Her name is Violette Summer and she is supposedly inspired by a Special Operations Executive agent named Violette Szabo. The real Violette fought and died for the liberation of France in 1944. I’m guessing that the game inspiration was so loosely-based that they felt the need to change her name. Head on over to Wikipedia and read about Violette Szabo.

Going by the promo stuff on the official Velvet Assassin website, it looks like you’ll be able to choose how to approach missions, so I’m enamoured already. I know that I blither on about choice in games. I was a huuuge fan of the old Eidos Commandos games where you would kill guards, or hide their bodies or just sneak around them. I loved working out a guard’s vice, throwing cigarette packets or wine bottles to get him and then bopping him over the head and stealing his uniform. Every mission, I left behind a little room with a pile of tied-up guards in their underwear. The thought of doing it all over again in a high-res third-person game is enough to make me go *squeeeee!*

Then again, I could be sorely disappointed. I wait eagerly for more information.

In the meantime, here are some rather brown screenshots and a teaser trailer, just for you.

GTA 4 is a great game, but not the perfect game that many reviews would lead you to believe. It’s extremely playable and great fun, with multitude of different gameplay elements crammed in there. You’ll also get somewhere approaching 40+ hours of entertainment from just completing the core missions (i.e. following the main game’s plot). I haven’t even factored in the multiplayer aspect, which is another game itself and a very welcome addition too. But there are a few unsavoury bits in GTA 4, and I’m not talking about the dodgy characters! I’ll discuss these bits as part of my look into 2 of the main elements of GTA 4; in-game artificial intelligence (AI) and in my next post the in-game graphics.

The AI - A bit dim, me:

If GTA 4’s AI was asked to hand over its end of year report to its parents it would show a D+. Shows glimpses of intelligence but spends too much time asleep in the corner, dribbling.

Although to be fair, the GTA 4s AI had a mountain to climb to be anything remotely good when all the previous games were a bit thick. That’s not to say that the AI hasn’t improved. It has, but not as much as I’d expected, or even felt was needed. I can’t help but feel that Rockstar has been a bit lazy in this department. Given the ridiculous budget ($100 million depending on who you believe on the internet) that was available to develop this game we should be marvelling at the realistic, living, breathing, sprawling metropolis populated by realistic inhabitants. Instead, we get a bloody great city populated by idiots. As such I present to you 2 examples of GTA 4s rather stupid behaviour:

It wasn’t me Officer - There I was sitting in a taxi, enjoying the sights and sounds of Liberty City, when my ride came to an abrupt halt. I could see that we’d stopped because of all the traffic ahead waiting to get over the bridge. Fair enough, citizens dutifully paying their tolls. But as the minutes ticked past, and we failed to move an inch, I became just a little bit board. So I paid the nice taxi driver and decided to go jack the car at the front of this toll booth queue. It’s the done thing in GTA, trust me. However, as I got closer to the toll booth the actual cause of the gridlock became clear. A police cruiser. I stood there and watched the pathetic sight of this cruiser gently rocking back and forth stuck between a concrete wall and a toll booth. It was mildly funny until I realised that it never looked like it was ever going to escape. I hadn’t expected the games AI to trip itself up so easily. All very disappointing, even if a little funny to watch.

I seem to be missing a gear – Your character is the only person in the whole of Liberty City that is able to put any car into reverse. I’m serious. I’ve not seen a single, damn car try to reverse itself out of a tight spot/pile up/around an obstacle. Due to the AI being generally rubbish, these situations occur all the time. Also there always seems to be one of these traffic jams when you’re trying to outrun the cops or tail/chase/kill someone. Mmm, suspicious. Couldn’t Rockstar have engineered with a better way of challenging the player than using lazy AI?

Here’s a video illustrating some of the more interesting “features” of GTA 4. As you’ll see it’s not just the AI which is a little bit buggy, its affected many of the vehicles in Liberty City as well:

So that’s the AI covered; lazy and frequently buggy, but hey that’s part of the GTA charm! For my next post I’ll cast my eye over GTA 4s graphics. Next-gen lovelyness or another case of Rockstar being lazy?

