It would appear that the BBFC are standing by their decision to ban Manhunt 2 in spite of the revisions made my Rockstar.

This is utterly rediculous, and a complete abuse of the power given to the BBFC, which should be revoked immidietly, there job is not to decide what we can anc cannot have access to, but to help us make informed decisions about media purchases, this action clearly shows they are not acting in the best interests of the british public, but in the interests of a nanny state.

So chalk up another game that the US gets, but us europeans will likely never get a sniff of.

Persona 3 had better be released without a hitch, i swear to god.

In other news, i forgot how awesome the music is in Shin Megami Tensei games, playing through Digital Devil Saga is an absolute joy, especially compared to Enchanted Arms, i'm enjoying it very much and can't wait to get through it and start on the sequel.

In other, other news, Sony are either nailing the final coffin in their european PR, or attempting to pull what they consider a clever tactic to sell more PS3s. Either way my view of them gets dimmer and dimmer with each passing news story.

As i said in a few other places, if it turns out to be true, and we lose the 60gb model, and never get the 80gb model, then i will NOT, EVER be getting a PS3 (Unless i can find a cheap 60gb second hand somewhere along the line) unless they re-introduce the backwards compatability. I don't care about the USB ports etc, but i do care, very much about the BC. Others may not, that's fine, just so long as your happy paying for an incomplete product. As i said in my other blog, it costs sony nothing, and a few moments of time to put the BC software on the HDD, why they are not doing it is an absolute mystery, an obscure riddle with an answer that nobody knows, and would make no sense anyway.

So yeah, F**K you Sony. And F**K you british government.

I'm done with Enchanted Arms, god i ever want to play it again.

Although i do hope the developer learns from it, and makesa better RPG in the future.

Now to make a start on Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga.

Also, upon finishing Enchanted Arms, i broke the 10k gamerpoints mark :) Well, actually i hit 10k a couple days ago halfway through it, but, whatever :P

Oooh £299 PS3? 40gb, very reasonable very reasonable.

Wait just one second... What do you mean no PS2 games?!

Well. I'll just take this money and put it towards a better TV then.

A lot of people dont hold backwards compatability in very high regard, i however, and many others like me, do.

What strikes me as so odd about this whole affair however, is the reasoning behind it. There doesnt seem to be any reasoning whatsoever.

It can't be to save money, because the software is already there and just needs to be put onto the HDDs at the same time as the operating system, and unless they plan to stop updating the compatability for the 60gb model as well, then they still spend development costs for that.

It can't be to save HDD space, thats rediculous, if the 20gb Xbox 360 can do it, and i can download a PS2 emulator from the net at less than 20 megabytes, then any argument regarding saving space is negated.

The only logical reason would be to spike european fans, it sounds absurd, why would Sony do that? One simply answer, money.

The pound (and even the euro) is a very strong currency at the moment, so the only other reason they would be making these changes would be to get more people to pay out for the expensive model. It absolutely boggles the mind how Sony thinks this is a good idea, i mean surely removing 2 USB ports, 20gb of HDD, and FREE software is a complete waste of time and money on Sony's part. They should have just dropped the price and left it, not released yet another model.

The enemy gets another turn...

Since my annoyance at being forced to level up on rediculously weak enemies earlier, Enchanted Arms has been a relative cakewalk, the Earth devil golem took some killing, but was tedious more than difficult.

Now i find myself on the home stretch, only to fall at the first hurdle, i was utterly, utterly destroyed by the Queen of ice. So i thought, fine, nuts to it, i'll use the roullette trick and gain myself some hit points, so i did that, i got atsuma to 3.5k, and everyone else to 2.1k hit points. The battle was sailing relatively smoothly, when all of a sudden, she pulls an attack out of her ass that lets her take another turn... There is no way i can survive those two turns.

So i find myself thinking, do i spend an entire day with my rediculously bad luck at the casino (I know it all about saving/loading, but i sometimes go 100 attempts in a row without a single win, my luck at gambling is stupid) to get my HP up, while resisting the urge to kill myself from utter boredom, or do i abandon it and start Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, which i've been avoiding playing until i could get my hands on the second, and now finally have.

Hmm, think im gonna sleep on it, need an early night because of a job interview in the morning, although it's pretty much guaranteed (apparently) im still a little nervous.

Has anyone ever had achievement notifications appear anywhere other than the bottom middle of the screen?

Recently i've been having them top right hand sight of the screen, i dont know where this started though, could just be enchanted arms/certain games.

Anyone else had this? Or is my Xbox being weird... ?

