Paper, Scissors, Glue.

And a steady hand is all you need to make some of these cool papercraft models.

There are some Wipeout Pure ships, and Ridge Racer 4 cars along with loads of other gaming and sci-fi goodness going on in there.













via PaperInside by way of Misterbleepy

Review: Mario Strikers Charged Football

In his first European outing on the Wii Mario brings a bunch of his pals to the park for a kickabout. However with electric fences for sidelines, environmental hazards, special moves, off-the-ball fowling (allowed), and no troublesome offside rule this is footie in its loosest definition of the word. This is to football as Hoops was to basketball.

The game kicks off with an extended and exciting introduction to all the characters and from the looks of them you'd think they're getting ready for Super Smash, rather than the beautiful game. Armoured chestplates and macho posturing abound, even from the (rather curvy) Peach and Daisy.

You then drop into a nice simple menu with the Wii-standard point'n'click interface. From the off you can see Training, Online, Career and Vs modes along with Options and Trophies. Training mode takes you through 10 simple lessons beginning with passing, lobs and shooting, progressing through special moves, power shots and power-ups and ending with a full 3-minute game to test your accumulated knowledge.

Each five man team has a main Nintendo character as its captain. You start off with ten or so playable captains and it looks like there are a few more to unlock through challenges and career modes. The usual suspects star: Mario; Luigi; Daisy; Peach; Bowser; Wario; Waluigi; Yoshi etc. Each has his own strengths and weaknesses based on running speed, power, accuracy and so on, and a selection of special moves. The captain is accompanied by three players selected from the Mario games' plethora of sidekicks and drones, such as Goombas and Koopa Troopas. Your goalie is mostly CPU-controlled except for kicking the ball out and saving special shots (see below). Your team is customisable at the start of a series.

The gameplay is simple and intuitive: direct your players with the stick on the 'chuck. A to pass, B (trigger) to shoot, Z to lob. String passes together to increase your chances of a shot hitting the back of the net. Hold the shoot button to build power, or trigger a special shot. Use the d-pad to trigger your player's unique on-the-ball move, which is usually an evasive manoeuvre. You can string pass and shoot combos together to some extent like the game's more serious brethren, but it's not as accurate.

On defence you can use the d-pad to tackle, or shake the stick for a more powerful (read dirty) tackle. But don't worry - there are no red cards in this game. Slamming an opponent into the electrified walls causes him to become stuck and temporarily disabled. Strong tackles, or powered shots will also grant you a power-up, frequently similar to the pick-ups found in Mario Kart: bananas; red shells; green shells; mushrooms, etc.

Each player has character-specific moves, different on defence and offence. There are nuanced differences on both types of tackles: Bowser will slam an opponent for six, while Yoshi can tackle from afar with his tongue. Each character also has a different special move and power shot triggered by holding C or B respectively. The captains' power shots trigger a short mini-game that can result in up to six goals from a single shot. A killer blow when used near the final whistle that caught me out more than once as I was relaxing, assured (or so I thought) of a 1-0 or 2-1 victory. Leaving the player quite defenceless during the build-up, holding Z brings up a swing-ometer similar to many golf games: as the needle swings round, press once to choose the number of balls you will fire, then again to select the power. If you manage to succesfully execue this attack without being tackled then the character leaps high into the air and fires the balls at high speed towards the goal. The goalie (who is usually CPU controlled) then has to use the wiimote to pick off the balls as they fly out of the screen. With good timing you can quite easily get 3 or 4 balls past the goalie completely changing the flow the of the game.

Dropping into online play is quick and simple. You choose a Mii to create an online account with and you're in. You get to choose a Friendly, for which you'll need to exchange friend codes, or a ranked series against a total stranger. Leaderboards are available which demonstrate quite how lowly you are in the grand scheme of things, even before release day. A quick series against my first human opponent demonstrated to me quite how nuanced and subtle the game is behind the manic and colourful action on the screen. There's far more to this than random button mashing.