• Go to xbox.com and sign in
• Go to support and click on the repair agent box (right side of the screen)
• Click on register a new device and enter your Xbox 360s serial number (found next to the USB ports, under the white falp on the front right of the console)
• Now click on your newly registered device (under manage devices) and click request a new repair
• Follow all the on screen instructions to “order” a repair from Microsoft
• Ignore the bit about being sent a shipping box as you will never be sent one (in the UK anyway). I confirmed with Xbox customer support that Microsoft doesn’t send out shipping boxes. You will only recieve an email containing the UPS pre-paid shipping labels



• Now check your email address (the one attached to the Xbox Live account)
• You should see an email called UPS delivery label. Click on the “retrieve UPS returns label” link and print it
• Also click on the “get the receipt” link and print it too (more about this later)
• Now find a box and pack your Xbox 360 inside it. Obviously use packing materials to protect your Xbox 360 during transit
• Attach the UPS delivery label printed earlier to the top of the box and make sure its either in a plastic pouch or covered to prevent damage. UPS need to scan it after all
• You can either request UPS to pick up your package, or you can go to a UPS drop off location
• Important: If you go to a UPS drop off location don’t forget to take the receipt that you printed out earlier. The UPS person will stamp this as proof that your Xbox 360 has been received by UPS
• Wait 2 weeks for the console to be repaired and sent back

Our repaired Xbox 360 came with a 1 month’s free Xbox Live gold membership and a letter identifying what the fault was and what they had done about it.

I hope that Microsoft has corrected the inaccurate and misleading information relating to sending you a shipping box. It caused a 2 week delay in getting our Xbox 360 fixed as I was waiting for a pesky box that was never going to arrive.

Did anyone actually test this prior to release? Truly shocking UI design.

On with the Dexter like blood splatter analysis and the scary looking characters.

Condemned 2 is released on the 4th April 08 on PS3 and Xbox 360

The Heroic map pack consists of the following maps:

STANDOFF

FOUNDRY

RAT’S NEST

How to download the Heroic map pack:

• Sign into Xbox Live
• Go to Marketplace
• Select Game Store
• Find Halo 3
• Select the Heroic Map Pack
• Select confirm download

The next Halo 3 map pack (called Legendary) will be released on the 15th April 08 for 800 Microsoft points.

Personal Banker then got rather shirty and started interrupting me with phrases like “Well, there’s no official policy” when I tried to repeat this back to her for confirmation, so I called the telephone banking team to verify her given reason. According to Barclays Debit Card Services, companies can set up charges based on the first 12 digits of your card number, ensuring that they still get their payments when you change cards. Debit Card Services Woman said that this is what Microsoft would have done, whereas my hosting companies would have been charging the entire 16-digit card number.

Make of that what you will.

Age Rating:

12 (BBFC)

What is it?

A Bioware RPG witha futuristic space-colony setting and third-person-cover combat

It is fun?

Hell, yes.

Is it worth the money?

(£39.99)

Yes, yes, yes. At £1 per hour, it’s very good value for money.

Why?

I love western-style RPGs. I love sci-fi settings. And I love taking cover during combat. I love Mass Effect. This game is almost made for me :)

There are flaws. I talked about Mass Effect’s dialogue issue back in December. The inventory interface is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen, as is the party selection menu. Still, I had so much fun playing the game itself that I don’t really care.

The Good:

• Purpose - You have actual goals throughout the game that aren’t simply “shoot everything in sight”. Sure, that’s generally the means to your end, but at least there’s a purpose behind it.
• Combat - The combat system is great. It’s like Gears of War but less frustrating. Gears feels like you’re wearing a huge chunk of magnetic armour and everything else is made of iron. Mass Effect gives you more control when running and it’s far easier to go around things.
• Breadth - You have a giant world to explore. This isn’t a sandbox game but you can spend hours just exploring the Citadel and pick up lots of side-quests
• A useful journal! Longtime readers will know, I’m a bit fanatic about RPG journals. This one does the job, though could have done with listing the target locations more prominently. Iinstead, you’re forced to open up every single item repeatedly, to find the nearby missions.
• Force powers Biotics - These mysterious powers are great fun. There’s a little something for everyone - healing, direct damage, disabling, shields, sharpshooting… I love it. None of them look quite as spectacular as KOTOR2’s Force Storm, but the combination of Lift and an assault-rifle-wielding teammate looks impressively violent.
• Advancement - I’m not sure if BioWare did a sneaky enemies-level-up-with-you but if they did, it was very subtle and much more satisfying than Oblivion. In Oblivion as you got more powerful, it never felt that way because even the lowliest grass-dwelling bandit mysteriously sprouted glass armour and would kick your sorry ass unless you specialised in combat. In Mass Effect, you can do the majority of the game in any order and it’s always challenging, but you still get the feeling of becoming more powerful.

