Monday 26 April 2010

SFN EXCLUSIVE : First Details of the New Call of Duty!

As I have stated both here and here, I am always on the hunt to bring you the latest and greatest info from the wonderful world of gaming, as well as all of the hottest exclusives that I know you all dream about! Today I have the biggest exclusive that you awesome readers of SFN have ever read : the very first details of the new Call of Duty! Rumours about COD games float about more frequently than the cold, but this time I can bring you this bit of juicy gossip that I am 85% sure is correct. I know, I know that leaves a 25% chance of error but my knack for investigative journalism as well as my gut, tells me that this is a bona fide piece of news that you will love!

032 033

If you’re a frequent reader of the site or if you follow me on Twitter (if you do, thanks!) then you’ll know that I read the Official PlayStation Magazine (@OPM_UK on Twitter) every single month and the very first games that I ever played were demos on PS1 which came with the magazine plus, I’ve been buying the mag for years. In this month’s issue which features EA’s Medal Of Honour on the cover (now on sale!) they have a full page poster ad stating that they’ll be revealing the new Call Of Duty, which will be developed by Treyarch, next month. Not wanting to wait until next month for the info, I scoured every page of the mag, from cover to cover, hoping for a tidbit of news about the new game. However, my search was unsuccessful until I went right back to the ad for next month’s issue.

The ad shows a simple image of a grenade, with no other suggestions about the game. So, using my instincts I headed to Forestle (an eco-friendly search engine) and did a few searches for “Grenades” , just to see the look of similar grenades. As expected, my search came up with tons of grenades that looked just like this and so I refined my search to “Vietnam Grenades” (because I’d heard the rumours) and by George, did I nab this exclusive!

image WW2 Vietnam Grenade

My searching turned up an image form the site ioffer , which was offering a lot of war memorabilia for sale, including guns and grenades. The grenades that were shown were described a being used “during the Vietnam War” which, if you didn’t know was one of the battles fought during the Cold War between 1959 – 1975 and took place in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. You can see that the grenades form the mag and the site are almost identical and they both have long ‘scratch-like’ indentations going from the top to the bottom which only helps to prove my point even further. Also, these types of ‘lemon hand grenades’ were used by the US Army at the time which could indicate the chance to play as a US Army soldier for the umpteenth time (!) when Treyarch’s new take of the Call of Duty series is released.

Thank you for reading this, and if you’d like to support the site and encourage me to search for even more awesome exclusives, please take a look at the ads on the site (above the heading). I really do appreciate it!

Related Posts

System Fail News EXCLUSIVE! New Feature of Red Dead Redemption Uncovered?
SFN Exclusive! Alan Wake Release Date Confirmed?
System Fail News (New Feature) > Topic Round-Up!

Comment Questions

1. What other places would you like COD to be set?

2. Are you excited for the new COD game?

Saturday 17 April 2010

Skate 3’s Improved Hall of Meat is Brutal!

Skate 3 Hall of Meat video via me on YouTube

Just when you all thought that you’d got lucky and I’d abandoned the blog, here I am back with a kick-ass trailer for Skate 3’s improved (and upgraded) Hall of Meat mode which is back from the original games. I’ve been playing a lot of Skate 2 recently as playing the ‘prequels’ is something I like to do before a sequel is released, just to remember why I loved (or hated) the series in the first place! What I’ve noticed from some footage I’ve seen of Skate 3 not just in my, admittedly poor quality videos, but in the screenshots floating about the interweb too, is that the graphics have improved from the 2nd game by a heck of a lot. It frustrates me that EA does this quite often, release a game with pretty rubbish features, release a sequel the following year with everything from the first game miraculously fixed but yet the sequel has brought with its release a whole host of new problems that can be fixed with another sequel. It’s what me and some of my fellow gamer buddies have labelled as the “sequel cycle” (patent pending) where publishers release sequel after sequel and so on. EA have a history of doing this with games such as the Need For Speed series but I feel that with Skate 3 everything has improved, the graphics, the physics and the career and multiplayer modes in which you have to sell loads of your own skateboards and create teams of skaters with your friends, these are all drastically ‘redone’ and the game looks all the better for it. The Hall of Meat is practically a different mode all together though the bails and the bone-cracking madness are still at the core. I really like what they've done, creating designated areas for Hall of Meat challenges as well as the option to rearrange your skeleton with a friend. I’m planning on writing a 7 questions review later in the week for the demo which I am downloading as I write this (a review that I might not get round to) but at the moment it looks like Skate 3 is going to be a recipe for delicious skating mayhem as opposed to just, plain, mayhem.

