The tall and short of it: me (the short guy on the right) and NZ Breakers basketball player Tom Abercrombie (that’s him on the left).

I’ve been a print/online journalist all my life: I’ve never really dabbled into on-screen time apart from the odd online video and that sort of thing. So when I headed up to Auckland (New Zealand) last week to take part in a charity challenge arranged by PlayStation and Vodafone, I was a little concerned to hear that it would be filmed by youth-orientated channel TVNZU. I  dont’ really feel that comfortable in front of a camera: I’d rather just write and let my words do the talking.

In the end, it didn’t turn out too bad (my team didn’t win, unfortunately – congrats Alan and Che Fu, but we didn’t get last, either). We were in four teams of two: four celebs – NZ Warriors Manu Vatuvai and Ben Matulino, NZ Breaker’s star Tom Abercrombie and musician Che Fu – teamed up with three video game writers – myself, PC World’s Siobhan Keogh and NZ Gamer’s Alan Ball – and Social Media NZ’s founder John Lai). Much to my delight, I was teamed up with Abercrombie, one of my basket-ball mad son’s idols. Seeing it was school holidays he and my wife came up for the two days I was in Auckland so got some photos with Abercrombie and got his autograph).

The winner of the challenge would get a $1000 cheque for the charity of their choice and the challenge involved using PlayStation’s Vita handheld and Vodafone’s 3G coverage to complete a variety of challenges (find Sackboy who was at a watering hole in Auckland’s trendy Viaduct Basin, get a high score on Reality Fighters, Skype someone from PlayStation to find your next location, that sort of thing). It was a lot of fun and competitive, which was good.

The final challenge was to beat a presenter from U-Live’s score on Wipeout 2048 – and I’m sad to say I lost control on the final corner of the track we were racing on and crashed, losing me precious seconds. My score was nowhere close enough anyway. I should have practiced more. Anyway, check out the video and have a good laugh. I’m the one in the blue and white checked shirt. (I’ve been told by a couple of people that the video isn’t working properly. I got it working but it was pretty slow loading up. Let me know how you get on)

Steam Sale: a licence to take my money money

The Steam sale has been going for a couple of days and so far I’ve been very restrained and only bought one game: Portal 2 for $4.99 (despite the fact that I already have it on Xbox 360). It’s not much but the Steam sale is like virtual crack: once you buy one game, another is sure to follow, then another, then another …

I’m convinced there will  be other games that I’ll purchase over the coming days but I’m trying to be very restrained and curb the use of my credit card this month. I’m only going to buy games that are under $10. That’s my plan and my way of making sure that I don’t spend crazy amounts of games that I probably don’t need.

That said, I’m checking the sale every day, seeing what gems are there they I just have to have and then won’t play for months and months.

I’m now contemplating getting Indie Game: The Movie. It’s pretty good, I hear.

How is the Steam sale for you?

I think my fling with Diablo 3 is over.

It was always going to happen, eventually. I don’t think I was going ever have the patience to grind for countless hours in a game that can consume your life if you let it. I played World of Warcraft once: after six months of playing it just about every night I had to wean myself and stop playing it. I didn’t want the same thing to happen with Diablo 3.

I think it was the relentless grinding that finally did it for me: It just became too much, too repetitve. The constant click-click-click on enemies  often more powerful than my mid-level barbarian  as I fought to reach my objective finally got the better of me and I started playing less and less Diablo 3. Even my teenage son remarked how I didn’t play it much any more (just before asking if he could play it instead).

Originally, I wasn’t planning on playing Blizzard’s latest game, but when a review copy arrived  in the letter box changed my mind. I hadn’t actually played a Diablo game before so I was keen to get stuck in. But launch week, as most players will remember, was a shambles: I got lots of “Error 37” messages (meaning demand was so high the server couldn’t log me in) and I moaned about the “always-on” internet connection that the game demanded, even if you wanted to explore world of Sanctuary and take on the Lord of Terror.

Unhappy with the launch week shenanigans, though, I gave up on the game for a few weeks: Constant disconnections mid-quest is never much fun, only resuming after a major patch that seemed to have sorted things out. The connection remained rock solid, which was pleasing, and I was once again guiding my barbarian, lovingly called Rathnulzerok (that’s not him in the picture, by the way), and his weapons of destruction, through the sands and dungeons in the quest to kill Diablo himself.  I was mesmerised by the gorgeous cut scenes, which truly are wonderous, and the intricately detailed world. It seemed blissful.

