Hardware - Turtle Beach X1 Headphones

A Guest Article by Funk
I've always played CoD4 and MW2 with headphones on as I think it's one of the best advantages you can have in the game. The downside is that although you can hear exactly where people are, you can't actually talk to people in games. It bothers me sometimes being in games where people are slagging me off because I'm winning and not be able to respond in some way. I've been on the lookout for a headset that had decent sound that matched my awesome Sennheisers and a mic built in that worked with the 360. Recently I got these Turtle Beach X1's.

Not being a sound engineer it's kinda hard to explain technically why they're good but they seem to have an advantage over my Sennheisers in that the sound is amplified and boosted in the right areas. There's a massive bass boost and a focus on the sound of footsteps, reloading and enemies using tech like predators etc. You can actually hear the briefcase opening!

The wires are a bit fiddly to start with because you have a usb cable to the console and an audio jack to your sound source and then another lead from the sound controller to the pad. This allows independent control of game volume in your ears and the mic volume of people in the lobby. You do get a slight humm through the phones when there's no game sound but this is because of the bass boost I think -and you never notice it during gameplay.

Overall I'm well happy with them, they've made me even more devastating and now I can verbally slap people who start talking crap at me during games. The X1's are reasonably priced and if you want to spend another 50 quid on top you can get the wireless X31's.

If you're serious about your FPS's and you want mic ability too. Get these - they're awesome.

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Review - Football Manager 2010

A Guest Review by Barry Burton

• Game: Football Manager 2010
• Format: Microsoft Windows
• Other Formats: Mac OS X, PSP
• Developer: Sports Interactive
• Publisher: Sega
• Genre: Sports Strategy

It’s the eighty-fifth minute of a vital table-topping clash away to Manchester City, and my Manchester United squad is currently deadlocked with its rivals at 1-1. At such a vital stage of the season – what pundits, armchair critics and general football tosspots like to call ‘the business end’ – a victory would represent not only a major scalp for a United side tipped by most for, at best, a solid mid-table finish, but a major psychological boost to a squad whose recent form, following a storming beginning to the season, has been inconsistent.

I am satisfied with my changes.

Click.

YEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!! You bastard!

2 – 1. Two to one. Two FUCKING one.

If you’re wondering why the above sentences are so short, it’s simple – they are typed as I play, and with every ounce of my brain sweating, every electrical impulse hard-wired and every cell containing a formation, a player stat or a training schedule, there is little left over for such frivolities as articulacy and explanation. (The use of the words ‘frivolities’ and ‘articulacy’ in that sentence, incidentally, coincides with the conclusion of the derby fixture; a 2-1 win for the home side, a victory for – fancy this! – the underdogs of United and the pure, flowing football drilled into the side by scholarly manager Barry Burton.)

With that all-important fixture satisfactorily concluded, we can crack on with the review. I would say the review of the game, but Football Manager is more than a game. It’s more than a game about more than a game. It’s a metagame squared. What it is… well. What it is, those of you who ‘get’ it will be able to explain to yourselves. To the uninitiated, Football Manager 2010 is nothing more than a fancy database with a graphical skin and, in a frivolous concession to aesthetics of the sort that have been embedded more and more within the thing in the last decade, a 3D match simulator. And objectively, they’d be right. But, much like football itself, Football Manager 2010 does funny things. It is more than the sum of its parts. Like football, it can be uplifting, it can be crushing, it can be depressingly dull or thrillingly tense. It can be anything.

Unlike most games, there is no ‘end’ to Football Manager 2010. There is no way to complete the game; it simply continues, on into the future, for as long as the player dares to engage. The beauty of it is that there’s always a new twist around the corner - there’s always something to keep you going. There’ll always be another wonderkid, another challenge to set yourself, another project to nurture. The game’s boundaries are set entirely by the player, and the player himself tests himself within those boundaries. For a game that is at once so simple and yet so tantalisingly complex, this is tantamount to giving a 12-year-old a vault filled with sweets; he just wants to try everything, to keep going and keep pushing himself till he’s completely and utterly sated. And then he wants to do it again, and again, and again; pretty soon, he’s sporting a not inconsiderable paunch and can barely move from his chair. But I digress…

If you can find something witty to say about this screenshot, then don't be shy.

There has been little talk, amongst the conjecture and the waffle, of what the bleeding Hell this game is actually like to play. It’s difficult to describe the interface and the tools at the player’s disposal without referring back to previous games, but here goes: The transfers are more realistic than ever, and now other teams will actually bid for your players after you’ve transfer listed them; the 3D match engine is rubbish, an irrelevance, a distraction from the task at hand; player stats seem to be lower even than in the 2009 edition of the game, and the more seasons you play, the worse the standard of player seems to get, a strange pattern that really ought to be patched, either by makers Sports Interactive or by some obsessive bastard with too much time on his hands;  some nice new touches have been added, like stadia being renamed after club legends. The overall ‘feel’ of the game is of a game that is quicker and easier to click through than the 2009 edition, but that is still bloated when compared to the iterations of my childhood. Damn that match engine and damn that pretty game skin!

