This week I was challenged to identify 5 affordable games that are worth buying today:

1. My old PC favourite, The Movies is amazing value at only £1.99. Sure it’s ancient by gaming standards and precise editing is a bit tricky but it’s wrapped up in a nice studio-building classic.
2. Alan Wake is surprisingly cheap given that it’s only been out 2 months. With a Metacritic score of 83 and the fact that everyone was talking about it at the last games event I went to, I would have expected it to stay pricey for longer. Perhaps there aren’t enough explosions? I almost bought it yesterday but I should really finish Fallout 3 first. £19.99 from GAME
3. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a brilliant game with classic boss fights (ok, that part’s no so brilliant, imo), a lovely combat system and incredible atmospheric storytelling. Only £13.99.
4. The whole Uncharted series annoys me – where I find The Prince amusing, Nathan Drake just wants a slapping, IMO. Couple that with my poor combat skills and I lose all sense of fun. However, TheFluffyFist and Brinstar really enjoy the game, so Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the list. £19.99 from GAME
5. Finally, I heartily recommend Oblivion on the PC. If you buy it from Play.com, not only do you get Bioshock for free, you can take advantage of the many incredible mods that have come out in the past 4 years. I had some serious issues with Oblivion, most notably the console-driven interface. I was also disappointed that much of Cyrodiil felt the same. There was none of that awe-inspiring feeling of traversing a real world that I got travelling between say, Vvardenfell’s utilitarian city Vivec and leafy tree-village of Tel Branora. I have high hopes that the Unique Landscapes mod will fix that. Bioshock/Oblivion pack – £10.99

We were set this challenge by VoucherCodes.co.uk, a money-saving website with great discounts on consoles, games and accessories including Dell coupons, Currys discount codes and Argos codes.

What top 5 games would you recommend for under £20 (or $30)?

Captive was a labour of love by Tony Crowther after his brother was hooked on Dungeon Master. So Tony decided to write a Dungeon Master type game on the AMIGA and ATARI ST. And so Captive was born after 9 months of hard work.

Released in 1990 Captive had a ridiculous amount of levels (65535) due to the very clever random level generator. You can walk through exactly how the Captive level generator worked at the fantastic Ultimate Captive Guide website.

Like Dungeon Master your party in Captive was composed of up to 4 characters (or droids) all controlled using the arrow keys on the screen. The aim of each mission in the game was to explore bases to find probes (which located other bases) and then blow up each base’s generators (and subsequently the base around you), and then escape back to your ship. Once you’d discovered 10 bases you got to explore a space station and rescue the captive. Yay!

Captive had a wonderful array of weapons and add-ons (called Dev-Scapes and Optics) which granted various extra skills to your droids when equipped (you could see what they were doing in each of the 5 TV screens). For example the root finder which showed you the way to the exit when you’re trying to escape the exploding base. Very handy in some of the huge, multi-floor bases.

Captive also had great title screen music too:

I must have blown up 100′s of bases in Captive before I finally gave up. 65535 bases is just one too many for me!

When the Hunter was released in 1991 this game really was the GTA of its day. Although you didn’t really steal the vehicles, but you did kill people and bunnies! Hunter was a great, free roaming adventure game with a plot. Kill the general and escape. Simple. I loved it and so did Tikipod.

Today it looks like arse (or like a Wii game):

But it’s still a classic. Sit back, put on your nostalgia hat and enjoy:

You controlled a team of 4 different characters whilst exploring a range of worlds. I can’t remember for the life of me why you had to explore these worlds though, not that the plot was the main focus of this game! That was running around kill things and blow stuff up.

Controlling all 4 characters at the same time lead to pretty intensive gameplay, as you can see from this video:

Another awesome aspect of Hired Guns was the music. It absolutely rocked. Check it out:

Thanks DMA Design for releasing such a great game!

Hired Guns was released for the AMIGA in 1993.

Stories came in from everywhere about people having the credit card problems. Scott wanted to stop his son from buying MS points indiscriminately – couldn’t do it. PrincessMeri spent two years asking Microsoft to stop billing her. Mark‘s account was hacked and $247 worth of points was charged to his card. People even made complaints to Watchdog and the Better Business Bureau (sadly, with no direct response). Lots of worldwide frustration over such a simple little thing.

We are now happy to report that Microsoft have finally added an option to remove your credit card details from your Xbox account! They no longer blacklist your card and you can add it back later if you change your mind.

Here’s how:

1. Log in to Xbox.com
2. Click the My Xbox drop-down in the top-right corner and select Manage Profile My Account. (screenshots from the UK version of the site)
   
3. Click Manage Payment Options in the list on the right left-hand side
   
4. You should now be presented with a list of your current credit cards! Note the magical new word, “Remove” next to the card ;) Click the image below for a bigger version.
   

Praise to the gods of customer service! And thanks to reader Johan for letting us know about the update.

Update: 11th Feb 2009
We’re getting reports that some people are having trouble removing their cards. Some even think this is a fake option on the site to placate us. Trust us, it’s not. You can actually remove your card details. Click the screenshots below for the readable pictures:

A few people get the following message:

“This payment option cannot be removed at this time. Please contact Xbox LIVE Customer Support.”

