Cagney not Lacey

With less than 10 days to go to "Cagney", the release of third update, and first pack of DLC for Burnout Paradise it's time to take a look at some of the new stuff coming up.

Online players seem to be rewarded richly in this package which includes online Stunt Run, Marked Man and Road Rage and a bunch of new Freeburn Challenges and Timed Challenges.

There is loads of detail at the Criterion website, including tons of ganeplay videos with dev commentary.

And how much is this going to cost I hear you all ask?

NOTHING!

It's at Cookie's

Loathe as I am to spoil a good surprise, the suspense was killing me.

Cookie texted me last night to say he was bagsying this, so I'm posting so y'all have some heads-up.

I'll let the Cookie Monster post the deets.

Top of the BoPs

Looks like Munchk has pulled Burnout Paradise out of the box and racked up the few extra points needed to put him back on top of the gamerpoint league. Well played Munchk! Nice to see some competition up there in l337-land.

Wii Fitter day 2

As Mrs beta had Davina's workout DVD on tonight I decided to join in for a 30 minute body pump session. There's precious little room in front of the telly, but we managed to avoid colliding with each other or the furniture. The DVD is much much harder than anything on Wii Fit.

Chuck in another 40 minutes on Wii Fit, including the long jog and super hula and I'm pretty knackered.

I'm not sure whether it's advantageous to do the body test at the beginning or end of a session. The advantages of doing it at the end are that you've probably sweated a good few pounds onto the floor and board (add wipes to shopping list), the disadvantage is that you don't know what sort of test you're going to get and if you get a balance test, like I did tonight, at the end of 50 minutes of Aerobic exercise and 20 minutes of muscle and balance training and you're going to be a bit wobbly as your muscles twitch in objection to the unexpected abuse.

Anyway... today's results:

Weight 15st 4lb (-3 lb)
BMI 28.99 (-0.42)
Wii Fit Age 39 (-9 years, +3 on my actual age)

Two days isn't enough to say if this is a trend or just body fluctuations... I mean surely a good piss is worth a pound or two?

Here's the updated graph

Wii Fitter

I got Wii Fit for Father's Day which was a bit of a surprise as I didn't think they were available in this country.

Had a good bit of a play this evening and despite my initial thoughts that it was a bit 'soft' my calves and thighs are actually burning following some of the more gruelling muscle strengthening sessions.

You add your Mii to the mix and define your basic stats... height, age etc. It then weighs you and gives you your calculated BMI. It then asks you to do your daily Body Test which gives you a calculated Wii Fit age. The initial test is based solely on a balance test - wobble left and right on the surprisingly sensitive board to keep a pair of blue bars within a larger red bar.

You then get access to a set of four sections - Yoga, Muscle Building, Aerobic and Balance Building. Each section has a handful of unlocked exercises and a bunch more that you unlock through improved performance and time spent exercising.

Muscle building comprises repetitive exercises such as lunges, press-ups, waist twists and so on. As your weight shifts on the board so it displays to you how much power you are exerting into the board.

Yoga has your virtual trainer demonstrating some basic yoga positions and it nominally measures your position and posture using the board.

The Aerobic section has step exercises (although the board is far too low for effective aerobic step exercising it still has value improving your coordination in a DDR kind of way,) jogging (measured using the wiimote,) and hula hooping.

The balance section is where the board really shines as you slalom, tightrope walk, ski-jump and table-tilt your way to enhanced coordination and posture.

Throw this all in the mix with a Brain-Training-esque encouragement and measurement system, and charted competition against your fellow trainees and it's a pretty motivational and effective system. The board itself is pleasingly heavy and sits reassuringly still even on wood laminate even as I thump my XX stone body (see later) up and down in the step class (displayed with you on stage with ten or so Miis from the Mii channel and an audience comprised entirely of the other Miis.)

Sure, you could cheat at almost any of these exercises. But what's the point of that? It trusts you to do what it tells you and if you're not going to do it properly you might as well chuck the thing in a cupboard and watch Big Brother instead. Another objection I've heard raised about Wii Fit runs along the lines of "Why don't you just go out and do some real exercise?" The answer to that, for me, is motivation. I'm a gamer - I like to see a target and set out to achieve it. This turns exercise into a neat little game that I do believe could have positive effects, if used properly.

So... in the interests of science, let's track my success over the next few weeks. I've taken my vitals, logged them and set a target and a time within which to achieve it. Let's see how I do over the next few weeks and months.

I am 6 foot exactly, and weigh 15st 7lb. My calculated BMI is therefore 29.41 which puts me borderline obese and very overweight. My Wii Fit age on day one (15 June) is 48. I've undertaken to lose a stone in 2 months, but even this doesn't bring my BMI down into acceptable levels.

I know BMI isn't the most accurate of measurements, but I'm hardly an athlete so I imagine my bone-mass and muscle-mass is fairly average, so I'm assuming BMI is a pretty fair measurement for me to use.

So here's the chart, day 1...

Anatomy of a RROD

As many of you know, I purchased my 360 the best part of a year into the products lifespan - back in August 2007 - the 26th to be precise. That was just over 9 months ago, and I bought it in what was then the Virgin Megastore in Southampton, for a cool £250 with a copy of Bioshock. I was made up - there was already talk of the 3 year warranty extension and I figured if anything went wrong with it in the first year, I'd just take it back to the shop and get it swapped out. Right?

Well I finally got proper RROD last week - Friday 6th June, and thought I'd just stroll into Zavvi, as it is now called, and get it replaced. Oh no. No way. I was firstly quothe a line about how they only cover faults in the first 28 days, and that after that the console would have to go back to the manufacturer. I gave them my understanding about the Sale of Goods act 1979, which, summed up, says the buyer has a right to expect things to last a certain time and be of a certain quality based on their price. I was then referred, by the Zavvi manager, to the online 'contact us' procedure on the zavvi website. I sent a large missive to them last week, outlining the details of my complaint, and such gems as the manager telling me that 'there's a really large problem with the 360', something that I mentioned might have been nice to be informed of when it was sold to me.

He also told me I'd have to give back the whole thing - 360, hard drive, all accessories, if I wanted to return it to the store. I could probably live without my gamesaves, and my profile is all on Live anyway, but I don't see why I should go through this.

The end result of my wranglings with Zavvi are that I really feel the onus has been left, wrongly, on me to get my faulty goods sorted out, something I have been able to do painlessly via the very kind loan of munchk's spare 360 (I have your HDD, too, I meant to say!) UPS came to collect my packed-up 360 yesterday, Wednesday 11th June, and you can track its' progress here, using the tracking number 1z5w33f99163119786

I was told zavvi's complaints department aimed to reply within two working days, and so far I have heard nothing at all, four working days having already passed since my complaint was lodged. I'm, frankly, never shopping there again, but that is by the by.

I know, "get a blog".

From the Files of....

Cheered me up no end on a Monday morning.

Kickin' it ol skool

yea yea, so GTA is fun n all, but we haven't gotten together in ages. We can remote in any night! This Friday.... is a Fi-day! All are welcome to munchk towers.

On the off chance we run out of things to do, bring your 360's, we can always lan/remote play :)

GTA Stunt Montage