I had always meant to try out the co-op mode, and much to my delight, a friend, Mike, who informed me he had picked up the game as well, obliged. We partnered up and explored and pillaged, virtually you understand,  smashing all before us: him a wizard shooting magical powers from his fingertips, me a barbarian wielding a huge weapon and stomping the ground, dazing foes.

My friend even helped me defeat the Act 1 boss the Butcher, a huge beastie with a mean ground stomp of his own and a massive weapon that fired spikes on chains. We battled Medusa-like creatures in underground viaducts and fought wasp-like bugs,  me dazing them with my stomp, he freezing them with his magic. I realised that this was how Diablo 3 was meant to be played: with a companion, even though we didn’t bother to use our headsets to communicate with each other while playing, instead chosing to use the game’s in-build chat window to tell the other what we were doing.

But then something happened, as often does when I play role-playing games: it started becoming a chore and I started playing less and less of it. I can’t put a finger on what it was specifically: Maybe it was because I was constantly being smashed by higher level monsters and running out of health potions, maybe it was because I was annoying my wife with the constant “click-click-click” while she was trying to watch TV (my PC is in the same room as the main TV), or maybe it was just because after Act 1, Act 2 seemed  a tad boring and just seemed to be, well, Act 1 but with different scenery. I think my friend is still playing Diablo 3. He’s probably a top-level magician by now, able to defeat big bosses with his character’s pinky finger.

So, yeah,  I’ve stopped playing Diablo 3 for the time being. I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t actually finished it yet, either, but I just don’t think I can make it to the end at the moment. I’m not in the right frame of mind. Besides, I’ve got other games to play and my right forefinger is thanking me for the rest I’ve given it, anyway.

I’ll go back to Diablo 3 again sometime. Probably but I’m not sure when, but I will. Rathnulzerok will have to make do with standing in limbo in the game’s welcome screen for the time being, his sword of magical awesomeness* no longer inflicting damage on the undead of Sanctuary, his helm of unwavering protection** sitting atop his head undisturbed.

I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see me when I venture back into the world of Sanctuary. Who knows? It might be next week.

*I made this name up. ** This one also. Neither of those items exist in Diablo 3. At least I don’t think they do.

In 2009, I did my first radio segment with Glenn “Wammo” Williams on Kiwi FM while at that year’s E3 convention in Los Angeles. So, it seemed somehow fitting that our last radio segment before Wammo climbs on a big bird to go explore London was the week after this year’s E3.

When I did my first radio spot with Wammo I’m sure I was stilted, unnatural and sounded like a bumbling fool  – some would say not much has changed since then  – but it’s been an enjoyable three years when we chatted games, gaming and everything about the industry in between. While my hair might not have always been the best and things were a little untidy behind me, it was a great experience from the first day.

So, here is the last radio segment with Glenn before he heads overseas: we talk this year’s E3 and the future of gaming. All the best on your new adventure, my friend. May the force be with you (I sort of felt obliged to stick a geeky sci-fi quote in there somewhere).

I got up at 4am New Zealand time this morning to watch the Xbox 360 pre-show press conference so I’m a little tired at this point but this is what I got out of Xbox’s pre-show conference: lots of Kinect interaction, lots of cable sports content (most of which we probably won’t get in New Zealand), Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. For this press conference, Xbox seemed to be all about content for an entertainment experience.

I’ve also embedded the video I did with Glenn “Wammo” Williams this morning about my thoughts.

I was right in predicting that there wouldn’t be a reveal or announcement of a new console but probably the highlight of the press conference was – and this sounds really weird – was the appearance of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of SouthPark, who were talking about the new game Southpark: The Stick of Truth. These guys aren’t even making the game and they were the most exciting thing about the presser: they were natural, unscripted and funny.

The event, held at the Galen Centre in Los Angeles, opened with a demo of Halo 4 and it was pretty neat to see what 343 Industries has done with the Master Chief and Halo. I’m not a rabid Halo fan but I’m actually interested to see where Halo 4 takes us.

Next we had Splinter Cell: Blacklist – the return of Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell games – and that had some interesting moments, especially showing you being able to use Kinect voice to distract an enemy.

