mkjones

I’m shocked but also appalled that one of my all time favourite video games is being made into a movie/tv mini-series.

XIII is an upcoming 2009 TV Mini-series based on the XIII comic book series by Jean Van Hamme and William Vance, revolving around an amnesiac protagonist who seeks to discover his concealed past. The series is directed by Duane Clark and will star Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff, filmed in Hamilton, Ontario.

Shocked

So why am I shocked? For a start, the game bombed. It was a financial failure. This is why I have spent the past 5 years waiting for a sequel that will never come.

Appalled

And what appalled me about this news is the wishy washy way in which the film appears to have been made. First was a full blown blockbuster movie with a top cast and large budget. Now its a TV mini series that sounds like a bad episode of 24!

Also, Stephen Dorf? What was wrong with giving the lead part to David Duchovny who did an excellent job voicing the character in the game?

I think what pisses me off most of all however is the fact that they bothered at all.

Most of the XIII plot has already been done in 2 previous movies, The Borne Identity and The Manchurian Candidate.

There simply is no need for the movie to ever be made.

The game however should have had at least a couple of sequels funded. The cell shading effect could really flourish on next-gen machines.

I love the guy singing the cheezy rock lines.

This link will allow you to download every English speaking Nintendo DS game for your M3 Simply/DS-Xtreme or other device (via PirateBay).

All the games total around 8 to 9 gigabytes and are pretty well seeded, enjoy!

Halo 3 is over for me and with it the end of a wonderful and moving gaming trilogy.

I have enjoyed the Halo games from the moment I played the first one and the somewhat disappointing sequel on the old Xbox.

It is, (should I say WAS) the best console FPS adventure to date.

As for the 3rd one, it more than made up for the shortcomings of the 2nd. Lets just say that the ending is far, far, far superior. In fact, its one of the best video game endings I have seen.

As for the gameplay/graphics/multiplayer/etc… Well, they have all been dissected and put back together by the blogosphere over the past few weeks so I will remain silent on these matters and sign of simply by saying it was a great game and a fitting end to the saga of Spartan 117.

Oh dear. It seems my favourite podcaster and all-round web celebrity Major Nelson has a few issues at the moment.

His website has been down most of today and recently it was updated to this:

We’re aware that some users are having difficulty downloading the Halo 3 multiplayer beta via Crackdown. Bungie Studios is working with the Xbox Live team to resolve this as quickly as possible - stay tuned. Gamers entering the beta through other means, such as the Friends and Family remain unaffected.

I am headed back to Seattle in a few hours, so I’ll be offline while I am in the air. For the most up to date information, keep an eye on Bungie.net for the latest from Frankie regarding this issue.

This site is experiencing an excessive traffic amount of traffic at this time, so sorry for the temporary nature of this message. We’re working on getting back online as soon as we can.

Via: http://highload.majornelson.com/

This is a real shame and I bet Major is seriously pissed off that he has somehow become a channel for Halo 3 complaints. (Keep reading)

Weirdly, after I had just written my recent post on gaming industry changes I found a decent article by some old Sega fan named Lucas DeWoody over at Advanced Media Network.

It details how Sega’s gaming quality has somewhat diminished since they left the console hardware industry:

To claim that Sega stopped producing quality games after leaving the console market would be a total lie. The real problem was that the Sega fanbase was forced, perhaps too abruptly, to make a seemingly overnight transition to multi-platform gaming, and Sega made poor judgments on which games should have gone to which platform, and when. Forcing their fanbase to make that adjustment, then signing various exclusive deals was a huge disservice to gamers.

Link

(Keep reading)

This ad for the original PlayStation was used in an article I read today:

When viewing the ad my mind fell blissfully back to the early 90s when gaming was still a semi-nascent industry feeding off the a mixture of youthful nerds and gadget fans.

When ads like this one started being broadcast on prime time TV everything started to change.

This ad is a typical early gaming ad, its fast paced, almost impossible to understand and never really gives away the fact that it is in fact an ad for a games console till the last moments.

Ads like were clearly aimed at what was known back then as the MTV Generation. People with short attention spans, time on their hands and money in their pockets, or at least in their parents pockets.

Most of these people were not gamers. Sure the SNES and MegaDrive/Genesis had impacted on a lot of people. But it was still very niche.

Sony were trying their best to change this, much to the detest of some gamers at the time (me included).

Ads like this are responsible for me never owning a PlayStation. This ad, and the many others like it, made no sense to me at the time. I hated seeing PlayStation ads on TV, I hated the idea that Sony, maker of TVs and Walkmans had simply jumped into the gaming market and started to change it.

Of course, gaming ads had been on TV before. But not like this. They were never ‘cool‘ or ‘edgy‘ they were a bit ‘awkward‘ and ‘nerdy‘. They were also aimed at kids and teenagers, not the 16-35 year olds which gleefully prop up the gaming industry today.

I hoped, prayed even, that Sony would fail. That they would go back to making CD players and leave the gaming world.

History tells us that this did not happen. Sony are now the current kings of the gaming world. Sure the PlayStation3 is having a few issues but my god they did a good job at brainwashing the public and bringing gaming out of basements and bedrooms and into the living room. (Keep reading)

The all new Xbox 360 Elite got a tentative UK release date today (September 2007).

A lot of friends and collogues are quite excited about the release of this piece of kit but not me. I just don’t like it. Its not the HDMI or the 120gb Hard Drive, its the colour.

Call me a traditionalists but I like my 360s white.

Is it just me, or does the new Xbox 360 keyboard-chat accessory look like it could kill your thumbs?

I suppose BlackBerry fans will lap it up.

I know, I know. Its a fruitless if not childish endeavour to create a new website every time something annoys me, but in this case the emotional drive to do just that was too much.

Where’s My Gamerscore is a site I have set up to help broadcast my distress at losing 1000+ points from my Xbox Live! Gamerscore.

All my gamesaves and achievements also went down the swanny in a moment of madness which was spurred on by an incompetent phone dolly at Xbox Support.

Have a read, see what you think. But most importantly, if you are are a gamer, do not let this happen to you.

I am now in the process of re-building my gamerscore and getting those achievements back. Already I have added 250 points by completing Fifa RTWC.

I also plan on playing my way though the G.R.A.W and CoD 2 campaigns to try and get these precious points back. Wish me luck!