More Star Trek Beta Keys

Us chaps have been trying to get beta keys for Star Trek Online keys all over the place (because we’re giant geeks), and have ended up with a few more than we need.

Ado kindly gave out a spare a couple of days ago, but we have another two to give out. All you need to do is add a comment to this post. The first folks to comment will get the keys unless you’re one of our filthy spam posters, then we’ll continue blocking you so hard!. If you added a comment to the last beta giveaway post, sorry but we’re going to have to ask you to comment again. It’s only a few words!

I’ll be posting a quick overview of the game shortly, in the mean time it’s a birthday weekend, so drinks abound. Never fear though, I’ll get your keys out post-haste.

As a pleading side note, if you’ve managed to find us for a key please have a poke around the site and send us an email at neil[at]stuporcollider[dot]com or post a comment. We appreciate anyone who wants to join in! Good luck…

Tags: Free Star trek Online, games, Star Trek Beta, Star Trek Online, Star Trek online Beta Key, Star Trek Open Beta

Star Trek Online Beta Key Available

Hey everyone, well it took me two days to get a free Open Beta key for the new Star Trek MMORPG and now it seems they’ve given me two. It seems just desserts for my filling in of registrations and trawling the net.

However, I’m just not that greedy, so if anyone wants it the first person to post a comment requesting this key will be rewarded with the fruits of my happenstance (you’ll get the spare key).

Can’t say fairer than that…

Tags: games, Star Trek Beta Key, Star Trek Online, Star Trek Open Beta

Tagged… in the USA…

A year ago, in an uncharacteristic show of generosity, a close friend of mine loaned me his “spare” X-Box 360 indefinitely. Over looking how lucky I was to secure such a deal, this has lead to much annoyance on my part and I’ll tell you for why…

When logging on I found the American market place information, this seemed pretty cool, that was until I tried to buy anything and was given the message “not available in your current location”.

Some time later (when I couldn’t download the Duke Nukem 3D demo!?!), I decided this would no longer do. I went to the X-Box Live website to change my information and found I was able to change every detail apart from my country, which was greyed out and displayed as “United States of America”.

Brown's Broken British X-Box

Pausing for thought, I figured this may be because my Gamertag information could be linked to my MS Passport, which in turn was populated by my Hotmail account. I vaguely remembered signing up for a US Hotmail account to get the .com address rather than the .co.uk, but that was in 1998 so memories are fuzzy. Acting on this hunch I went to check it out and change the country if I needed to, which would hopefully precipitate the change I required.

After changing my address from somewhere in Puerto Rico (yeah, I know) to England I checked back but nothing had changed. I tried further times and on several different areas, but no matter what I tried the country of my X-Box Live account never changed. Reluctantly I phoned their helpline and was reassured that many other people have experienced the same problem, usually when moving from one country to another for work or university. “Excellent” I said, “there must be a solution then”. “There is”, I was told, “just start a new Gamertag but put England in it this time…”.

Yeah, and that’s it. End of conversation. No more steps. Just bin your ‘tag and don’t use it again. No transferring of achievements or memberships, no process for keeping your MS Fun-buck$ or downloaded content (although this obviously didn’t apply to me), nope just start again from scratch.

Apparently it’s “Impossible” to change that entry on the database. Being a user of MS Access I can well believe that making anything do what you want it to on a Microsoft database can be unnecessarily hard but also being an IT Professional I know that “Impossible” is almost certainly untrue. As such I have decided to continue my quest to find a way around this.

To be continued…

Tags: Duke Nukem, gamers, gamertag, games, Microsoft, Puerto Rico, wtf?, X-Box, X-Box Live

I have your movies…

Hey guys and gals and none gender specific trolls (I’m lookin at you Squeil). I just came up with a lovely new game I’ve been playing with myself (please do not insert your own grammar into that sentence and that’s not new, it’s the second oldest game, just behind the game*). It involves entering a message into your mobile/cell** phone and then using the predictive text to deliberately alter the meaning to obscure your true intentions, thus rendering the recipient blissfully unaware of truth that lies beneath…

This can be done for best effect when having something horribly hateful to say but simply disguising it as an informational text or, even better, something nice and complimentary.

80s Style!!!

