Defence Mechanism

Spotted today in a local Gamestation. No wonder they aren’t selling very well!

Of course I want one!

See Carolyn’s blog for why…

Not too long ago in a young chap released MacSaber, a cool program that used the MacBook/Pro motion sensor to turn your laptop into a light saber, well sound like a light saber anyway. Well now he’s stepped it up big time. He’s just released WiiSaber. All you do is sync your Wii remote with your mac and you’re off! Awesome! My arms already hurt from too much wii-ing but this is too much fun!

For extra fun make sure you try the B button.

Technorati Tags: Wii

Great piece of kit. Definitely better than my old M3 Power.

Carolyn says it’s much smoother too.

Check out Microsoft’s new Origami device. It’s a bit on the chunky side!

Here’s some screenshots to whet your appetite…

Product design by the sacked Nintendo DS designers.

Watch out mate, she’s gonna get you with it!

Speaks for itself!

Oi mate! Put that wing mirror back!

Also check out the exceedingly dull teaser site.

I’ve had a Sony PSP for about 2 weeks now. It’s one impressive piece of kit! The first thing you really notice about the PSP is the screen! It’s big! Approx 4.5 inches diagonally! Which for a hand held is mighty impressive. It’s also very sleek and sexy. One bad thing is that it’s a fingerprint magnet! Which is why I keep a microfibre cloth handy so the PSP always looks ship shape.

The PSP is capable of so much! As well as games you can watch movies (both UMD and MPEG4), play MP3s and view your photographs. To do all this the first thing you are going to need is a much larger memory card than you get with it. 512Mb is about minimum I’d suggest if you’re going to stick full length movies on it.

Cool things about the PSP are.

• You can switch off the PSP mid-game and return to it later without losing where you were.
• The interface changes color every month!
• The ability to play mp4 movies on it. (Many apps available to convert your movies/DVDs)
• It’s so damn slick!!!

Games

With the PSP I got Metal Gear Acid and Ridger Racers, both Japanese versions. Of those 2 I only played Ridger Racers as its menu was fairly easy to navigate and most of the rest of the game is in english. Metal Gear Acid has too much japanese and I really don’t have an idea of what’s going on. It’ll be getting Ebay’ed soon!

I bought Wipeout Pure on the day of the American launch. It’s also a really impressive game. I was a fan of the originals on the PS1. I didn’t ever complete them as they were getting too fast but I enjoyed them greatly. I skipped the PS2 Wipeout Fusion as it got some really bad reviews. Wipeout Pure however is just great. Initially I tried playing it using the analogue stick but it felt dreadful. I switched to the d-pad and all the old wipeout feeling came back. Wipeout Pure looks stunning! The graphics are as good as Wipeout Fusion on the PS2 but the gameplay is as good as the PS1 versions. One thing that would make Wipeout Pure perfect is if you could get the original music from Wip3out into it. The music in pure is all right but it would be cool to listen to Orbital and the Chemical Brothers again while playing.

I’m progressing quite well with Wipeout Pure. So far I’ve won Gold in all the alpha, beta and ascension tournaments in the vector and venom classes. I’ve also won gold in all the individual maps in alpha and beta with vector and venom class ships. Currently working my way through beta on Flash class. It’s great fun but it is getting fast!

I’ve also just ordered Lumines from a guy on Ebay. It looks really interesting. It was designed by creator of Rez and Space Channel 5. It’s kinda like a cross between Tetris and Rez. It gets an excellent review at Gamespot. Can’t wait for that to arrive.

Normally I don’t go anywhere near PC World but I’d heard of a printer bargain, Canon IP4000 for £99, so I headed there this morning. Unfortunately they were back to £130 so I didn’t bother. Will be back at £99 soon I imagine. Anyway, I had a nosey in the bargain bucket to see if there was any goodies, usually not, but I found a set of THX Certified Logitech Z-2200 speakers in there for £35!!! A quick check on pricerunner finds the cheapest pair at £85 delivered! So I bought em…

Left speaker, beautiful!

Right speaker and volume widget! Logitech MX-700 mouse base in the shot too. They do make some tasty equipment.

The 10″ sub and the inside of PC! Yup, that is a huge sub!

For no reason - here is a picture of my task bar. Here’s what’s on it listed left to right.

• Messenger 6.2
• Skype - www.skype.com
• iTunes - www.itunes.com
• ATI - I downloaded 45Mb of drivers for this!?
• iPodder - ipodder.sourceforge.net
• Steam - www.steampowered.com - This is where I’ve bought Half Life 2 from. It’s all on my hard drive just waiting to be unlocked.
• Ultramon - www.ultramon.com - Dual monitor software.
• Feedreader - www.feedreader.com - RSS Agregator
• WinDVD Manager
• Removable Drive Manager - Cause my 250Gb LaCie drive is plugged in. Firewire of course.
• Gmail Notifier
• NVidia Mixer

I realise I could have “Hide inactive icons” selected but I like instant access to my hardly used system tray widgets!

If you’ve mostly played FPS games on the PC then you’ll know the only way to play them is with the keyboard and mouse. W, S, A and D are used to move your character forward, backward, sideways-left and sideways-right. And the mouse is used to aim/fire/jump. It’s logical, it works and it feels right.

Now I have an X-Box. And if you have an x-box you have to have Halo the best FPS there, apparently, is. The problem with playing FPS on a console is that you have to use a joystick to aim. This just sucks. It’s far too fiddly and it’s ruining my Halo experience.

Today, however, I found this. It’s a keyboard and mouse adapter for the X-Box. It allows you to use your keyboard and mouse to play FPS the way they were meant to be played! Hurrah! I thought maybe I’ll get to enjoy Halo afterall. But, it seems, there is a problem…

I googled the product name to see if there were any other reviews of the product. There weren’t. But what I did find was a lot of discussion. Well not so much discussion but lots of forum posts suggesting that this device was likely to ruin online gaming! Excuse me! Ruin online gaming?! It seems using a keyboard and mouse to play a console FPS is tantamount to cheating!

Is using a steering-wheel to play driving games cheating? Is using a mat to play dance games cheating? No, I don’t think so. It’s the logical controller for the job. A keyboard and mouse is the logical way to play FPS. If that makes me a cheat then so be it! But I’ll be having fun instead of throwing my controller at the wall in frustration!

K/sec that is! NTL has just increased the speed of my broadband to 1.5Mbps from 1Mbps for free!

God bless NTL! Not often people say that!