Blogs: NowGamer Team Blog

In honour of Sony’s potentially catastrophic failure to put a fully functioning clock inside early models of the PS3, I’ve decided to put together this Top 5 of the worst console faults of all time, just to put things in perspective. At the time of writing it’s unclear whether the PS3mageddon bug has been fixed by Sony or has simply righted itself. Either way, the panic is over and we can all laugh about it now.

We’ve been hearing more about ‘Gem’/'Arc’, or whatever they end up calling it, over the last few months. It’s going to be a wand-like motion controller for PS3, and it’s going to be… well, it’s going to be a motion controller. That’s all we really know. You can shoot orcs with a bow and arrow using it. We’re as much in the dark as you are. But aside from a couple of tech demos, what it probably looks like and some rumoured names, what do we need it for?

Being in an office that was flooded with promotional copies of Heavy Rain a couple of weeks before release, I was lucky enough to get hold of the game and complete it. It’s a phenomenal experience, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t see score attacks as the pinnacle of game design. There is one glaring area in which the interactive drama falls down, however: portraying female characters. I recommend reading this after you’ve had a chance to play it for yourself, as minor spoilers follow.

Where do you draw the line on DRM? What Valve did with Half-Life 2 is a widely accepted practice today, even though at the time online activation was met with an unprecedented community backlash. Proper notification in the system requirements box would have softened the blow for many, especially those that lugged PCs to work or school. But in hindsight this concept proved instrumental in introducing PC gamers to the juggernaut of digital distribution that is Steam, which is the one positive thing I can take away from that whole debacle.

Or… how Natal will have a negative impact on not only Xbox 360, but also on PS3…

It's all or bust for Sony's mo-con wand. And here's why...

GDC is just around the corner and will mark the first time Sony has let the journalism world pick up and play the first clutch of titles available for its motion control device. But is the Japanese giant too late to the party? And do we need it?

The news in brief returns, and now it’s snugly packaged with a new, sillier name...

There needs to be a marketing rethink for gaming as a whole. I’m talking about for the entire thinking behind gaming: why we do it; who does it; how we’re perceived by those members of the public who, for some bizarre reason, don’t actually play games; and whether we are indeed wasting our time. Things need to change, we need to stop being judged as subhuman shut-ins (which we are, but still) without even the most miniscule of social skills (again, guilty as charged). Therefore, I would like to put forward this proposition – broken down into easy steps for the mind to ingest:

Maybe it’s our undesirable, slightly side talking, but we’re still somewhat fundamentally troubled by the concept of online gaming. Not for its entertainment value you understand which is, by and large, beyond reproach – rather features more implicit. Human desire seems to forever inch back the boundaries like so many Bombermen in a maze.

Do you watch Mad Men? If you appreciate grown up American drama, complex characters and accurately recreated period setting then you absolutely should. It’s a tremendous show set in an Ad Agency in the early 1960’s, lead by a charismatic enigma of a creative director called Don Draper. Near the end of series one he’s given a new projector to try and sell and while he admits that most advertising is about generating an itch for the ‘new’, he hits upon trying a different tactic.