As Gabe says in the comments, they may have an active subscription using their credit card that needs to be cancelled first. I switched to a pre-paid 12 month subscription a few months ago, so the theory seems to hold true. If you get a customer service rep to explain this, let us know.

Our advice, remove your card details and buy pre-paid cards instead:

• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership plus 1 free month!!!
• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 4200 Points Card
• Xbox Live 2100 Points Card

Edit 30th May 2010: Microsoft have changed the way you get to your credit card details, so I’ve updated the screenshots above.

So, I’m looking for a new MMO. Any recommendations? I already know LOTRO, WoW and Guild Wars reasonably well. I played the beta of Empire of Sports and tbh, having my character work out in a gym just reminds me that I should be working out in the gym. I’ve just tried Archlord and omg, the serif-font menu design looks like arse so I can’t bring myself to give it a proper go.

What else is out there that:

1. Lets me play a female character in all classes, not just sexpot mage clichés (Archlord = FAIL!)
2. Has good casual clan/social support
3. Works well, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel

Any ideas?

At the moment the following Widgets and applications are available.

• Xbox Live Friends List:

This is the application that I’ve currently got installed on my iPhone. It’s a nice little application. It is very similar to the Vista Xbox Live Friends Widget but shows a lot more information. You get a breakdown of the last 15 games and their achievements for these games. Nice. Also available for IE, Firefox, MacOS, Blackberry and Palm OS.



• Warhawk Leaderboard:

It does exactly what it says on the tin description. Yep, it shows the Warhawk leaderboard. Simple, clean interface, err, yeah, that’s it.



• Halo 3 recent games:

Not tested this as I don’t have a Mac and I don’t particularly like Halo 3. But given the high standard of all the other apps, I’m sure it will be useful, just not to me.

• 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.

Microsoft Xbox Live and points cards:

• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership plus 1 free month!!!
• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 4200 Points Card
• Xbox Live 2100 Points Card

Test system:

• UK Wii Console – set to 60 Hz 4:3 screen mode
• Sony CRT TV (handles 60hz mode)
• RGB SCART lead
• COMPONENT lead – For CARNIVAL game test
• Wii FreeLoader – EURO version (£9.99 from Play.com)

Games tested and results: (GameCube unless otherwise indicated)

• PIKMIN (JAP) – Works fine
• PIKMIN 2 (JAP) – Doesn’t work
• PN03 (JAP) – Works but has squashed display
• SUPER MONKEYBALL (JAP) – Works fine
• METROID PRIME (US) – Works but with some pre-game menu issues (in game ok)
• ZELDA – WINDWAKER (US) – Doesn’t work
• ZELDA – WINDWAKER BONUS DISK – OCARINA OF TIME (US) – Doesn’t work
• RESIDENT EVIL 4 (US) – Works but has squashed display
• WAVERACE: BLUE STORM (JAP) – Works but with thin flickering band near the top of the screen. Gameplay unaffected but flickering band is annoying
• VIEWTIFUL JOE (JAP) – Works but with squashed display and playback issues with pre-menu movies
• DOBUTSO BANCHO (ANIMAL LEADER) – Works but has squashed display
• CARNIVAL (US – Wii Version) – Works but need to use COMPONENT lead otherwise the colours are all screwy (red and black)

As you can see, most of the games tested worked, but a number suffered some sort of issue. Tikipod didn’t test any JAP Wii games, as he didn’t have any available. According to one of the comments on the Play.com Freeloader product page Super Smash Brothers Brawl (US) works just fine so you can all rest easy.

Oh, and the recent reports that the latest Wii firmware update (called IOS37) disables FreeLoader is a hoax. However, with all the Wii firmware updates that Nintendo rolls out there’s no guarantee that FreeLoader won’t be disabled by one of them in the future.

Update 24th Mar 08: Carnival is a Wii game, so updated the post accordingly.

Update 7th Feb 2009:
The saga is over! Microsoft have now given us the option to remove credit card details through Xbox.com. See Remove Your Credit Card Details from Xbox Live – ONLINE! for details.

So 30 days have now passed since I was called by Xbox support. Have they removed my card details as they promised? Err, no they haven’t.

To be honest I didn’t expect them to have either. Maybe they had their hands full dealing with the rather shoddy provision of Xbox Live since Xmas and forgot about my support call?

It has now been 53 days since I first asked Xbox Live support to remove my credit card details. I’m now wondering if they actually are able to remove my card details? At this rate the card will have expired. Very, very poor service Microsoft.

Check out part I and part II of this ongoing saga.

Update 26th Mar 08: They’ve been removed. I can’t believe it. Microsoft have FINALLY done what I asked them to do over 3 and a half months ago. When I examine my LIVE account on my 360 there are no card details at all! Upon reviewing my LIVE account at http:\\billing.microsoft.com my card details have been flagged as removed (only there for historical purposes) and can’t be used or viewed. About bloody time Microsoft.

Our advice, remove your card details and buy pre-paid cards instead:

• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership plus 1 free month!!!
• Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Membership Card
• Xbox Live 4200 Points Card
• Xbox Live 2100 Points Card