*NOTE* – at some point over the week (maybe next week) I will be posting a HUGE REVEAL about the upcoming Call of Duty game. You seriously don’t want to miss it. Keep visiting SFN for the next week to find out more.

Related Posts

Skate 3 = Skating + Creating , This Dev Diary Shows Us Why
Team Up.Throw Down. Skate In A Quarry?
7 Questions Review : Battlefield Bad Company 2 – Multiplayer Demo

Comment Questions

1. Are you fed up of sequels or do you absolutely love them?

2. Do you think Skate 3 will be an epic fail or an epic win?

Sunday 11 April 2010

Have You Voted?

This is just a quick reminder, nothing big, but I just wanted to post this so that if you haven’t already, please vote in the poll over there –> –> –> –> –> –> –>

This month, in SFN’s monthly poll I am asking you whether or not you plan on buying the Nintendo 3DS. I am really looking forward to finding out the results to this one so please go and vote!

Also, I have now put up both an About page and a Contact page for the site so now, if you want to find out more about the blogger behind the blog (that would be me, Jasmine) or if you want to ask me a question or have any feedback, you now have a way of getting your thoughts across.

I recently asked you all to take a look at the new ads that I have recently put on the site as they will help me to make the site into a real ‘.com’ website. By looking at the ads you can help keep the site running so I would really appreciate it!

Thank you so much for being such great readers, for now,

 

Keep On Gaming!

Jasmine (AKA Jasmino924)

Friday 9 April 2010

[SITE LINK] Red Redemption Multiplayer + Online Guitar Hero

Okay readers, once again, it’s that time of the week where I post links to some of the Internet content that I think you’ll find of interest. Posted for you today, I have a video detailing the awesome-ness that is Red Dead Redemption’s seriously,ridiculously, good-looking online multiplayer , which is, of course in glorious HD. I have also linked to an extremely fun, online version of Guitar Hero. Only it’s way better than GH and it’s everything that Guitar Hero should be. I must say that if you do decide to visit the sites, be sure to come back to SFN, I’ll be waiting!

The first link is to a YouTube video from GameZone (Online), which shows off why Rockstar is (one of) the best developer(s) of our time. Is it not enough that they’ve already created loads of fantastic Grand Theft Auto games? But now they’re making another great game that we already know is going to be excellent and on top of that they’ve now gone beyond all of the footage we’ve already seen by showing off RDR’s superb online multiplayer too? Damn, I’m running out of adjectives. Now, I’m going to steal a phrase from an advert I once saw : if Rockstar was a dinosaur, it would be an Awesomesaurus!

Red Dead Redemption Free-Roam Multiplayer Reveal - YouTube 

JamLegend Logo

The last link I’m going to give you is to my favourite game on the internet. Ever. It’s to JamLegend, a Guitar Hero themed music-rhythm game that I’ve spoken about in the past

I love the site to be honest, and I think it’s miles better than the actual Guitar Hero games. JamLegend features songs from the well-known band All American Rejects as well as some other famous bands such as the (god-awful) Tokio Hotel. There are also some incredible covers to rock out to, for example, electro-pop sensation SuperPowerless does a really cool cover of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. If all of that musical goodness isn’t enough to get you to visit the site then how about the fact that you can upload your own MP3 tracks to play? I think you just found your new favourite music game, didn’t you?

Go forth and rock out! - JamLegend

Have fun watching the video and being a legend, I’m off to take a look at the first official edition of First Play, but for now,

Keep On Gaming!

By, Jasmine (Jasmino924) :D

Related Posts

Hands-On : First Play (The New Interactive Service for PS3)
System Fail News EXCLUSIVE! New Feature of Red Dead Redemption Uncovered?
An Online Alternative to Guitar Hero

Thursday 8 April 2010

My Predictions : Infinity Ward Staff “Situation”

Infinity Ward

The other week I mentioned some of my goals in life (it was a little off topic but you should read it anyway) but one thing I forgot to add to that list is that I never want to be sued. Please take note of this if any of you reading this are lawyers! This same goal is the primary reason why I haven’t posted anything about this ridiculous Activison/Infinity Ward thing that’s going on. You see, me and you just like to play a little Modern Warfare 2 online, just to chill out, but behind the scenes at Infinity Ward a whole host of things have been going on. People have quit, some have been fired and a lot of poop has hit the fan. That Video Game Blog (TVGB) which is a favourite site of mine has got some pretty good coverage of the situation if you want to read up.

