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Games

Brits Worried About Eye Damage Caused By Nintendo 3DS – Will Your Health Concerns Stop You Buying One?

Nintendo’s 3DS hasn’t even hit the shelves and it’s already causing quite a stir. Not only has it been highly criticised for the purported battery life which endures a paltry 2 hours (roughly, depending on usage), it’s also causing concern for over a third of adults, who remain skeptics of the 3D technology involved, and how damaging it could be to your health.

A recent survey by VoucherCodes.co.uk has revealed that 37% of Brits surveyed feel some degree of concern regarding the damage the glasses-free 3D display of the Nintendo 3DS can do to your eyes. Nintendo has issued a health warning sparking the debate, which advises children under seven not to play the 3DS with the 3D function turned on (it can be turned on and off via a sliding switch on the console), because the muscles around their eyes are too weak to handle the strain the 3D effects cause.

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Free Realms PS3 Release Date Announced – Free Console MMO Gaming!

It’s been almost two years since Free to Play MMO Free Realms was released on the PC, and it’s finally coming to the PS3 on the 29th March this year according to the Playstation Blog.

Free Realms is aimed more at the younger audience with visuals very similar to World of Warcraft with it’s bright, vibrant colours. Players will be able to jump right in by playing mini quests, themed events, features for social networking and the ability to upload videos to YouTube. You can get involved in combat if you want to, but that’s up to the user and you can also make your way through the many quests available in the game.

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Bulletstorm Review (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)

In the school playground of shooters, Bulletstorm is the sailor tongued big kid whose motivation for the next wedgie lies more in the prospect of beating his personal record, than in any angsty hatred. People Can Fly’s new shooter is brazen and unabashedly brutal, but does the sci-fi butcher-fest successfully make its retaliation to the ubiquitous Call of Duty and its wannabes, and more importantly, is it the romp one hopes it to be?

Bulletstorm follows the exploits of space pirate Grayson Hunt and the, well, storm of bullets that ensues when a bid for a revenge against his former general lands him and his friend Ishi, in a giant, vicious-alien-filled, torn and ruined resort on a strange planet.

Development and marketing (see Duty Calls) has been keen to show the world that this is no run of the mill, stale first person shooter and perhaps the most prominent feature is the points system, which overtly awards the player for “skillshots”, flares of creative execution, in big flashy letters. This arcade-inspired reward system essentially underpins the main premise of the game, which is expertly calculated hyperbolic violence.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Release Date Announced

Sony has announced an official release date for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (or the Playstation Phone), which will be hitting UK stores from 31st March 2011.

When the Xperia Play is released it will come pre-installed with six games which will include Tetris, The Sims 3, Fifa 10, Bruce Lee Dragon Warriors, Star Battalion and the PSone classic Crash Bandicoot. All the games listed will be Android titles as the phone will run off Google’s Android OS, and as well as the six game listed above, there will be another 50 games that will be available from the Playstation Suite.

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Xbox Kinect Motion Controller Sells 10 Million Units In 60 Days – Fastest Selling Gadget Ever!

Well it was pretty obvious that the Xbox Kinect would be a huge success for Microsoft, but just how successful was the cause for much skepticism. Pitting itself against the PlayStation Move primarily, but also the Nintendo Wii, in terms of functionality, it faced stiff competition from day one, back on the 4th of November last year.

However, Guinness has now announced that selling 10 million units since then, places it as numbero uno when it comes to sales figures in it’s book of world records.

The infrared camera for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has also encouraged a huge increase in game sales for the 360, according to Microsoft, with again, 10 million being the cited figure of Kinect games.

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PS3 To Get Online Storage With Firmware 3.60 Update…For Playstation Plus Subscribers!

Sony have announced that they will be releasing a nice little extra with firmware update 3.60 which is to be released tomorrow (10th March 2011), which will be the PS3 online storage. But you’ll only be able to take advantage of this if you’re a Playstation Plus subscriber.

So just how will the online storage work? Well each Playstation Plus subscriber will get 150MB of space so they can upload saved game files to access at a later date, and with each save roughly around 1-2MB it gives users plenty of space available to them.

Users will then be able to access their saves on any other PS3 with an internet connection by logging in using their account and going to Saved Data Utility to find the save files. However you will need to wait 24 hours before being able to use the save file on another PS3.