EA came on and talked about voice commands using Kinect in Fifa 13 and Madden NFL 13 – it even bought out fabled NFL quarterback Joe Montana to look like he was having a good time playing it; We had an oh-so-brief trailer for Gears of War: Judgement which revealed nothing at all about game play; then focussed on Kinect functionality and how the Xbox 360 was going to give us all the entertainment we wanted.

NBA is coming to Xbox sometime – but we won’t be getting it in New Zealand. I daren’t tell Master Game Junkie that: he’s a basketball nut and is still getting over the fact that the LA Lakers didn’t make it to the playoffs. 

Xbox announced Smart Glass, which actually sounded pretty cool, a free app that offers additional information over a variety of smart phones and tablets, including iOS and Android, when watching TV or playing games.

Applications shown off included using a second screen to offer more information about movies being shown on Xbox and to access multiplayer match details while in Halo.

Internet Explorer is also coming to the Xbox 360 and using Smart Glass you’ll be able to browse IE using a smart phone or a tablet. “It turns any TV into a smart TV,” said Xbox Live’s Marc Whitten.

We had more games: the new Tomb Raider game shows a much more brutal Lara than we’ve seen before – she stabs a guy in the throat after wounding him with a shotgun blast; Resident Evil 6, which features more zombies; Ascends New Gods which seemed to show fighting big dudes; Lococycle (from developer Twisted Pixel) which featured a strange trailer that showed what looked like a futuristic motorcycle – “She was the first cadet to break the four minute mile: by three minutes and forty seconds”; and Matter, a Kinect game that looked like it featured one of the cores from Portal 2.

There’s also going to be a lot of DLC that will come out on Xbox 360 first, apparently.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker were genuine highlights in an average Xbox’s pre-show presser and Usher appeared on stage to perform his new track “Scream” in Dance Central 3 – about which time my internet connection started chugging (I tried to initially start watching it using the Xbox Live event app, but my console refused to connect to the internet just as the event started).

Then the event closed with a demo of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. The jury’s still out on this game for me, at the moment.

So, how did you think Microsoft did at it’s pre-show press conference? Did it impress you or were you left a little underwhelmed? Personally, I was left a little underwhelmed to be honest.

Sony’s pre-show press event is about 1pm NZ time today, with Nintendo’s tomorrow morning. I’ll post my thoughts on both when I can.

I’ll get to the games I’m playing shortly but last week, I crossed the Tasman to visit our neighbours in Sydney, Australia to attend the Samsung Galaxy World Tour – which also doubled as the Australasian launch for Samsung’s third edition of its Galaxy S3 line-up.

I like Sydney and it blows me away that it has almost the entire population of New Zealand in its environs. That’s just mind-blowing. Not that you’d be interested, but I had a non-eventful flight where I had the butter chicken and rice for dinner with ice cream for dessert. It was pretty tasty, actually.

The Samsung Galaxy launch event was held in Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, which is near Campbell Street in the city’s CBD. I took a photo of the Campbell St sign just because … well, just because I wanted to take a photo of a street with my surname.

There was media from New Zealand, Australia and Singapore at the event, which had a string ensemble – called the Samsung Orchestra – and a huge screen behind the main stage.

Those of you who follow smart phone launches probably know everything there is to know about the Galaxy S3 so I won’t tread over old ground like specs and what it can do, but from the time I’ve had with it, I’m pretty impressed with it. It’s probably the best Android phone I’ve used and could well convince me to drop using my Windows Phone 7.5 handset (although, it’s a Lumia 800 so I’ll have to have some internal discussions).

Gamewise this week, I finished up the Harley Quinn’s Revenge DLC for Batman Arkham City, which was fun but didn’t actually blow my socks off. You play as both Batman and Robin, his trusty sidekick, this time and it’s more of the same for fans of Rocksteady’s Batman games but Rocksteady have upped the ante when it comes to combat in the sheer number of foes you’ll face at one time: often you’ll find yourself outnumbered by plenty of stun prod-wielding foes, armour-clad enemies and knife-poking baddies.

I’ve also been making my way through Ghost Recon Future Soldier when I can. It’s fun but it has some of those ridiculous things where you’ve got a time limit to complete a task – and standing between you and your end goal are a mountain of heavily-armed foes. I just don’t understand the point of those: you pretty much have to sprint during the few areas where there are no foes (the end goal is the control room on a cargo freight ship, so you’re climbing lots of stairs).