The big debate is whether or not another Modern Warfare game will ever see the light of day. IW were already rumoured to be working on a “top secret” Modern Warfare MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) which I suspect was going to be revealed at E3, but the question on everybody’s minds now is ‘what will happen to the Modern Warfare brand?’ Activision have all the legal rights and all that jazz but I wonder if they would ever make a new MW, with no input from Infinity Ward whatsoever? You can talk about that in the comments but for now I want to put my 2 cents in and say my predictions.

  • A lot of Infinity Ward staff members have left the company, including one member who’d been working there for 8 years (TVGB have got the details) and a couple of CEOs have also left (read : been fired) and I predict that because so many people have left IW, most will go on to create a brand new studio with a great FPS as their first game. There’s no doubt about it that they could get a big company such as EA to work with them because which company is dumb enough to turn down an opportunity to publish a game made by the team behind the totally awesome, badass and as I’m a girl, hunky (!) ‘Soap’ Mactavish?

 

  • Another idea in this big ol’ brain of mine is that the ex-IW staff members will join the team at EA who are working on Medal of Honour. It’s blatantly obvious that EA only chose to develop MOH to take a slice of Modern Warfare’s delicious, gazillion dollar pie and so it would make sense if the ex-IW guys wanted to get back Activision by creating a game to rival theirs!

 

  • What I most likely suspect will happen is that Activision will be all like “oh crap, what have we done letting these guys quit (or get fired) ,however will we pay for our golden toilet paper now without a third Modern Warfare game? (said Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO) < See this is how I’m going to get sued! Anyway, Activison will pay a chunk of money to get the ex-employees back at Infinity Ward and so, peace will be restored. Or at least until IW piss Activison off again…

*REMEMBER* – Please take a look in the sidebar –> –> –> –> –>

to vote whether or not you will be buying the Nintendo 3DS.

 

Related Posts

Dr Jasmine’s Surgery : 5 Must Have Downloads
5 Top Tips : How to Pwn n00bs in Modern Warfare 2’s Online Modes
5 (More) Modern Warfare 2 Online Gameplay Tips

 

Comment Questions

1. What do you think will happen?

2. Will you be disappointed if there’s no Modern Warfare 3?

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Hands-On : First Play (The New Interactive Service for PS3)

First Play Logo 

So you’re probably all going to start asking “what is First Play?”. Well, readers, if you’re too lazy to click this link and read up on my post for when First Play was originally announced, I’ll quickly summarise it here. Basically First Play is a brand new interactive service that will be coming to PS3s in the UK on April 8th (that’s this Thursday folks!) First Play will provide screenshot galleries, HD reviews & previews as well as featured downloads, which will be handpicked from the PlayStation Store by the First Play team plus there'll be network highlights featuring the best things the PlayStation network has to offer. This could range from the best LBP level, the best PSP Minis or even the best content in the video store. Simply put, First Play is pretty awesome.

I was one of the lucky people who got sent a beta code because I signed up for updates via their website which is how I got to do this hands-on article before Thursday’s release date. Anyway, read on and find out exactly why you need to download First Play!

When I first found out about First Play I was unbelievably excited. I knew that it was being led by the team behind the Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM_UK on Twitter) and that’s a magazine that I’ve been reading since I was 8 years old! Needless to say I’m 14 now and I’ve spent countless hours being captivated in OPM’s glossy pages full of bright pictures and well-written articles. Articles so good, I’d like to say, that they can even rival the quality of mine (gasp!) My time with First Play started yesterday after I’d spent even more hours downloading the 1GB+ file from the PlayStation Store and I have to say that it was well worth the wait.

What stood out to me most was the interface. Slicker and glossier than any of the pages in the mag, the ‘home-page’ of First Play is easy to use and easy to navigate, I had no problem searching through the heaps of gaming goodness that the First Play team had put together. From the main interface of First Play I headed straight to the most appealing part of the service and probably the best ; the HD Reviews & Previews. On offer they had previews for both the upcoming titles, Lost Planet 2 and Super Street Fighter IV (SSFIV), a chance to look at the ads (more on those later), a review of the film Cracks on Blu-Ray as well as a HD video review for Battlefield Bad Company 2. I found all of these pieces of content particularly amazing because not only are they in beautiful and rather stunning HD, they highlight one of First Play’s key features. Insider info. I know that many journalists do have access to exclusive knowledge but First Play takes this to all new heights. Because they are so closely affiliated with Sony they get news and other content before anybody else. Now I’m not saying that you should stop visiting the likes of SFN because frankly, who else will give you these great tips for MW2’s online modes? However, what I am saying is that they can help you to get a lot of gaming gossip before the whole world has even caught the slightest whiff of it! Anyway back to the content…