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Asphalt 6: Adrenaline For Mac OS X Review

If there’s one good thing about the Mac OS X App Store, it’s the temptation that it offers to developers to port their existing iPhone and iPad applications over to Mac OS X. In the case of games, this is fantastic for Mac users who have typically had less choice than Windows users when it comes to titles on the operating system.

With the release of Asphalt 6 for Mac, it seems as though Gameloft is looking to expand to the Mac App Store with the driving game as one of its first titles on the desktop alongside Let’s Golf! 2. Gameloft has developed many of my favourite iPad games, such as Asphalt 5 HD, Real Tennis HD and Let’s Golf! HD, so I was looking forward to checking out what the development company had to offer on the desktop operating system.

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Battlefield 3 Gameplay Trailer Released

Whilst there have been quite a few COD: Modern Warfare 3 rumours flying around, today EA and DICE released the first actual gameplay trailer for Battlefield trailer today, and to put it succinctly it looks nothing short of amazing.

Of course it does look a little too good for real gameplay footage from a game about 10 months away from release, but if the finished article looks anything like this it will put some serious pressure on the more established shooters out there.

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Win An Xbox Kinect Sensor & Games (Competition)

Here on Zath we’ve been interested in Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect Sensor/Motion Controller ever since it was first announced as Project Natal at E3 2009, the idea of Wii-style games without the need for a controller interested us greatly, however it was the potential for truly different kinds of gaming that this gaming accessory could provide us with.

One specific example of this was demonstrated by Peter Molyneux’s Milo artificial intelligence concept, which although the concept won’t see the light of day as its own game, the technology will no doubt be used in future games.

Anyway, you’ve probably had chance to read our recent Kinect review in which we asked whether you should buy one, and also found out what we thought to Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports, well now we’re going to give you the chance to win an Xbox Kinect motion controller for yourself in our latest competition here on Zath!

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Panasonic Jungle Handheld Console Is Abandoned Before Launch – Competition Too Fierce?

Since Panasonic last year announced its intention to launch a handheld gaming device called the Jungle, a lot has changed. And that may just be the reason it has decided to quit.

Since then, not only is the Nintendo 3DS nearing launch, a great advancement in mobile gaming in the eyes of fans, Sony has also come up trumps with the announcement of the PSP2 / NGP (Next Generation Portable), though the release schedule for the 5″ powerhouse is yet unconfirmed.

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Steam ‘Big Picture Mode’ Announced By Valve – Allows Console-Style Gaming Through Your HDTV!

Well, GDC has begun, and Valve has already dropped what could potentially be a bombshell. Valve, the masterminds behind the incredibly successful and popular gaming franchises Half Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead, has announced that PC and Mac gamers on Steam will soon be able to play games through their television sets, using a controller.

According to the guys at maclife.com, Valve is keeping fairly tight-lipped on the details, but the basic principle behind the new feature, named ‘Big Picture Mode’, is clear for all to see. However, this could cause many problems in the gaming world online, especially, as anyone who has ever played games on both PC and console will know that using a mouse/keyboard combination can provide much greater performance than using a console controller.

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The Game Maker’s Companion Review (Book)

Times are changing fast within the gaming world. Nowadays, there are more and more people creating their own games for the iPhone and Android devices with some of them become big successes.

The good thing about this is that games don’t have to be the best looking title, or give you endless customisation, just as long as they’re fun and easy to play. I’ve always wanted to make my own game and with this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The Gamer Maker’s Companion is the second book, with the first one being The Game Maker’s Apprentice. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the first book, so sinking my teeth into the second book was a bit tricky as it assumes you’ve already read the first.

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Activision Say Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Rumour Is A Hoax

Earlier this week we brought you the rumours surrounding the next game in the Call of Duty franchise brought about by the launch of a countdown site at www.findmakarov.com and the release of dog tags to the press with the name Sheperd on them suggested to be the same character that appeared in Modern Warfare 2.

However Activision has announced today that the countdown site is a ‘hoax’ and that there will be no announcement from them regarding the future game in the coming weeks; the result of this fresh information is that its rivals, EA, are now suspected of the hoax as the countdown points to when they are due to reveal Battlefield 3 at GDC.

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ScentScape USB Odour Add-On – Games & Movies To Get Smelly?

