August, 2008
A-List Games – Should All Games Aspire? (Games Blog Banter)
August 21, 2008
“Welcome, welcome to the 7th instalment of Blog Banter, the regular blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel and coordinated by Game Couch! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!”
Do all games need to be A-List games?
I’m not sure if this question itself implies that we should settle for mediocrity, I interpret this as meaning, should we need and require multi-million pound budget games that take years to develop?
Continue reading »Cooking Guide Review (DS)
August 20, 2008
A cooking guide on the Nintendo DS? Why? Can’t you decide what to eat?
In recent years, Nintendo have been real innovators in terms of gaming technology, they’ve obviously had great success with the Wii, but before that came a quieter gaming tech revolution in the form of their latest handheld, the DS.
I’m constantly being surprised by the gaming styles and uses that this flexible gaming platform is being put to use, be it conducting surgery with Trauma Center or in this case utilising the Nintendo DS as an interactive recipe book – Cooking Guide DS!
Continue reading »EcoButton (Computer Standby Button)
August 19, 2008
The EcoButton is a cool USB gadget that saves you money and fights global warming! I can practically hear your tuts of disbelief back at Zath HQ. But seriously this little eco-friendly gizmo will do exactly that and even has the balls to gloat about it too!
I am talking about the EcoButton. Essentially it is a large nicely lit button that plugs into a USB port and once clicked puts your machine into “Eco Mode”. This allows your computer to go into a standby mode that only uses 1.8 watts of power (apparently that is loads less then most normal standby modes). “who cares” and “nothing new” I thought when I first saw it, but I decided to look a little deeper.
Continue reading »Motorstorm Review (PS3)
August 18, 2008
Start your engines to one of the dark horses of the Playstation 3’s release titles.
I could not believe how good and addictive this Motorstorm is. I got this with a package as I didn’t think there were any other games better looking and thought it would be ok for a couple of hours or so.
A year down the line and I still love this game. Motorstorm is off road racing at its best and now it’s back as one of the PS3 Platinum games.
I’m not really one for racing games as I find them very repetitive and get boring very quickly, but this is just pure chaos on dirt tracks and lots of exploding cars and bodies flying everywhere and I love it.
Continue reading »3 Mobile Broadband Review (UK)
August 17, 2008
You might be thinking “why do I need 3 mobile broadband internet?” – Well I’ve recently come to realise that this would be a great addition to my gadget bag, it means I don’t need to rely on the places I visit having wireless internet access. For instance, many coffee shops/hotels still do not provide any form of wireless broadband internet, or if they do, it is often charged at an expensive rate.
Therefore by having a 3 mobile broadband USB dongle (card), it gives you the convenience of working/surfing the internet anywhere with a mobile network signal, in my experience there are very few places these days that don’t have any signal at all. It also makes for a great backup in the event your ADSL or cable connection go down and you still need to access the Internet, particularly important if it involves your work!
Continue reading »Northern UK Bloggers’ Meet-Up
August 16, 2008
The first Northern UK Bloggers’ Meet-up took place yesterday at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds – which is now a one of the facilities of Leeds Met University, which happens to be where I was a student back in 2001-2004 – it kind of felt like I’d come full circle!
The aim of this first session was to decide on the format for future events (which we kind of did), have some informal discussions about blogging and basically get to know each other.
In total there was about 20 bloggers that turned out for this initial event, we proceeded into the “boardroom” – not quite like the Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar waiting for us – there was certainly no intimidating grillings, it was a very relaxed and good-humoured affair.
Continue reading »Spore Creature Creator Download
August 16, 2008
The Spore Creature Creator download is the pre-cursor to a new game that’s on the horizon from Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, this game is called ‘Spore’ – you’ll come to know that name well!
The main Spore game is due for release on PC on 5th September 2008. The aim of the game is to create your creature and evolve it into whatever you want it to be. Starting out as just single-cell organisms, the choices you make for the development of your species will have distinct effects as your creature evolves over time. Ultimately you can build an empire and decide to take over the galaxy, or be a peace keeping, fun loving creature.
Continue reading »Harry Potter & Half Blood Prince Release Date Pushed Back!
August 15, 2008
I can’t believe what I’ve just read!
After crying for the last hour, I’ve only just managed to pull myself together to write this blog. Ok, here we go……….Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has been put BACK to July 2009!!
So all of us die-hard fans of the Harry Potter franchise have just been given a swift unforgivable curse (I’ll let you decide which) to the face.
Continue reading »Dell Studio Hybrid Review
August 14, 2008
The Dell Studio Hybrid is the latest new Dell product range being released – I got to take a sneak-peek at it at the recent Dell Studio Laptop launch at Silverstone, so here’s what I thought to it…
Do you still have one of those large, noisy, beige boxes of a computer sat on your desk? Do you like the idea of minimalist computing like you often see with Apple Macs? The Studio Hybrid is a new breed of computer from Dell.
The Dell Hybrid is a highly compact desktop computer which Dell has really tried to make as green as possible – in the environmental sense at least, the actual case features an interchangeable ‘shell’ casing that comes in a variety of colours see-through colours as well as a bamboo casing which gives it a real distinctive look – it certainly fits well in with their design-conscious Dell Studio Laptop range.
Continue reading »Prison Break Season 4 Trailer
August 14, 2008
The Prison Break season 4 trailer and promo videos have now been released ahead of the show re-starting again after what was a shortened season 3 last year due to the writer’s strike.
The last few episodes of season 3 really did feel rather rushed in terms of all the events that were happening and it really makes you think as to how much story was cut from the guys trying to escape Sona prison given it spanned 13 episodes instead of the expected 22 episode run that we were expecting from Prison Break.
Continue reading »
