managed to shock on an emotional level; invoking a strange feeling of grief when a playable character witnesses a nuclear explosion and kicks the bucket.

However, it was the multiplayer where the game really shined. Still a fantastically popular title online, Modern Warfare tapped into a need for all gamers to feel as though they were bettering themselves; by having unlockable guns and attachments, the game enticed gamers to spend hour upon hour improving their account and reaching that 10th prestige level.

With Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward built an empire. It’s just a shame Modern Warfare 2 couldn’t amaze us in the same way.

- Tom “tom01255″ Wallis

Game: God of War
Format: Playstation 2
Developer: SCE Studios Santa Monica
Publisher: Sony

It’s hard to believe that there have only been four God of War games over the past decade. I say that because there has been a seemingly endless number of games that have taken inspiration from this brilliant series of games.

Just take a look at EA’s recent release Dante’s Inferno; would that even exist without God of War? It could be argued that God of War almost singlehandedly revitalised the hack and slash genre (although some credit must be given to Capcom’s Devil May Cry series too).

The format is simple: A burley man (in this case Kratos) runs around fairly large yet linear levels, armed with a plethora of bladed weapons, and cuts a sea of mythical enemies into mince meat.

Chuck in some light logic-based puzzles, usually involving cranks and pullies, and have the player search off the beaten path for collectables that upgrade your abilities and there we have it, the epitome of the hack and slash genre.

Kratos is pretty tasty.

The God of War series is also known for its epic boss battles, which always culminate in the Quick Time Event finale, complete with suitably gory conclusion. And don’t forget the health dosage of quick time sex mini games and an ample showing of breasts.

Actually when put that way, you can completely see why so many game developers have reacted the way they have to God of War. It is the ultimate teenage boy fantasy game. And God (of war) bless it.

Disillusioned with the usual choice of parties in Parliament? Then why not make your vote really count by voting for The Newb Party, a newly formed party with one core belief at heart; we can learn so much from video games! With all our policies taken from the best ideas from the world of video game entertainment, where could we possibly go wrong? Just take a look at some of these fantastic policies…

The Economy

With most of our countries banks in severe debt right now, the only way out is to get the rest of the country owing them as much money as possible. Taking a leaf out of Animal Crossing’s book, all houses in the country will be subjected to mandatory extension, which will triple the owner’s current debt.

On the day the debt is paid off, houses will be further extended, again renewing the debt at an even higher price. Not only does this solve the bank’s financial problems, but housing will no longer be an issue, with most houses predicted to be six storeys tall by 2020.

Education

Education is definitely a priority for The Newb Party, and we have taken our cues from one of the best. By instituting a level system similar to that found in the Fallout games, children will be able to level up by doing the most mundane of activities, such as collecting cola, finding new locations and even making bootleg alcohol out of bizarre fruit.

The best part is that regardless of the skills used to level up, the children can invest in whatever new skills they desire. A vote for The Newb Party ensures a future where children who spend hours hitting small animals with tire irons will be able to talk their way out of any situation.

Medical Research

Stem cell research is a hot topic and the ethics around the situation prevent any real progress in the area. Other parties might skirt about the issue, but The Newb Party? We say send ‘em all to the bottom of the Ocean! Just like in Bioshock, we plan to send the best and brightest scientists to a retro-futuristic city under the sea and let them meddle with things that should never have been meddled with to their hearts content.

Although there is the slight chance that the whole society will collapse, leading to wide spread murder, we feel it is worth the risk to give scientists the chance to unlock the secrets to being able to fire bees from your arms.

Defence

In a world where war is always changing (or never changing depending on who you ask) it is important to keep ahead of the game. That’s why under The Newb Party, the army will undergo a radical transformation named Project Metal Gear. All funding for vehicle research will be diverted into developing mechs, ranging from enormous water-firing super robots to semi-organic jumping tanks that moo for some reason.

We will also be using nano-machines to improve the current soldiers. By linking their minds together they will be ale to execute overly dramatic attacks that they will have almost no control over. Some may claim this is all unnecessary and that there is nothing wrong with the current soldiers; to them we say that mechs are clearly awesome. Unfortunately one of the side effects of these changes is that the recruitment process leaves many trainees with nothing to do for several months but sit and watch, but we are working on it.

Healthcare

One of the key issues facing government today is healthcare, and The Newb Party has just the solution; abolition of the NHS and all private medicine practitioners. Instead, a new policy will be introduced, referred to as the Crouch and Wait scheme.

Video games have revealed that staying out of harm’s way for a few moments and catching your breath is often more effective than seeing a physician. Many soldiers have reported that by ducking down out of site for a few moments, they can recover from anything, be it bullet wounds or grenade blasts. The next time you have a cold, why not just crouch and see what happens?

Taxation

This is the hardest part of any parties’ manifesto, but The Newb Party has by far the best taxation policy. Essentially, all possessions are taken once a year, including money, and laid out in a field. It is then the job of the individual to roll a sticky ball over all of their worldly goods and try and gather as much as possible within a three minute time limit. At the end, anything not collected becomes property of the government, and anything on the ball returns to the original owner.

The Katamari scheme for taxation provides a much fairer way to decide how much of your property the government owns, there’s also the added benefit of life being a lot more exciting.

A vote for The Newb Party is a vote that will help build a better tomorrow. Would you kindly cross the ballet paper next to The Newb Review logo and drop it in the ballet box…

If you want to send us any questions, comments or suggestions please email podcast@newbreview.com

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