Have you ever been sat there, playing your games and thinking to yourself, “I really wish I could smell what it was like in that dungeon/swamp/blood stained pit”. Well all your dreams have just come true.

A new USB accessory is going to be released for PC and consoles later this year which will allow gamers to smell games like World of Warcraft. It will be called ScentScape and will contain 20 scent wells that will spray out different aromas up your nostrils like Ocean, Forest, Smoke….let’s just hope the smoke smell isn’t actually the ScentScape burning out!! The game will prompt the device to spit out the correct smells when in the right enviroment.

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Alien Breed Trilogy Boxed Set For Xbox 360 Announced

It was only last week that we reported that Team 17 were in the process of releasing Worms merchandise to the masses, but now there’s more news coming from the Yorkshire games company.

This week, it’s been announced that Team 17 will be releasing the reboot of the Alien Breed Trilogy as a boxed game with all three games on one disc. It was back in 2009 when the first game of the trilogy was released on the Xbox 360 via Xbox LIVE and was titled Alien Breed: Evolution.

Since it’s original release, it was renamed Impact for it’s release on the Playstation Network and PC via Steam. Since then Episode 2 (Assault) and Episode 3 (Descent) have been released with the PSN version of Descent only being released this week.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 To Be Announced In Next Few Days? (Rumour)

Although Activision has taken a break from the Modern Warfare series with the most recent edition to the record-breaking series of Call of Duty games, Black Ops it looks all set to return with the next instalment potentially being Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and it could be announced within days at the upcoming Games Developers Conference (GDC).

The rumour has arisen after the launch of a countdown site, with the URL www.findmakarov.com, displayed a ticker sporting the familiar font of Modern Warfare.

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Kinect Sports Review (Xbox 360 Kinect)

Sports games seem to be the generic release game for motion controllers. The Nintendo Wii had Wii Sports, Sony had Sports Champions for the Playstation Move, and now Microsoft have Kinect Sports for Xbox Kinect.

Because of that very fact, I wasn’t really expecting a great deal from what Kinect Sports could deliver and although it’s a fun game, it still an average one at best. A few years ago, I would have found a game like this to be well worth the money and it would rarely leave my console as I’d always be playing it. But because of the way games have progressed over the years I need more of a story.

Maybe I’m just becoming a moaning old bugger in my late twenties, or just lazy. This is definitely a party game which is where the majority of the fun is. But as you may have already read in my review of Xbox Kinect, my living room doesn’t have the space to allow 2 or more players unless I do some major shifting of furniture.

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Kinect Adventures Review (Xbox 360 Kinect)

As you all know by now, Microsoft have released their Xbox Kinect motion sensor ‘controller’, and bundled with the peripheral is Kinect Adventures.

Nobody expects amazing things from release titles, let alone one that’s part of a bundle on release, but occasionally you can hit oil. Unfortunately, this time around, Kinect Adventures is a good, but average title for your Kinect-equipped Xbox 360.

I saw this as merely a game that would get you used to how Kinect works and to help players get used to playing games without a controller in your hand. Don’t get me wrong, the game works well and is enjoyable, but I found myself getting a bit bored after 20 minutes or so.

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Xbox Kinect Sensor Review – Should I Buy The Xbox 360 Motion Controller?

I was quite excited when I first starting reading about Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect. A motion controller gaming system without the actual controller sounded like futuristic stuff and ever since it was first announced to the world as Project Natal, it was something I just had to have, it really came across as actual future technology that until then you’d only seen in sci-fi movies.

I was excited when I did finally got my hands on Kinect after we’d already seen a Xbox Kinect/Project Natal Preview, even more so through the setup as it felt strange not to be using a controller apart from my very own hands to lead the way.

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BAFTA Video Games Awards 2011 Nominations – Part 2

Now seen as one of the biggest gaming awards ceremonies in the calendar the gaming version of the recent film BAFTAs have been steadily increasing in popularity and importance over the years and last week the nominations for this year’s awards were finally announced.

Here at Zath we’ve already looked at the GAME Award which is voted for by the public as well as the first half of the BAFTA Game Awards 2011, so if you haven’t already you should go and have a look at them, but for those who have or have an aversion for chronological order let’s have a look at who’s up for the remaining seven awards…

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