After marvelling at the impressiveness of First Play’s logistics for a little while, I selected the Lost Planet 2 preview video. I had tried to get into to the LP2 multiplayer beta myself so to see footage of the game in action was pretty cool. The OPM team have always had a knack for knowing what their readers want. What makes this video so special is the quality of the footage, all in crisp HD, as mentioned, but it’s also the voiceover work. Everything in First Play from each and every screenshot to the main interface is all voiced over by Lucy Porter, a comedienne with masses of funny things to say. In the LP2 preview vid she explained the back-story of the game, explained why the climate had changed between the first and second games from frosty snow to a more jungle like atmosphere and she even talked about the set designers interesting use of HDMI cables! All of this was very funny and her voice brings something extra to the already jam-packed table.

Next on my list of things to visit in First Play was the HD screenshots. Remember how I mentioned that all of the images were voice captioned? Well, they were, and it was pretty cool, I tell you! Images from Brink, Mafia 2 , 2010 FIFA World Cup and Red Dead Redemption were some big games to choose from but having already jumped on the RDR hype rollercoaster I selected those images. One example of an image was of the main character, John Marston, shooting at a buzzard. A seemingly uninteresting picture don’t you think? That’s what I thought too until Lucy’s voice started playing with something to say about Red Dead Redemption's hero/rebel choice system (something I talked about here). Her voice added something more to the image and wasn’t just a humorous little caption, it was something that actually expanded on what we already know about the game and it really does help if you don’t know much about a particular game.

As I headed to the Network Highlights section of First Play I was greeted by an advertisement for Assassin’s Creed 2. Now I don’t mind ads at all because they help to keep a service (or website) cheap or entirely free. Plus these ads are particularly great because they’re not full of the worthless crap that you find littered between TV show breaks and they’re also skippable (that’s a made up word by the way) and (yes there’s more) if you really take a liking to the ads, you have the option to press select and visit the product’s website, another useful feature. I really like the Network Highlights section because it will feature content made by users such as kills in Uncharted 2, awesome Sackboy costumes, or, as the beta showed, the 10 best Singstar videos. I thought that these videos, showing user input, are what sets First Play apart form Qore, a similar online magazine-like service available to PS3 owners in the US. Well there’s that and the fact that First Play is way cheaper too…

Featured downloads are also one of the things featured in First Play, a great round-up of the other things that PS3 owners in the UK should download. Besides every episode of First Play that is! Though there’s not much to say about it despite the fact that it’s a great addition to First Play’s already excellent list of features.

And so, readers, I shall leave you with this… First Play is a must download. No doubt about it. It’s released on April the 8th (this Thursday) and is 99p for one episode or £8.99 for 12 EPISODES which is 30% off the usual cost (bargain!). The service is currently only available in the UK (for once we get something first!) but will be made available to other countries in the PAL region (Europe) soon. If you live in the US you can download Qore instead.


Related Posts

System Fail News EXCLUSIVE! New Feature of Red Dead Redemption ...

System Fail News (New Feature) > Topic Round-Up!

First Play UK Announced

Comment Questions

  1. Are you angry or annoyed that First Play isn’t available in your region?
  2. What do you think could be added to First Play to make it better?

Sunday 4 April 2010

System Fail News (New Feature) > Topic Round-Up!

Jasmino924 Avatar (Hi, I’m Jasmine!)

First things first in this little round-up of sorts : HAPPY EASTER! I hope you all had fun celebrating the miracles that are, of course, chocolate and bunny rabbits! Just kidding… Second things second (secondly) here’s a list of all the posts that I lovingly created for you dedicated readers this week.(Counting from last Sunday)

  • I posted an exclusive article uncovering a (possible) feature in the Western/Spaghetti shooter, Red Dead Redemption.

          System Fail News EXCLUSIVE! New Feature of Red Dead Redemption Uncovered?

