It is not a short game by any means, I suppose it took me between 12-14 hours which is an average length game and 3 times the pitiful length of Call of Duty 4. 

The game is a little buggy in places and occasionally members of my team would get stuck in scenery but if you progress they will come running forward.  The AI is very strong and you must use cover properly or face a quick death.  Your team mates will even shout at you to get to cover if you are not doing it properly. There are some sections where the AI are really hard to break through and one level very near the end took me many attempts to complete.  It is vital you use suppressing fire from the front with one or two teams and flank them from the left or right so they are unsuspecting.  Oddly, the game went from easy to hard to easy to hard and so on throughout the game, not a continual increase in difficulty.  The tank sections were really easy though and the tank guns made easy work of the enemy. 

Visually the game looks good but is not a stunner with the likes of Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock for example.  There’s the odd clipping against scenery and occasional framerate dips but on the whole it is good, but not awesome.  Graphics in the cutscenes looked fantastic though and the models of soldiers were impressive.

The best part of the game though has to be the storyline.  WW2 shooters have never had the best storylines to accompany the games but this story was very interesting and I was compelled to watch the cutscenes throughout - something which I rarely do. 

Despite a few bugs here and there and the spikes of difficulty, I have thoroughly enjoyed this game and I would recommend fans of WW2 games to play it.

GREAT/10

So it has been hard for me to decide how to approach this review.  Of course I have to be impartial and just say really whether it is good or bad and hope that my hatred of racing games is brushed aside.

So I popped in the disc today thinking “yeah yeah its going to be another generic racing game that I am rubbish at and I am going to hate”.   To my pleasant surprise though, the game is actually a huge amount of fun.  So okay racing is boring, but it is spiced up by the ability to do tricks in the air - and not just a few feet into the air, but several hundred feet.  My first massive jump was met with a few “ooh aah  wow omg thats high…. OUCH” and I came down crashing on a rock with a sound that echoed probably the snapping of a broken neck.  Despite my bruises I quickly got back on the quad bike and continued my race - and came 4th !!  Beginners luck

Lets start with the basics and the menu system.  You have 7 options - World Tour, Single Event, Trial Mode, Online Play, Garage, Leaderboard and Options.  The menu is quick to navigate  and you can easily select your chosen mode. 

World Tour is the career progression mode where you play through a series of events and unlock tracks, costume, quad parts and so on.  

Single Event is just that - a single race for practice or for fun.

Time Trials consists of the standard race modes but with no other racers.  You are on your own to improve your lap times. 

Online is the online multiplayer and of course needs no description. 

Within the above modes you also have different types of races - standard race, sprint and freestyle.  Races have bigger tracks, Sprints have shorter tracks and freestyle is in a class of its own.

Freestyle I found was the most difficult mode.  Not only do you have to score high on the tricks, but there are collectibles which you must get to even finish the line.  For example, you must keep getting the fuel collectible, if you run out of fuel it is race over.  This I found the hardest part because the A.I. usually beat me to the fuel because I was not fast enough.  You really have to be in the lead in this mode to have a chance of topping up your fuel.

pure game

I just had a play of online mode in some unranked player races.  I can report no lag, although this may change when the game is released on Friday and more people play online.  The game plays as smooth as a baby’s bum.  Despite the game being extremely fast paced, I have experienced no glitches or framerate issues and it plays exactly how a next gen game should play.  In addition if you do not have a full room, it can fill the race up with A.I. controlled racers to give it a busier feel. 

Visually PURE looks fantastic.  The tracks are highly detailed although the trees could do with a little fine tuning.  What is it about trees which makes them so difficult to render in games?  I have never found a single game that does trees well.  But anyways, this does not really matter much as the trees in the distance look fine, it is only up close when you have splatted your body against one when they look like cardboard cut-outs.  The tracks themselves have great variation in them although it could do with having a few more tracks to add to its repertoire.  Having said that, in each track there are multiple paths so you can vary it a little by switching paths each time for a new view.  Some paths have short jumps, some have massive jumps, it all adds to the mix.

Mod Your Quad - In addition to the career mode and other modes, there is a garage.  Here you can build your own quad bike from scratch or if you are impatient like me you can press the button to allow the computer to choose what is best.  Every part can be customised and upgraded and even give it a paint job to suit your mood.  What is great about this is once you have upgraded and fine tuned your quad bike to suit, you can then take that quad bike and use it online for your races. 