As you all (Thats right, all... 6? Or so people who visit my blog :P) know, i am having problems getting to grips with the fact that everything made after like, 2004, is widescreen with almost no exceptions.

So, i bit the bullet, and traded in my 4:3 EDTV towards the cheap solution, a PC monitor, and got a Gateway - Somethingorother, 19 inch widescreen, with a native resolution of 1440x900.

Now, as a PC monitor i would be very happy with this, and if i ever get around to building that PC i promised myself, i will probably be very happy with it.

For my 360 however, im slightly less happy with it, while it's a lot clearer, brighter, and altogether better than my previous screen, it's still not perfect for my 360, it being 16:10 instead of 16:9, with no option not to display the image at fullscreen, the image is a little distorted, but that i can live with. For some reason however, im assuming because im scaling 720p up to 1440x900, the amount of jaggies onscreen has almost quadroupled. On the previous monitor, at 1024x768, jaggies were almost unnoticable, but now they are quite noticable.

Natural assumption tells me this is simply because before i was scaling down quite dramatically (output is 720p, being scaled down for 1024x768 letterboxed) whereas now it's being scaled up. And as a bit of a digital art junkie, i know i should never scale up.

I'm reasonably happy with the image quality considering i payed very little for the monitor, but if microsoft would support the kooky 16:10 resolutions, i will be a happy happy man, as those jaggies should likely dissapear, or at least be reduced significantly.

Bioshock looks tremendous, gears and oblivion both look very nice, everything else is a bit of a jaggiefest, but is otherwise very pleasing visually. I have to mess around with the colour/tone/brightness/contrast etc settings until i get something im happy with (atm the choices are washed out, or so bright my eyeballs burst)

Overall, i think it's a good purchase, that when i get an HDTV next year, will either go to my brother as a PC monitor, i i will keep for the same job (if it becomes inconvenient to use my HDTV as a pc monitor, given the amount fo consoles i have, it probably will)

I'd post pics, but it's late and i dont know where my camera is. But it's not impressive enough for pics :P Not like other peoples 50+ inch Televisions of the Gods. :)

I know bosses are supposed to be challenging, but when they wipe out the entire party in one attack, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it... Doesn't that strike you as a little bit... wrong?

I'm playing through Enchanted Arms at the moment, i started primarily for the points, but found i am quite enjoying it so far (Japanese voices of course, the english are rubbish)

So i've gotten say, i reckon a third of the way in, and i can defeat the enemies in this area without a second thought, so unless someone in their QA department was on break when they were testing this section, you would expect to be able to defeat the boss with reasonable challenge if the enemies are a cakewalk. No siree bob.

The boss is in two parts, first you have to fight a cerberus type enemy, who was a reasonable challenge. But after some cut scenes, i have to fight the big evil villains earlygame sidekick. He summons these, golems every turn, and when he gets three, the next turn, he wipes out my party. Hmm. Lovely.

Problem is, if i concentrate on attacking him, i can only hit him once or twice a turn, because he stands at the back, and i just cant reach him. If i take the characters with the ranged attacked, i cant get past the first boss. So they aren't an option. Regardless, it's nigh impossible to do nearly enough damage in those 4 turns.

If i concentrate on the robots he spawns, they spend the entire time healing each other, and i can take out 3 maybe 4, but eventually, some of my characters die from regular battle fatigue, and i cant kill the golems quick enough.

Looks like im gonna have to reload, and run around killing rediculously easy enemies until i level up a few times.

I'm enjoying the gameplay, the environments look nice, and so on and so forth, but jeese, these guys hired the worst writers, and they must have forgotten to even hire a QA team, let alone a good one. The story is the standard "OH noes, i know little about my background. Uh oh, im not a human, im some kind of cloned weapon! But i have feelings, therefore i must be human!!" and so on and so on, standard crap ripped right out of FFVII or numerous other RPGs/Animes with the same story.

That said, i dont even know why im enjoying it, maybe its refreshing, the environments are clean and crisp, not loaded with gunk, blood, grit and normal maps set to 11. Everything is bright, colorfull and fresh, even if it doesn't push the hardware much. The battle system is a lot of fun too.

EDIT:

Ok, so after a couple hours of running around grinding enemies and using the SP to up my hp/attack stats, i trounced him. Well, i say trounced, it was still a tense battle even if i did win by quite a margin. My point remains though, if the boss is going to be so disproportionate compared to the enemies in the area, how do the developers expect players to beat him without pointlessly grinding on piss weak enemies?

It would appear nowadays, that the furthest thing from anyones mind is 4:3 resolutions. I don't know, maybe PC gamers still endorse them, but consoles sure don't seem to want to. At least the Xbox 360 doesn't.