Sound is, as you'd expect from a Mario game, accomplished and inoffensive. Each stadium features its own muzak and events are signified with a variety of sound-effects, some of which ring out of the Wiimote's speaker, such as when you're awarded with a power-up. Music, Effects and Voices are all variable in the Audio options screen for when it all gets too grating.

Graphics are generally bright, clear and colourful featuring largely primary and secondary shades, but the colours during the matches can sometimes get a bit muddy on screen and it can be hard to spot the ball, or tell who is on which team. One game I played online had green v yellow on a wasted brown pitch which made it very hard to see what was going on. Environments are interesting and well designed. Characters are drawn and animated with the high quality you'd expect from a Mario title, these are especially noticeable during goal and victory celebrations. Secondary effects are subtle and welcome, such as a nice holographic effect during team selection and to show off the winning captain.

Overall you've got a fast, furious and very fun game here. Each series is a set of three 3 minute matches with no breaks. At first it seems like there are a lot of buttons to remember but each has a very definite use in any given position and you quickly get used to what's going to happen. At it's simplest level learning to pass and shoot is enough to win you a game or two, but the skill lies in clearing space for your Captain to let loose with a six-ball power shot. Clever timing with pick-ups, observant use of environmental factors (wind-blown cows!) and combining the different characters' power-ups is paramount to mastering this game.

Nintendo have dropped a sure-fire winner here. This game is going to take over as the de-rigeur party game, and also provides more than enough depth for a single player. With the simple online play options provided on top I can see this staying in the Wii for a long time.

anyone busy this friday?

guess where fi is this week...?

Quiet! Listen!

Hey, did you hear it? The cries of hundreds of thousands of people. The outpouring of pure anguish and heartfelt pain. Ten hours of panic and confusion and fear.

What is it? An earthquake? Volcano? Tsunami? Hurricane? Forest fires?

Has Al Qaeda launched another terror attack? More planes down in fields and city centres? Tube trains full of smoke and flying nails and death?

Whatever it was it moved thousands of people to move from their couches and post over and over on message boards and forums around the world. To rave in anger and rage. Were they railing against a corrupt government who finally overstepped a line? An evil oppressor? Genocide? Misappropriated relief supplies leaving millions starving?

Whatever it was, it must've been pretty bad, yeah?

I know four people who were personally affected. I, myself, was a victim this terrible day.

Were you affected? Let's hear your story. How did you cope? What did you do on May 17th 2007...

The Day The Halo 3 Beta Download Button Didn't Work on Crackdown.

Sometimes the people I share my hobby with make me want to turn off, unplug, and never come back. Thank you Bungie, MS and Realtime Worlds for letting me share in your free public beta.

Eternal Sonata / Trusty Bell Demo Preview

Last night I grabbed a demo of upcoming RPG for Xbox 360 - Eternal Sonata or Trusty Bell (I think the latter is the lame Western title.) It was a bit of a rigmarole, having to set up a Japanese Passport user so I could log on to the Japanese Xbox Live Marketplace, but now it's set up, it's done for good. My alter-ego lives in Hokkaido University's admissions office. Apparently.

It now appears as a demo for all my logins, so I don't have to switch to play. It's totally in English, without changing any settings.

As I understand it the main portion of the game is set in composer Chopin's dreams as he lies in a coma. The game therefore has a strong musical theme throughout.

It looks lovely.. bright, vibrant and clean. Your party is made up of two boys and a girl, drawn in a pretty, clean, almost anime style, carrying various weapons some of which look to be modified musical instruments (in keeping with the musical theme of the game,) and the girl carries an umbrella. The demo consists of going somewhere north of a village and doing something, but I skipped it by accident so I can't be sure. It ended when I killed some giant Lion / Manticore thing so I'm guessing that was the objective. Whilst moving around the game world there are various people to interact with who give you the rough idea of the game, how to fight etc. and there are also chests to open which yield mostly Peach Cookies, but sometimes pieces of a score (not explained) and magical items.