Tricks and Stunts - A major part of the game and what separates this game from others is the use of stunts and tricks.  Get a good long run up to a jump and with a button press or two you can be doing aerial manouvres that would even impress the Red Arrows.  The buttons on the controller represent different tricks alongside pushing the left stick in the direction you desire.  At first you are offered “A” stunt (by the use of the A button).  If you are successful and do not crash you are offered B aswell, B is a more advanced trick.  Then if you have 3 or 4 successful tricks in a row you are offered the even more advanced “Y” trick.  Now you hold onto the ability of the “Y” trick until you crash out.  Two successful “Y” tricks will give you the amazing special LB+RB (xbox360 version) trick which ultimately ended up in me crashing every time.  It takes timing to do the tricks and because the game is very fast paced it takes good concentration to pull the advanced stunts off successfully.  Succesful tricks also provide you with nitro boost eventually, so there is a purpose to being good at the game.  Sadly, I am rubbish at it.  One thing I should mention that is very important is that PURE does not seem to display rubberband A.I. - if you are beating the A.I. then you are beating them fair and square and they do not unfairly zoom past you at the slightest knock.  In my second race I was miles ahead and I crashed.  I got back on the bike thinking I would end up in last place and I was still in first place.  I am sure having no rubberband A.I. will please everybody. 

So this is my review for PURE.  I am really happy with this game.  Despite hating racing games, PURE is a lot of fun and is suitable for all ages.  The creation of quad bikes is not necessary but recommended and if you are lazy then let the computer do it for you.  

I really cannot criticise this game at all, it does what it says on the tin and does not make wild claims about being something it is not.  If I had to criticise something, it is the lack of local multiplayer.  It is not a big issue for me, but I can see that it may be a problem for some and I think this omission may be a deal breaker for some players that unlike me, actually have friends to invite around.  

This is a must-buy for all racing fans. 

SCORE - GREAT/10

Pure is developed by Blackrock Studios and Published by Disney Interactive Studios.

It is released in Europe on Friday 24th September on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.  PEGI Rating 3+

Based around seven real world locations, including New Mexico, Italy and Wyoming, PURE will have you tricking your way to off-road racing gold.  

PURE is not just an off road racer.  You must beat the game using tricks, stunts and aerial jumps.  It is a bit like snowboarding but in a big quad bike and without the snow.  

Naturally there will be online multiplayer and 16 of you can cram a room, get drunk and fall 100 feet down a hill on a 4-wheeled motorbike.  Just be sure to have the vomit bowl ready in case the jump is so high you get an attack of the vertigo devil.  All in the name of gaming of course and not real life.  

Furthermore in PURE you can build your ride from scratch and there are approximately 60,000 variations of quad bike to build so you can mod and tune to your hearts content.  Check out the videos below for how to mod your quad.

PURE recently won the Best Racing Game award in the Critics Game Awards of E3 2008, so you know it does have something special up it’s sleeve. 

PURE will be available in Europe on 26th September on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC

I will be reviewing PURE hopefully some time before it’s release so keep your eyes peeled for a run down of this great looking game.

Check out these crazy videos

Check out my more in depth Review

There are 10 bowling alleys to unlock, except these are no normal bowling alleys.  Instead of an alley in the traditional sense, you have a wide map area with lots of sets of pins and collectables.  Think maps about the size of Marble Blast Ultra but with bowling pin sets scattered across the course.  The purpose of course is to knock down the set of pins in that frame only (the one which is highlighted by a red arrow) but there is nothing to stop you from going for other sets of pins on the same course to boost your score of the current pin set.  Say for example for some reason you miss your target pin set.  You can guide your ball while it still has pace to another pin set and try and take down those instead.  If you take any out of that set, when it comes to bowling that set in your next go, the pins you took down will already be down.

Rockets can boost your balls to go a lot faster.  But be careful when using them because pressing X to left boost will shift the ball slightly left and you can actually miss your target, the same for pressing B to boost right.  It is difficult to explain but you can clearly see how it works in the trial version of the game.

Alongside the courses and collectables on the map you have challenges and tournaments.  Challenges are against one computer opponent and Tournaments are against 4 or 5.  The good thing is that you do not have to go through every computer controlled opponents before you get another go.  You only see your goes and the opponents are tallied up in the background.

This is of course also online and local multiplayer if you wish to play your friends.

Throughout the course of the game you will earn cash and this will allow you to buy better bowling balls with more accuracy and better firepower.

It is a good game and quite addictive and certainly worthy of 800 points in my opinion.

300ft under the ground in a system of tunnels they have been building a massive machine (17 miles long) that can collide particles.  When these particles collide they can create little tiny black holes which then evaporate into air.  What they are aiming to do is to recreate the big bang theory which they think started the creation of earth.