  • System Fail News got its own ‘promo post’ when I posted what would be on the site this week
    This Week On…System Fail News
  • As promised in the ‘promo post’ (damn alliteration!) you could watch a cool dev diary from the makers of Skate 3 (EA Black Box) of why player creation is so darn important! (You totally read the word “darn” with a country accent didn't you!)
          Skate 3 = Skating + Creating , This Dev Diary Shows Us Why
  • I then went on to post the (maybe shocking) results of last months poll where I asked you (totally awesome) readers “Which Technology is your favourite” as well as informing you about the upcoming April poll (now up)

           The Results Are In (March Poll)

  • Today I posted the potentially heart-stopping, amazing, and of course EXPLOSIVE live action trailer for Ghost Recon : Future Soldier
           Ghost Recon : Future Soldier , The Movie?

 

Ok, recap done and the next piece of business is this > the ads…

Please do keep reading because I have something else to ask you but what I want to say now is this. I feel that SFN isn’t like any other site on the net that just provides video game news. SFN also provides helpful tips and features that not only give gamers good advice but makes you think too. However, I don’t have the funds to make SFN an established site with a real “.com” web address or a cool layout which is why I’m asking you to help me out and take a look at (and possibly click on) the ads I’ve recently put up on the site. Please help me out, I would really,really,really appreciate it!

And finally, the April poll. This month I’m asking you if you will be buying Nintendo’s recently announced ‘3DS’ (or 3D-DS). I’m really keen to get your opinion so please vote!

Thanks folks and once again…

Keep On Gaming!

From Jasmine (Jasmino924)

Ghost Recon : Future Soldier , The Movie?

Ghost Recon Future Soldier Live Action Trailer via me on YouTube

I absolutely love movies. If I haven’t spent all of my money on the latest video games (of course) I’ll go to the cinema or beg and plead with my parents to rent me a film from Blockbuster. After reading that you can probably guess that 2 of my favourite things are films and games, and together they go hand in hand (have you seen the awesome Resident Evil films? Just saying). Sometimes I am strongly against making films out of games, (in fact, I once signed a petition against making a Guitar Hero film) though I give a big thumbs up to video game developers who can make a game so good that it runs like a movie (though less scripted). E.g. Quantic Dream with Heavy Rain.

Ubisoft have released a new trailer for their upcoming title, Ghost Recon Future Soldier that is set to feature some futuristic technologies such as an invisibility cloaking device and an exo-skeleton for soldiers (to help them carry heavy accessories etc.), the entire trailer is live action, using real actors and some wicked special effects, which is something they tried out with Assassin’s Creed 2. I am pronouncing this trailer as the greatest trailer of all time, Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer imma let you finish but the trailer for GR:FS is amazing!

The main hook for the game is that the game features tech and guns that are being created RIGHT NOW and I recently read that someone who is working on the game said that with the last Ghost Recon game they featured really hi-tech gadgets and weaponry but about 5 years later all of that stuff in the game had become a reality.

Modern Warfare 2, prepare to get knocked off the top spot because Ghost Recon Future Soldier is about to become the most realistic shooter that we gamers have ever seen.

You can pre-order the game now from Amazon for Xbox 360 and PS3 using the widgets in the sidebar –>  –>  –> 

Related Posts

Why Heavy Rain Is the Best Movie I’ve Ever Seen

System Fail News: It's Official! A Movie Based On Uncharted ...

Comment Questions

1.Do you think that more developers should use live action trailers?

2.Are you looking forward to Ghost Recon Future Soldier?

Friday 2 April 2010

The Results Are In (March Poll)

Jasmino924 Avatar

This month I asked you what technology you readers are most looking forward to. The choices were between 3D TVs , Microsoft’s Natal and Sony’s Motion Control device, which, after many months of debate we now know is called ‘Arc’. Well the month of March is now over and we are into April, thankfully past the horrible “April Fool’s Day” traditions! The final results of the poll are this > both 3D TVs and Sony’s Motion Controller only received 20% each, which was the same as 1 VOTE! Surely you guys want to experience your games in crisp 3D with surround sound? Or was James Cameron’s Avatar too much for you? Anyway, I digress, the overall winner, the top dog, the champ of the 3 tech choices was *drum-roll* Microsoft’s Natal! Congrats to Microsoft, Bill Gates you shall be receiving your prestigious “SFN Polly Award” on the 15th of well… Never.(hehe)

To vote in April’s poll keep visiting System Fail News where I’ll also be posting some great gaming articles!

 

Keep On Gaming!

From Jasmine (Jasmino924) :D

 
Clicky Web Analytics