If you want to have a go and then wish to share that go with the world*** post your best tries in the comments section, either with the actual message you have subtly camouflaged in [square brackets] or leaving us all to hazard foolish guesses.

* not the wrestler
** delete as applicable
*** world may only extend to the three people that read this blog ever now and then

Tags: camouflage, cellphone, games, modile phone, movies, predictive text, Squeil, word

Gameswipe FTW

Just thought I’d post a quick FYI for all of those gamers that read this blog from time to time.

What I anticipate to be a rather interesting program airs tonight that should contribute to the on-going debate over the health and effect of computer gaming and the treatment of those gamers by society. This particular show should be of most interest to people who like their documentaries with a sarcastically honest edge, as it has been compiled by one Mr Charlie Brooker, he of Screenwipe and more recently Newswipe fame. The televisualation will air tonight at 10pm on BBC4 and will most likely be available via iPlayer soon thereafter.

For those of you who aren’t aware, this also comes as a timely riposte to an ITV “documentary” which went to screen last week. That particular piece of pseudo science, reactionary drivel followed three children over three years, in what was laughably referred to as an “experiment”, to see how these kiddies dealt with videogames in their lives and what affects they might have. Apart from proving that individuals with various social disorders should be wary of the dangers of over indulgence in the electronic arts*, it also displayed the journalistic integrity of a hobo standing an a box reading aloud from an upside down copy of The Daily Star by relating every behavioural problem they could find to avid video gaming. My personal best was 7 minutes continuous viewing, before having to pause again and take deep breathes to assuage my frustration and outright anger at some of the crazy claims and bulls**t statistics used to justify them.

I’d urge everyone to try and watch the above travesty (available here on ITV’s website for a time) in preparation for tonight’s undoubtedly superior observational piece on a phenomenon of our times.

Watch, record or iPlayer Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe or thou shalt be full of lose…

Tags: Charlie Brooker, Daily Star, documentary, gamers, games, Hobo

Dave Arneson

As you may have heard the second founding father of Dungeons and Dragons died on Tuesday.

Dave Arneson created D&D along with Gary Gygax (who sadly passed away last year) and was responsible for some of the touchstones of the game that persist today. Despite being employed by TSR briefly Dave left to pursue his own projects and had to fight a lengthy legal battle to be recognised as one of the creators of D&D. He continued to develop his own projects, and for a time worked as a lecturer for Full Sail University.

By all accounts Dave Arneson was a wonderful human being, a wonderful inventor of stories and an unsung hero of the RPG world. He will be missed by his loved ones and mourned by those who will now never have the chance to meet him.

You know recently I’ve been reading Ansel Adam’s autobiography and with Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Gygax and now Dave Arneson all gone I feel like all the wise old men are slowly dissappearing from this world. I suggest you learn what you can from the ones left before it’s too late to tell them how they touched your life.

A year ago my Grandad became very ill whilst on holiday, forcing him, my Nanan, Dad and Mum to stay with him at intensive care over Christmas. I’m told most people believed that he wasn’t going to pull through,but fortunately he recovered. He’s now very weak and has trouble walking but he still cuts my hair and breeds canaries in his back yard, and I now realise that in a few years he probably won’t be there anymore. I now treasure every minute I get to spend with him and absorb every tidbit of information he deigns to reveal. Even the slightly disturbing facts about where he used to hide his chewing gum.

I leave you with a quote from a man vastly more pithy than I:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

-Mark Twain

Tags: D&D, deaths, games, RPGs

Non-English Metal; We Salute You!

For your daily fix of everyone’s favourite President of the Union…

GO COMRADE! Brought to your ears and eyes by ANJ

For more of these visionaries work see below. You want 3:12 for the goods, but watch the rest for the pathos.

Incidentally ANJ are apparently on the soundtrack for Stalin vs. Martians, a new RTS featuring cutesy aliens and a giant controllable Stalin. Win.

Tags: funny, games, metal, music, parody, russia, Stalin, video

Resident Evil 5 is Rubbish

Go controversial title, go! You’ll never overstay your welcome and add lacklustre additions to your fine franchise, yet still neglect to bring your core attractions up to date!

