I’m just showing people a possible look for the reviews system on Gamed Up, although admittedly, I think I have an idea as to how I’ll be changing the images…

What's the score?
Presentation
How the game itself is presented, i.e. the story, plot, design, and the ideas the developer was trying to convey. Also covers how well everything is implemented.
Audio
Covers sound and music.
Visuals
How everything in the game looks.
Gameplay
How the game is to play, such as the controls and how everything interacts together, as well as how fun it is to actually play.
Value
Is the game worth buying at its current price? Also, will you be able to play the game again or is it basically going to be thrown away after completion?
Overall
This is the overall score of the game, which is NOT calculated by average

Here is a list of the descriptions of each score as well, to quantify the numbers in words:

0 – Non-existant (Features*) / Don’t bother (Overall)
1 – Terrible
2 – Awful
3 – Bad
4 – Below Average
5 – Average
6 – Above Average
7 – Good
8 – Very Good
9 – Excellent
10 – Outstanding (Features*) / Must-Buy (Overall)

* Features is defined as Presentation, Gameplay, Audio, Visuals and Value.

I’m doing pretty well this month… two three posts!

Anyway, I figured that I’d give a little update on things.  First of all, I’d like to make a couple of announcements, one of which affects this site directly, and one which is to do with a related website.  The most important announcement is that over the next few days, I’ll be moving all my websites over to a new web server, which means that some of the sites I own may be down for up to a couple of says (in rare cases, it may be longer).  Additionally, I’m doing a reshuffle of the structures of some sites, so you may find that even after the move is completed (it will be announced), some sites may be down while they’re moved to their new homes.  I’l post up more about this at a later date.  Additionally, I’m hoping to upload a new DiggerCast episode either before the end of this year, or not long after New Years.  Yes, I’ve been a bit slow with it, but I’ve been having issues with the recording software which caused a lot of recording to not be saved!  I need to record the final few minutes of this episode and upload it.  There will be a special episode recorded this month as well, but it isn’t due for release until after New Years.  I’ll make a post on the DiggerCast website in due time elaborating on all this more.

Now, another thing I have to mention (and this is quite big) is that the Pocket Games Review will be done in multiple parts, starting from this week.  I’ve finally managed to organise someone to film with, so we can play the games and give a better review of  the game, seeing as playing them alone is no way of reviewing them!   Also, seeing as Gamed Up won’t be up for another month or so (though it does have its own blip.tv and YouTube accounts), I’m both announcing it on here and posting the videos part by part on my personal YouTube account (TheStormkeeper for those who don’t know – though I don’t think anyone did!), then I’ll post up a more combined video up on the Gamed Up accounts.  Admittedly, this means that the videos may still actually be split up into parts on YouTube, but at the same time, they’ll be a little more coherent in some ways.  I can’t tell you what I’ll do yet, but rest assured, I’ll sort something out.

If any of you have been following my tweets over the past 2-3 weeks, you’d have noticed that I have been in touch with the lovely people over at pocketgamenews – who are a part of Cadbury, who set up a pocket game competition a few months ago as part of their new chocolate bar Spots v Stripes, which was created to commemorate our winning of the Olympic bid – and they are eagerly awaiting the video which I said I’m going to do!  So first of all, seasons greetings go out to the Pocket Games team and secondly,  I hope to have the first part of this video series recorded and uploaded by Tuesday, with a blog entry on here following not too long after the next videos are to be uploaded.  As for what’s in this first video, it’s essentially going to be me introducing the games, showing each of them off (and avoiding touching the chalk if possible!), then talking about them a bit, and essentially giving my first impressions of them.  Due to the fact that I’m using my laptop’s webcam for this, I won’t be able to show off how everything works with them in this video, but that’s why I’m doing it in multiple parts!

The following part will be myself and my friend Ollie (who some of you will know from the DiggerCast) demonstrating the games better, then playing each of them and giving them a verdict at the end.  This ensures that we give each game a fair amount of playing time and makes things easier  in the long run.  And of course, in the great Spots v Stripes tradition, we’ll each be either supporting Spots or Stripes.  As for who will be which though, all will be revealed in the next video!  In the meantime however, I need to get myself a haircut, to prepare for my video début as I need to make myself look reasonably professional, though I have no idea how I’d manage that overall… though I can but try.

A bit late for many of you, but I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a great (and safe) New Year… I know mine will be better this time round!  I’ll see you all next blog entry.