Looking around the web, opinions seem to be divided on whether it is a safe practice or if it spells the end of the earth and we get swallowed up by a huge hole.  Obviously the scientists conducting this research insist it is safe but others disagree.  Apparently the Hawking Theory (named after Stephen Hawking who made it up) says that a black hole will evaporate within milliseconds after creation because it lacks stability.  Only stable neutral black holes can suck things up like a Dyson, but they need radiation.  These black holes will create radiation but they will not be neutral therefore they will dissipate into thin air.  Or so Mr Hawking and his friends think.

But what if the scientists are wrong?  Who are they to play God and decide to put the world at risk?  Maybe there is no risk involved but as everybody knows, no machinery on earth is 100% reliable especially on such a serious thing as this.

Of course if there is a problem and we all get sucked up, it may not even happen on Wednesday, it might be later on in the week when they eventually collide these particles.

Now I am all for scientists doing research in the name of mankind - finding cures for cancers, altzeimers, tornadoes and so on, but I see no reason why we need to know how Earth was formed.  Okay there was a big bang created by some geezer called Adam and his wife Eve and a hole exploded and created this beautiful globe and that is all we need to know.  We don;t need to know why or how or when, we want cures for illness.

All I can see this experiement is useful for is to inflate the ego’s of these scientists to give themselves a good name.

See You next Thursday?  Don’t All Fart At Once!

Five game developers - Atari, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters, have decided to get together to take legal action against people who illegally download their games.

The developers are to serve legal action against 25,000 people across the UK.  The people can avoid legal action and pay damages of £300 per person in out of court settlements.  If they decide to go to court it could cost the person up to £16,000 in damages.  The first 500 people who choose to ignore the letters demanding the £300 fee will be taken to court in the first wave of action.  It certainly is a lottery if people do choose to ignore it.

The regular line from people who download software/music illegally is that it does not hurt the industry.  But to cite a few figures from the article, Topware Interactive released Pinball 3D.  It sold 800 copies but was illegally downloaded an estimated 12,000 times.  

I fully support any action these developers want to take.  If people choose to be a “knock off Nigel” then they should pay the price. 

The lesson is to don’t be a knock off Nigel and do your bit into supporting developers and the game industry.

The game itself has 3 pub games. One is a card game, one is a dice game and the other revolves around spinners. All 3 games rely on solely an amount of luck and there is no skill involved whatsoever. They are also pretty basic so you will be spending your time only pressing the A button to draw the next cards, spin the dice or spin the spinners.

Unless you want to rack up lots of gold ready for when you play Fable II there is no reason at all to buy this game, especially at 800 points. I will not be buying it, part of the fun of playing RPG games is getting enough gold through the game to buy your upgraded weapons or whatever. Why on earth would I want to go into the game being able to afford everything? Of course there is a negative to gambling early, if you rack up a huge debt then this will not reflect very well on your starting character.

Gamble wisely.

To improve reader content for the blog I would like everyone to create a screenshot for the announced game to be included in the Sunday post. Entries must be drawn by yourselves in whatever medium you choose and must reflect the game of the week. You can use Artpad, or Paint or whatever program you want to use. If using Artpad, please take a screenshot of your final work and send it over. You do not need to be good at art to send a submission. It will not necessarily be the best screenshot that gets placed into the post, it will be the one or two shots which reflect the game in question well.

The game announcement will be held midweek on a Tuesday, the closing time for entries for that week will be 12pm Midday on Sunday. For an example screenshot please see the post here

All entries which do not make it into the original post will enter the users gallery for everyone to admire, hate or even laugh at.

So get your artistic computer pens at the ready, the first game to be featured in the Screenshot Sunday will be “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”.

Please send all entries to beck AT spritesandbites.net and put “screenshot sunday” in the title.

First and foremost, security and reliability is of utmost importance. Because I need to install Wordpress on it I also need a MYSQL database aswell. Unlimited bandwidth would be a bonus but not a requirement. Also, SMTP support would be a big bonus so I can have my own domain smtp server if I need to send emails away from my isp.

Finally they need to be UK based. I know there are some cheaper deals abroad but I want a UK company to deal with if there are any problems.

So does anybody have any recommendations of a supplier that would suit me please?

I cannot help with all box types but if you have Rev 6 remote or above then try the following with code 206

1. Select any channel on your TV.
2. Point your Sky remote away from the TV and press tv
3. Press and hold down select and the red button simultaneously until the red light at the top of your Sky remote flashes twice.
4. Input the Sky remote control code (206) and press select . The red LED at the top of the Sky remote control should flash twice.
5. Point your Sky remote at the TV and try the volume button. If this works try other TV functions. If these work then the correct code has been selected.

I have confirmed the code 206 works with the Polaroid FLU 26/32 and with Sky HD boxes. I have also managed to get the code working on Sky+ remotes/boxes.