Play is simple and key presses are well designated on the screen. The attack / defend system is easy to understand and works well, promoting a bit of tactical play once you get used to it. Random encounters are a bit boring (as always) but avoidable as you can see the mobs roaming before you get to them, you're rarely surprised unless you're not paying attention, and sneaking around behind them and attacking from behind gives you the advantage you'd expect.

The battle system is not something I've seen before, but then I'm not a huge RPG player outside of Zelda which has a very fixed system, and doesn't really handle random encounters. At the start of your group's attack you're presented with the battlefield... your three guys (two guys and a girl actually) and the bad guys. The action is paused, and you can toggle views with the left trigger and work out what you're going to do. The current attacker is highlighted and the next attacker is also signified. Each attacker has an alloted time - typically 5 seconds in the demo - to make his/her attacks or moves, and the time starts running the second you move or press a button, so you need to work out whether you're going to make a ranged or melee attack (be it physical or magical) and where you're going to do it from (see Dark / Light magic below). Once you're in position you can hammer the attack / magic buttons to your heart's content until your time limit is up. You have to be careful not to keep hammering into the next character's go or you'll start the timer. Each succesfull hit builds a combo meter which then improves magical attacks for the next of your party who chooses to use one.

There's a nifty dark / light element to the magical attacks. Each character has a slot for a dark attack and a light attack that can be assigned in menu, and where you stand on the battle area (in sun or shade) designates which is used. The Light attacks generally seemed more powerful in the demo, and were many times more effective than physical attacks especially when boosted with the hit combo counter.

In battle you can also use a number of pre-assigned items like Peach Cookies (made from mashed peaches and used to boost HP) and an Angel Trumpet which did much the same as Peach Cookies.

Once you've used your attacks the mobs get a go and there's a timed B-button defense to their attacks which reduces damage and in some cases allows a parry (I think.)

There didn't appear to be anything as spectacular as the FFXI-style summons but I guess this part of the adventure is early days for the party.

I found the fighting got a bit monotonous in the end, but it was often avoidable, and will probably be spiced up a bit with magical items and attacks in the full game.

Based on the demo I'd want to see some full reviews before shelling out, but if the final gameplay lives up to the looks it'll be a winner.

It wuzza accident!

It was me, I dun gone n broke the blog.

I didn't mean to change the stylesheet, didn't mean to come anywhere near Fi Town, but I was in my Blogger dash pootling about with my other blog (yes, the stale one) adding it to my Netvibes Universe and thinking how I might be able to fix some layout niggles if I reselect the same theme and load it in. I already know what the theme looks like, so I don't need to preview it, just hit save and get back to the template code. Right?

So here we are, in this -- still green but not the right shade of green -- new blog. It still smells new, I've been in here a while and you get used to it, but when you go out and come back in you can smell it all strong and new again. The long chain polymer new car fragrance of freshly milled blog.

I'm getting used to the look, too. I'm starting to dig the layout and the detailing, and it's nicely built. Look, look here and see this edging... and here? See? Those little arrows in the bullet points -- it's nice touches like these that show off the craftmanship.

Under the hood is a different story, and I fsckeded a few things in there while trying to suss it out. It's like my cable box at home, horribly impossibly tangled up. Everything has a use but why the fuck's it here? Down here with the footers? I was gingerly poking about trying to rename the sidebar headings, slowly approaching with chair and whip in hand when it reared on me and I shattit and got the fuck out. I feex the damn headings later, wtf. Stop looking at me.

Get this though -- just when you thought I couldn't dirty the ether anymore with my half assed fumblings, I send these packets to be served into your processing units -- I bagsie da hotsts!

You're going to want to bring da portables, fo sho def, although I do have the Guitars here. If your testosterone fulled urging for nubile pale skinned next gen consoles feels like it's overwhelming you, then bring something shiny, I let you plug in, is no problem.

But no footy, y'hear?