(My blogs seem to have taken a turn to pointing out flaws, or simply discussing the 360 more than others, probably because imm sick of sony bashing :P)

Unlike many people, and perhaps it was a mistake, who knows, i bought a 4:3 HDTV.

What the heck is one of those? I hear you cry, well, the most common one, the one that i have, was originally marketed just before the 'HD revolution' as PC monitor/TV combos that could display regular television, SCART/composite/S-Video and VGA. Mine goes up to 1280x1024 (Although this sometimes causes problems as it's official max resolution is 1024x768)

Ok ok, i hear some of you saying it's not HD because the minimum HD size is 720p, well, i hate to break it to you, but regular TV is 640x480, so anything higher than that is 'high' definition.

That argument aside, i was happy back when it was my primary PC monitor, i could play all my games in lovely 4:3, and switch to (an aweful looking, unfortunate side effect) TV channels at my leisure.

Yet, when i bought my 360, i became unable to play it on a regular television, so when my PC bit the dust, i bought VGA cables and let rip, and it's been fantastic, im being able to squeeze a great deal out of such a old monitor. But something was wrong, only, i didnt notice until recently.

Letterboxing.

As you all know, widescreen is a requirement for being on the 360, but it would also appear than 4:3 is NOT.

Unlike a PC, where you have a multitude of options, the 360 gives you these options from it's home settings, not from inside the game, so whatever settings the game holds, are set in stone. Which is very unfortunate, as it would appear that most games will enforce a letterboxed widescreen at ANY resolution above regular SDTV resolution.

This, i feel, is a great shame. Why did developers not include the option to play at higher 4:3 resolutions? Oh sure, not many people are going to use them, but you managed to put them into the PC versions nonetheless...

From the list of games i own, here are the few that are completely playable in 4:3 up to 1280x1024

Amped 3

Call of Duty 2

What a sorry state of affairs, 2 out of 22 games support 4:3 resolutions. The rest are displayed in a letterbox format, some (especially ports) can't even do that properly. Lego Star Wars 2 being the prime culprit, not only am i forced to view it letterboxed into widescreen, but it doesn't support widescreen properly, the developers have just stretched it sideways.

This is the list of games i have that DO force letterboxing (that i know of, not trying all my games again right now), ones with widescreen related 'issues' will be marked with a *

Blue Dragon

**Bioshock** (Cuts the top and bottom of the screen)

Condemned

Crackdown

Dead Rising

Enchanted Arms

Gears of War

GRAW

**Hitman: Blood Money** (The issue is not technicly with 4:3, but with VGA cables)

King Kong

Lost Planet

Perfect Dark Zero

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Stranglehold

Tomb Raider: Legend

Viva Pinata

What are your views on this? Outraged? Could care less? Do you see 4:3 as old or inferior? Maybe you think im kicking up a fuss about nothing? Opinions welcome.

EDIT:

I finally caved and decided to play oblivion again, only on 360 this time. Only to discover it too has 4:3 issues, looks like i really do need to update my telly, only having just (tentatively) lost my job, might be a while yet before i can. The game seems to think it is displaying widescreen, but it being squashed into 4:3, so everything appears rediculously thing/tall.

Recently, or more accurately, the past week, i've become dangerously obsessed with Xbox Live Gamerpoints.

However, in an effort to maintain some degree of integrity, i have steered well clear of college hoops, football managers, fifa, NHL/NFL and so on and so forth. I did play King Kong however, but i had been meaning to at least finish that since i played the first half on PC at release, i figured i could at least get 1k poins while doing so.

Now, a lot of people put King Kong down, while personally i don't think it's such a great game, i think it's a perfect example of how production value does not equal a good game.

But, there is one thing the game does at least half right. Achievement points, ok fine, theres no skill to them, no challenge either. But, the crucial thing here, is that they do NOT reward time invested, and they steer well clear of multiplayer (mainly because the game doesnt have one, but hey, correlation doesn't equal causation right?)

Multiplayer achievements have become something of a bane for me, ok, yes, fine i am the stereotypical loner of a gamer who prefers to sit in a dark room and only emerge to forage for food. I'm anti-social, great, but why does that mean i should be put at a disadvantage in concern to achievements?