Those of you who have never played a Football Manager (or Championship Manager pre-2004) game will most likely have no idea what I’m on about, and most likely won’t care either.  You’ll never know the almost paternal feeling of pride that comes from one of your youth team graduates flourishing; never know the feeling of tension that comes with a vital relegation six-pointer; never know the feeling of satisfaction when all of your side’s plans for the season come to fruition.

Or at least, you won’t unless you’re a football fan. Football Manager is the football fan’s dream. Every football fan knows that if only he were in charge, if only he picked the team and set the tactics, things would be better for his team. Football Manager 2010, as it always has done and always will, takes this fantasy and makes it, if not real, then certainly…

Ah, fuck it. It’s real to me. Manchester United 2 – 1 Manchester City. There, on my hard drive, for all eternity.

Click.

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Retrospective - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

• Game: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• Format: PS3
• First Released: November 20, 2007 (USA)
• Developer: Naughty Dog
  
• Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
  
• Genre: Third Person Adventure

I know I'm late to the party. This game came out in 2007 just after the PS3's launch in Europe. I'm excused for being late for two reasons; firstly, I only got my PS3 in 2008 and, secondly, the PS3's just a glorified Blu-ray player, right? Wrong. Definitely wrong. And I'll tell you for why.

When you first load the game up the main thing that grabs your attention is the graphics. Everything is crisp, everything is clear and the backgrounds are gorgeous. A special mention has to go to the character models though, they truly are astounding. The developers have crammed the game disc with ten times more movement animations and 70-80 facial animations per character which when combined really enhance the game and succeeds in further drawing you into the game world.

So the game world looks real, but how does it sound? Pretty bloody good is how it sounds. The score is creepy when it needs to be, inquisitive when it wants to be, and downright dramatic the rest of the time. The music fulfills the objective of being atmospheric and adding a real sense of occasion to the play-through. A huge shout-out has to go to the voice actors. Nolan North does a great job of depicting the cocksure treasure hunter Drake but also, with the excellent character models, can portray sorrow, concern, pain, anguish, elation, bereavement, and any other emotion you wish to name. Other honourable mentions go to Sully and Elena who give the game some depth and perspective alongside Drake.

 Characters! Some of them!

The story is your typical treasure hunter scenario: Group A finds ancient clues that lead to treasure 1, group B steal it, group A get it back, both groups head towards the final destination where they inevitably cross paths and chaos ensues. It's all very National Treasure, but that's not to say it's not enjoyable. There's a bit of a twist around chapter 19 that left me feeling a tad bitter for being so predictable insomuch as it followed a typical videogame convention instead of sticking to what it was doing best, but the game soon explained itself and everything was forgiven. Well, nearly everything. The jetski sections are sure to haunt me for the rest of my life but thankfully they only occupy a minuscule amount of the overall game time.

"Aye, right, cheers Jambo but ye haven't told us aboot the game - ye've just gan an aboot facial animations and other bunkum." Alright! I'm getting there. I might even do it now. The game has a cover system - very similar to the Gears of War franchise's own - and it works great. Corners, boxes, fences, and bannisters provide excellent cover and the majority of it can be destroyed by a few bullets leaving you frantically scurrying around like fat kid who's misplaced his Freddo. The gunplay is also very satisfying with a nice range of pew-pews to choose from and they all feel crunchy and meaty.

 Shoot them! Shoot them with your gun!

The PS3 pad works very well with aiming and shooting being done with the L1 and R1 buttons. This is a great move as, quite frankly, the L2 and R2 buttons where these actions are conventionally mapped are rubbish on the DualShock3. The game also makes use of the SixAxis technology but thankfully it's few and far between. I don't say that because it's implemented poorly, I say that because motion control is a terrible, terrible idea that has only succeeded in saturating the games market with shovelware.

The game uses a few QTEs to advance the story but I feel these work very well within the context of the game. I know these can be controversial as a lot of gamers find them as a cheap way of forcing human interaction within a static scene, but I really enjoy them. So there!

All in all, Uncharted is an excellent game - worthy of any and all praise that is heaped at it, piling up by its feet. It's engrossing, encapsulating, atmospheric, delightful to look at and a pleasure to play. The game demands attention much the same way a Hollywood blockbuster does and it's certainly evident that films paid a huge part in the inspiration and design of the game so it comes as no surprise that an Uncharted film is currently being made. Games like this restore my faith in the PS3 as a console. Games like this restore my faith in videogames where bringing in a new IP is considered a costly risk. Games like this are why I play games in the first place. The promise of a second installment - already out - fills me with joy. Uncharted is the first PS3 exclusive I've played and thought: "y'know what, this is actually really good" and for that it can be considered a rare treasure indeed.

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