Fi' Club Friday

Thankfully the week has flown by! Everyone coming tonight? Will we see a return to PSP antics? Will I ever win one of those tank games ("no!" they all shout... lol)

Bad news from Hollywood.

HolywoodReporter.com reports, quite aptly, from Hollywood that Universal, Paramount and Image are all pulling out of the UMD movie business. Also many stores are reducing shelf space for the movies, and rumours have it that Wal-Mart are dropping the range altogether.

Having never bought a UMD movie I guess I'm part of the problem, but I'd rather have a decent sized Memory Stick Duo and buy DVD movies to rip.

New PSP Mag with playable UMD

From 27 April Future Publishing are to begin publishing a PSP magazine, with the unweildy title of Official PSP Guidebook. It will feature playable demos on a cover mounted UMD. I will certainly be having a look at the first couple of issues.

Cheap games at GameStation

If you buy anything at Game Station online at the moment, you can get any £34.99 PSP game for £19.99. Some guy reportedly bought Carmageddon 2 for the PC for 99p and picked up Pro Evo for £19.99. I might finally get Everybody Golf at that price.

Here's the list of games in the offer.

Comments Feed

You can now subscribe to a comments feed using the following address:

http://www.mailbucket.org/ficlub.xml

It's not perfect, as it would be nice to get the posts in there too, perhaps, so it's all in one feed, but it's a start.

Paging Dr. Richard...

Reckon Richie has started his own 'Fi Club blog on a different channel.

Rumour has it, he's getting more comments than us. :O

Oblivion - Part One

I thought I'd blog about my impressions of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in parts, as I went along. It seems sensible as when you start a game that boasts over 200 hours of game time you can't wait until the end to write about it.

Yep, 200 hours. And having played my first three hours I can well believe it has that much play in it. To begin with you get the RPG standard character selection process. Choose a race, a name, play with the features and proportions, choose a specialisation, choose a fucking big television... oh no, that was something else. Anyway, once you've created your bipedal Siberian Tiger (Khajiit) and named him Wim O'Way it's time to begin.

Starting off in a dank jail cell you're soon whisked into a plot of subterfuge and assasination, then left to wander your first dungeon facing rampaging rats and goblins galore. This introductory passage serves two purposes: firstly it familiarises you with the basic controls, combat combos and spellcasting; secondly it equips you with enough rusty armour and weaponry to give a whole village tetanus. The plot unwinds a little further, you're given your first quest, you pick your starsign (it turns out Cyrodiil, along with an abundance of the letter 'i' also has much more exciting astrology than your average fantasy realm: Wim's birth sign bestows him with Poison Touch for example, which is distinctly more useful than my own Virgoan 'logic',) and you open a small gate and emerge from the prison sewers into the open countryside, a free man (or cat, or lizard, or orc).


Now, given that the quest bestowed upon you is of fairly high importance, the land of Cyrodiil is altogether much too distracting. There are rivers to swim, fish to catch, deer to hunt, ruins to explore, houses to enter, locks to pick, guards to evade... or not. Oops.


Wim's first encounter with the long arm of the law, and his natural catlike reflexes and night vision, not to mention his feline predilection for taking things that are just lying around and running off with them have determined that he is going to become a professional thief. He has succesfully (after only two quickloads!) negotiated entry into the Thieves Guild (and stolen a 100GP flawless diamond from the house of the local representative as he chaired a meeting of prospective candidates, the irony of which wasn't lost on Wim. Hey, the guy didn't say we couldn't steal from other thieves, there were some rules which I didn't really listen to, but I'm pretty sure none of them forbade that.)

So, as I left Wim last night as he tossed fitfully in a stolen bedroll, in a stolen tent, in the grounds of a ruined castle (which he hasn't stolen, he can't carry that much, but he would if he could) he was dreaming not of the important quest given to him by the Emperor, but of finding a fence for the giant 'rock' in his backpack before the local guild leader realises it's gone.

Return to Vice City next for PSP?

PSP World reports that Rockstar have filed three patents indicating that the next GTA installment for the PSP will be set in Vice City.

From the article:

This would make quite a bit of sense, since it would mirror the order that was used on the PS2 in GTA III, GTA Vice City, and GTA San Sndreas.

I for one would welcome this turn of events as VC was an incredible game in terms of style and humour, and it would also seem to promise that one day we'll be able to visit San Andreas on our portables too.

Beat 'Em Ups! God, yeah, that's what we need!

From Eurogamer:

News - New Tekken PSP details // PlayStation Portable /// Eurogamer: "Sony has announced more details of Tekken Dark Resurrection, the first PSP instalment in the hit beat-'em-up series.

It'll feature more than 30 customisable characters, including newcomers Dragunov and Lili, our old friend the Armor King and lots of other familiar faces. You can spend the money you earn from fights on new stuff for your character - apparently there are twice as many items to choose from than there were in Tekken 5.

Game modes will include Arcade Battle, which sees you fighting your way to fame and glory, and Quick Battle, which lets you take part in one-on-one or team battles against the CPU. Team Battle allows up to eight players compete in a knockout tournament.

Story Battle lets you find out all about your character's history, while Tekken Dojo sees you fighting for the title of Tekken Lord as you battle in a series of Dojos based on a private island owned by Mishima Zaibatsu.

Then there's Ad Hoc Mode, for wireless battles against real life opponents, and three attack modes - Time Attack, Survival and Gold Rush. And finally, there's the obligatory Practice mode, complete with tutorials, freestyle training and command training.

Tekken Dark Resurrection is out later this year.

This is good: toys and prizes as incentives to play and practise, and an ad hoc multiplayer mode. Rokin.

Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror

The Metacritic review of Syphon Filter for the PSP looks promising -- 8 way multiplayer, too!

"Assume the role of Gabe Logan, a highly-trained Precision Strike Operative, commanding a black box United States Agency that legally doesn't exist. Gabe finds himself dealing with a beautiful woman from his past who harbors a shocking secret while he battles the Red Section, a para-military group in possession of Project Dark Mirror, a next-generation weapon of mass destruction. Using Precision Strike Tactics, advanced vision technology, and the latest in high-tech weaponry, Logan and his team perform surgical strike missions - too sensitive for a military response, too dangerous for civilian intelligence forces.

Through the role of Gabe, players will have to be quick to strategize, as he is responsible to infiltrate, recon and execute decisively. Once inserted, Logan is his own authority - he must make life and death decisions, quickly choosing which course of action to take."

[Read the review]

Great trailer on the [Official Site].

Project Mayhem

Tempest fugit. The relentless march of time goes on and now we are two weeks older. With nothing new, improved and hugely interesting coming out for the PSP any time soon, I slowly raise a hand, cough, and say "Hey guys, I'll host" and then try to muster the interest to bang out another witty 'Fi Club email.

Except that we all know that we won't actually play a huge amount of PSP at this one, GTALCS is getting a little long in the tooth and Burninout is too crazy hectic to fill an entire evening. Let's soldier on, though, and pretend like we're charging our PSPs ready for an evening of hardcore gaming and pile over to my place, this Friday March 31st and sit around drinking posh beers (or, in Munchk's case, whatever the cool cola du jour is) and eating the snack foods that we love to regret by the following morning.

Remember, fellow Space Monkeys, to keep up the pretence of actual PSP goings on -- for some reason the wives and respected partners are cool with it and we still seem to get away with it every two weeks.

Erm, discuss.