When you're as addicted to points as i am now (racked up over 5k in the past week alone) have you any idea how... niggling, how annoying it is to KNOW that you;ve done everything you can in one game, but only see 600 points? It's infuriating, when the rest of those points would take at least 50 hours in multiplayer to gain (or with a second pad, but nobody wants to cheat to get gamerpoints, ok, so a lot do, but thats another reason multiplayer points are worthless)

Not only do i have to pay for the privelege of gaining these points, i have to put a significant amount of man hours into doing it, while putting up with whiny 12year olds, dead communities (Prey multiplayer achievements? LOL to anyone who didnt do them at release, like me) or, and here it comes. Cheaters.

It seems, that people will go to any lengths to get these points easy, that includes rigging ranked matches. Achievement points are supposed to be nothing more than bragging rights for loner nerds like myself, and when people can simply cheat to get them, it begs the question. What exactly are they worth now? Nothing, nothing whatsoever. It's the same reason i grow bored of MMO's if not playing with friends, it becomes less fun, and more of a chore. Rewarding nothing but hours invested, not skill or inginuity.

Now, my problem would be less were i able to attain these offline with friends, i could at least then hold some satisfaction that i worked somewhat for them, but being forced to spend a long time looking for ranked matches on games that dies before they were even released? No thanks, especially when some cheating sod already got all the points without the hard work.

I feel that developers should steer well clear of multiplayer achievements. If people enjoy multiplayer, and want to keep playing it, then great, you've made an awesome game. But how much skill did it take for that guy to get 10 THOUSAND kills on Gears of War? None, but i bet it took him a long time.

Now, i like achievements that take a long time to get, dont get me wrong (100%ing Lego Star Wars II takes quite a while, im about 60% at the moment with about 18 hours clocked) But i dont want to have to pay extra to do it, nor do i want my hard earned bragging rights to be reduced to nothing more than a meaningless number by cheaters.

Do something about it developers. Throw the old fashioned gamer a bone, and reward skill and practice, not simple multiplayer hours invested. I myself plan to never get any multiplayer achievements unless i happen upon them accidentally whilst playing offline with friends. I may get live gold again sometime, but i really don't miss it, and i would only be putting myself out for points, and paying for it too. So no thanks.

In other news, i hate my dog. My sparkly new copy of Rogue Galaxy (dont laugh, it only came out here last week) arrived this morning, only to have my dog bit it. Somehow, miraculously the packaging survived without a visible peircing, but somehow, he went right through the games case, dislodged the disc, and scratched it as it came out of it's holding. It plays fine, but i'm incredibly annoyed about it nonetheless :(

Karma for paying less than half price for it i suppose.

Another blog so soon? Oh my.

Now, i am usually not one for upgrading needlessly (I waited for the DS, and got the Lite right off the bat, same for PSP, had it, sold it for the lack of games, and will get the newer model sometime next year)

But i decided to buy an Xbox 360 Elite, for a number of reasons. I will be coming into a little bit of money later in the year to do my driving lessons, and am hoping to have enough left over for a nice TV, so the HDMI port was appealing. A bigger HDD is always a plus, and at the time, HMV's deal was amazing (Retail price 299.99, +2 free games!)

But the main reason for the upgrade was fear of breakdown, which is something that really shouldn't be there, i've been lucky so far, i've had a second hand 360, and one replacement for it, but the warranty ended this week, and all i could think about were the 3 red lights of death. So i sold it as quickly as possible, and traded up for a brand new Elite, with 3 year warranty against the 3 red lights.

Unfortunately, the deal at HMV ended the night before i bought my 360. Sucky, so i got it at GAME instead, and my choice of bundle games was limited, but still ok, i ended up getting Blue Dragon and MOH: Airborne for 329.99, which isn't too bad.

So i realised while playing Airborne, that despite being the best MOH game yet, it's still not a patch on Call of Duty 2. A launch game. So without further ado, i decided that i would trade it in, and buy it again when it drops to around ten pounds. I got £30 trade in at work, considering i paid £10, not bad. I picked up Call of duty 2 for £12, and got Spliter Cell Double Agent also for £12, with some credit left over.

I'm enjoying CoD 2 much more than i was Airborne, which is a shame, i thought MOH might actually get it right this time and was really looking forward to the airdrop mechanic. But oh well, it gives me a chance to go back and play some older games i've not played (2 Week exchange policy for staff at work, and a backlist of games i've not played, Kameo, King Kong, CoD 3, Enchanted Arms, Bullet Witch, and more)

I also gained a new respect for gamer points, i mean, how many old games have you played, and wanted many years later, but just couldn't remember the name of? Gamertag to the rescue! Just look it up on your gamerscore list.

So nowi have a shiney newElite, a list of games to plough through (Including Rogue Galaxy when i get paid again, been looking frward to that forever, but it only just came out in the UK) and a week off! Life is good for the first time in a little while.