Now that the power cut is officially over and out of the way (man it feels longer than 6 days!), I can start to talk about the Monkey Island remake, along with Steam and Battle.net. I decided to expand the post because Steam is the method I used to download the game and right now, I’m fully starting to appriciate Steam for what it is; a good way of getting games without the storage overhead! I mean, it’s nice having a CD, but when you’re on the move, it’s not practical to carry a game with you, is it? I applaud Valve for releasing Steam in the first place. Granted, it may have initially started off a bit rocky (most new things did), but it’s starting to really become a great way of getting games, or storing some of the games you already have! For instance, if you add your Half Life or Gunman Chronicles key to Steam, it gives you Half life and lots of goodies… this was a pleasant surprise for me, as I unfortunately lost access to my original Steam account, so it’s on their system, but I’ve no way of accessing it! Either way though, because of the advent of faster broadband, the retail landscape has been changed – you can now download a DVD worth of content in a matter of hours, rather than weeks! Additionally, digital downloads reduce the cost of a product, seeing as the distribution and manufacturing charges have been wiped off; those for the box, manuals, the game media itself and transport costs. Altogether, this does make for a cheaper game.

Another aspect to digital downloads is that the download is just data, meaning you can’t break it! I’ve lost one or two CDs and ended up just buying a replacement, as it seemed to be too much hassle to return it to the developer (the media cost almost as much as the game would have – plus I was in Ireland the devs pointed to the UK which wasn’t that cheap to post to!). At least with this method, people can keep their media safe and also carry it around with them – all that’s needed is internet access. That certainly means less baggage for me anyway, seeing as my laptop weighs a ton! There are a couple of downsides though, at least for me… firstly, although I may physically have a particular game that’s for sale on Steam, I may not necessarily be able to add it. This presents a problem as I have to purchase an entirely new copy of the game for it to be on Steam. For a game like the X-Com collection, this was less of an issue, as I could offset most of the cost by saying that I needed UFO to complete the collection. Granted, it’s just one game, but it does make the overall cost feel a bit less. I also have my eye on the id software collection too, as the value of the games I don’t have are nearly the value of the pack itself.

Decisions like that are a lot easier to make. Of course, one thing I do plan to do is compare the prices of games on Steam over what they are retail. If they’re cheaper or the same price on Steam, I’ll get it there instead. I can’t fully move away from non-digital downloads though as It’s not very practical for me. That said however, if devs like Blizzard are also hopping onto the DD bandwagon, I’ll be happy. The new Battle.net has impressed me so far, and I’ve only just signed up! They now offer the ability to download a digital copy of their games, which is cool. My copy of Diablo 2: LOD seems to be a bit screwy atm, so this is a welcome method of downloading a copy of the media that should work! I think my WarCraft III expansion suffered a similar fate as well. One thing I am concerned about though is the fact I selected US English for StarCraft by mistake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can understand US English fine, but I’m concerned about the technical issues more to be honest. I guess this just means I have to download a different patch now. Either way, I do appriciate the facility to download my Blizzard games. I’ve also just downloaded a system checker for StarCraft II, so I can opt into the beta, or at least try anyway. Either way, after much grief (the checker told me it couldn’t upload my system info), it uploaded it anyway. Now I’m not sure if it’s because the app is screwy, but I figure it uploaded the data the first time, or perhaps it did it after I moved my PC into my router’s DMZ… either way I don’t think I’ll ever know. But it’s done now, so I can rest easy. That said though, while Googling some ports for the app, I saw someone mention that 400GB is needed to participate in the Beta testing program.

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Warning: This game contains a few spoilers relating to the first part of the game! While I’ve tried to limite the amount of spoilers, some were bound to happen, in order to explain the game properly. If you don’t want to have part of the opening stages of the game spoiled for you, then you’re advised not to click through to continue.

As a handful of you may already know (be it through my Twitter or me ranting and raving about it on IRC), I got Ghostbusters for the PS3. Oddly, the PS2 version was nowhere in sight, despite it being said that it would appear on the same day as the PS2 version. Oh well, at least I’ve saved myself 25 pounds from not buying the game. Anyway, I’ve been waiting for this game to come out for a while, and like many fans of the franchise, I’ve been waiting for a sequel for quite a while. Coincidentally, this month, the Ghostbusters Franchise also celebrates its 25th birthday. 1984 is obviously a great year for many things although right now, Tetris and Ghostbusters are what come to mind. But I promised myself I’d stick to Ghostbusters this time, so no deviation! I especially need the practice for the upcoming DiggerCast Teaser-Pilot.  Anyway, it’s been 20 years since the last Ghostbusters film and Dan Ackyroyd has essentially said that the games is the 3rd film, although I noticed there’s a 3rd film apparantly being released in 2010… but I digress, I should be talking about the game.

I’m just mentioning again that if you click through to read about the game, there will be spoilers. Keep in mind that the Wii, PC, PS2, 360 and DS games have not been released yet. The first 4 follow roughly the same plot, although the PS2 version (which I’ll get later) along with the Wii have a different graphical style. The DS version is different to the others. Anyway, I do recommend getting the game… although it’s perhaps not what people expected, it’s still a great game to play and worth the 45 quid (you can get it cheaper elsewhere) for the game. I got mine from Game, so I got some money back, and used my discount to lower the price by £2.50.

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