Resident Evil 5 outsold No Line on the Horizon (U2’s new crapfest album). Not only did it outsell it over the release weekend, but in two days it sold more than U2’s effort since release. Now, since an album costs less than a tenner, and Resi is the best part of £40 I can see how the figures pan out, but I still can’t figure why it’s selling so well.

Resi has a fine pedigree. For me it was the first scary game I played. Silent Hill came along and knocked the atmospheric survival horror ball out of the park, but Resi was there first. Hammy storyline, awful-yet-inspired dialogue, cack-handed controls and zombie dogs enamoured any who played it. The first sequel was more of the same but sans mansion. Then we had more of the same but with a big persistent bad guy. Then there were some remakes, some light gun games, a prequel and some terrible movies.

The Resident Evil franchise was gradually eating itself. Subsequent games added little in terms of gameplay whilst maintaining the hammy story and sparseness of ammo. Then Capcom blew us all away with Resident Evil 4. Abandoned villages, chainsaws wielding unkillable maniacs, over-the-shoulder viewpoints and a strange man who followed you around just in case you fancied buying some guns. Just about every man and his zombie dog loved it.

Now we have Resident Evil 5. It’s basically Resi 4 in Africa but without the atmosphere and with more of a focus on multiplayer. When you die in Resi 5 you go to a screen here you can buy equipment, you also manage the equipment of your AI partner who both supports and confounds your efforts. Many times Sheva has sprayed green healy herb into my face, whereas she has also managed to get torn apart by a girl with a tentacle for a head and become lacerated by a mounted machine gun.

I guess Resi 5 doesn’t feel like a Resi game to me. Admittedly I’ve not finished it but I had no urge to after being killed by the same crocodile six or seven times. The game is not tense like it’s brethren, it’s more run and gun. Unfortunately the game feels so static. The position of the camera and your inability to move whilst aiming might have added to the dramatic tension if there was any, but it’s sadly missing. Resi 4 somehow maintained a feel of hopelessness, of being in a hostile lien land. Resi 5 fells more like you’re on holiday ad I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because any attempt to get into the feel of the game is destroyed by the little concessions made to the co-op.

I just didn’t like Resi 5. There are better action games and better horror games. If this game didn’t bear the Resident Evil name would it have sold? I don’t think so. There have been big advances in video games since the seminal Resi 4, but Capcom seems to have ignored them. We were hoping for the same kind of revolution 4 provided, instead this feels more like a mission pack rather than a valid new addition to the core games.

Rant ends!

Tags: games, rant, Resident Evil, zombies

World of Subways

As you may be aware, the chums here at Stuporcollider love us some survival horror and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Resident Evil 5 with great antici…
pation. To tide us through until Friday (WHEEE!) here’s a trailer for World of Subways Vol.2:

Well, that’s going on my to-buy list!
Also, while I was watching the trailer for Resi 5 I noticed that they’re remaking Last House on the Left. STOP IT!

Tags: games, trains, video, zombies

Wrestle Jam

A couple of weeks ago I managed to spend every night of the week at the cinema catching up with the Oscar nominations. While I didn’t get to see the Oscars, as subscribing to Sky movies is daylight robbery, I did manage to see some excellent films such as Frost/Nixon (my movie of the year) and Darren Aronofsky,’s The Wrestler, otherwise known as Mickey Rourke Strikes Back.

For those not into watching excellent pieces of cinema; The Wrestler is the story of a washed up 1980’s wrestling superstar. Now destitute, Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson is living life the only way he knows, and how that affects the relationship with his daughter and would-be squeeze. A major part of the film is Randy’s ties to his past fame, with one particular scene showing him and a young boy playing Wrestle Jam ‘88, a fictional NES game from The Ram’s heyday. Kotaku ran a great article about the making of this piece of game art, I suggest you read it and be enlightened. I also suggest you see The Wrestler, it is not bobbins.

Apparently Aronofsky demanded a playable game, which was provided by brother and sister team Kristyn Hume and Randall Furino. All in all the game was a lightly featured clone of Wrestlemania, and even had it’s own 8-bit theme song (linked below). I adore this kind of commitment to building a film’s versimilitude, sure you could have run a video of any old game, or cobbled together some footage but here the production team seem to have gone one step further and made a work of homage from something many would consider no more than set dressing. Bravo!

Tags: art, film, games, movies, video, wrestling