The Bad:

• The interface and dialogue system. The interface will need a whole post to explain, so I’ll save that for another time. Just trust me, it’s rubbish.
• Uncharted worlds - These are fun to start with. The first time you get dropped on an uncharted world, it’s a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The next hundred and fifty seven times start to grate. Ultimately, the uncharted worlds all feel the same - drive around from way point to way point, drive in circles shooting something, fall off a mountain, find building, kill everyone, search back room (or for variety, upstairs back room), play unlocking mini-game, The End. But it’s the only way to get that level 50 achievement so, for some insane reason, I did them all. There’s no way I’m going for level 60 on another playthrough.
• Repetition - The endless combat in corridors for the main quest does get a little samey after a while.
• Achievements - If you collect gamerpoints compulsively, Mass Effect will swallow you for days. Assuming that you play as efficiently as possible, you’ll have to play the game all the way through twice and the middle four planets at least once more with different allies. Considering it took me around 40 hours to hit level 50 with almost all the sidequests, that’s something in the region of 80-100 hours to get all the gamerpoints. I’d advise you to rent Avatar: The Burning Earth instead, but you probably already did.
• Tower of Hanoi - Has BioWare ever made an RPG that didn’t feature the Tower of Hanoi? I’ve been solving this puzzle for at least 15 years now. I know it was in KOTOR and I’m sure I saw it in another BioWare game. Here’s a compromise; show us the puzzle and have a character ask what it is. If we answer Tower (or Towers) of Hanoi we get a free pass, okay?

In summary:

It’s a brilliant space-shooter RPG. Mass Effect would get my vote for Game of The Year 2007.

Mysteriously HUD-Free Screenshots

I suppose should be reasonably happy as our 360 has lasted since March 2006. Wow, that’s nearly 2 years. Hang on a minute, our 360 sits next to a working Gamecube and that’s 6 years old! Not forgetting my working PS2 (7 years old), PSOne (12 years old) and BBC Model B (22 years old).

Thoughts that crossed my mind when I saw the RRod:

• Arse, arse, arse.
• Wait, rebooting the console should sort out the problem, it is Microsoft after all.
• (After reboot) Arse.
• Eeek, what about my Xbox Live profile and my achievements/saved games?
• Phew, they are on the HDD, should be safe.
• But what if the HDD has died?
• Oh hell, Xbox Support. Weeks, maybe months without a 360, aggghhhh.
• Wait, my PS3 and Wii will do instead. Yay.

After further investigation using the Xbox-scene.com forums error code guide our secondary error code is 0102 which means:

Error in the “Digital Backbone” (CPU/GPU/RAM), this is usually caused by a cold solder joint between the GPU and the mainboard

Looks like I’ll have to get Microsoft to fix our console. Problem is that to date my experiences with Xbox Support have been awful. I’m still waiting for the saga of removing credit card details from my Xbox Live account to end.

Has anyone else had a 360 fail as it could involve up to 30% of consoles according to this RRoD article?

Update 21st Feb 08: 8.30am - Reports of our Xbox 360s death have been greatly exaggerated. Lazarus-like, it’s ALIVE! Woke up this morning, poked the power button and the 360 booted up fine. No RRoD, just the green ring of life. However, I’ve placed the 360 on death watch as I think it may fail again pretty soon. But for now, the 360’s back baby.

Update 21st Feb 08: 9am - Its died again. Sniff. I quickly downloaded some XNA creators club demos, turned off the 360 and then when I turned it back on the evil RRoD was back. Boo.

Update 26th Mar 08: It’s back from it’s trip to the Xbox repair centre and it’s ALIVE!!!! It took 2 weeks from sending it off to getting it back. Pretty speedy. The problem was the motherboard, as I suspected, so it has been replaced. Although the Xbox does sound different now, and emits a sound like a slightly asthmatic duck sleeping when you turn it off. Oh, and Microsoft included a free 1 months Xbox LIVE gold membership to sort of say sorry for the crappy 360 build quality.