What have you been playing  lately?

For those who don’t live in the South Island of New Zealand, it’s starting to get cold in the mornings now. Real cold. Not as cold as our Southern cousins way down south, but cold enough to make me don a beanie that I normally wear under my cycle helmet while I chatted to Glenn “Wammo” Williams this morning.

In hindsight – and watching the video – I probably shouldn’t have worn it  (it looks a little naff) but it kept my head and ears warm, which was the main thing (I couldn’t be bothered turning on a heater to warm up the room as I was heading off to work shortly after the video).

Today, I chatted to Williams about Max Payne 3, the third game featuring the former NYPD detective and DEA agent whose wife and infant daughter were murdered by junkies. The first two games were made by Finnish developer Remedy – which went on to make Alan Wake ; Max Payne 3 has been done in-house by Rockstar (the same publisher that bought us Red Dead Redemption and the GTA series).

Max is a lot older – and fatter – now but the game brings the same tortured hero and bullet time from the previous games – where you get to slow down time and see your bullets fly super slow as they impact on the enemies body. He’s a one-man killing machine – and business is booming. Max Payne is also probably the only character who can wander around a Sao Paulo favela wearing a hideously patterned hawaiian-style shirt as he’s shooting up the place.

Check out the review. Let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Success!  I managed to start playing Diablo 3 at 9.49pm tonight. Perhaps all the North Americans had gone to bed. Unfortunately, I’m too tired to play now so will play tomorrow. It’s a start, right?

Diablo 3 has reminded me about the hit and miss nature of PC gaming.

I wasn’t planning on playing Diablo 3 tonight. Heck, I wasn’t really planning on playing it at all but things changed when I found a review copy in my letterbox when I got home.

So, I thought I’d install the game, try to remember my BattleNet login and password and join in the fun – except 52 trillion other people around the world obviously thought they’d do the same thing, at the same time as I did.  The result? Blizzard’s servers collapsed under the strain with gaming blog VG247 reporting that Blizzard said on its Facebook page “Please note that due to a high volume of traffic, login and character creation may be slower than normal. If you’re unable to login to the game or create characters, please wait and try again.”

I started out by seeing the Error 36 message, then one that told me I didn’t have a streaming internet connection (which I did), then I had to update the drivers on my ageing Geforce 8600GTS card, then I got an Error 3006 of some sort. I told myself that I was off to have a shower and as if by magic, I managed to get to the login screen. I remembered my credentials during the online authorisation process so logged in and was face with the Create Hero page.

So I did. I selected a barbarian and called him something … in fact, I can’t remember what I called him. I clicked create and … nothing. It just sat there, doing nothing. VG247 reported that Blizzard had decided to “temporarily taken our Battle.net websites offline and launched more servers to accomodate for the traffic. We hope to resolve these issues as soon as possible”. I thought this gif, which Eurogamer and VG247 ran about the situtaion, was amusing.

I might be stating the obvious here but: didn’t anyone at Blizzard anticipate that the demand would be incredibly high for this game? Why didn’t they have more servers ready for the deluge? I would have thought it would have been better to have more servers than not enough. I don’t work at Blizzard, though, so I don’t get to make those decisions.

Anyway, I’ll try again later and see if I can get my barbarian with the name I’ve forgotten into Sanctuary and causing some havoc. Wish me luck. Good luck to you to if you’re planning on hitting Diablo 3 up tonight. And if I can’t get on tonight, I’ve got tomorrow night, or Gravity Rush, Resistance: Burning Skies or Mario Tennis Open to play instead.

In other news, today’s Tuesday so it’s the day that I chat games with Glenn “Wammo” Williams. Today we talked about, funnily enough, Diablo 3 and Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, which I had some hands-on time with last week. Enjoy.

Today, I’m going to take a double punt at my review of Radical Entertainment’s Prototype 2, the open-world game that features an angry soldier as its main character and the ability to turn your hands into razor-sharp blades and consume other people and take over their identities.

First there is the video review with Glenn “Wammo” Williams, which I did this morning, then there is the written review, which I finished up, so I had a bit more time to think about things and how anti-hero James Heller acts in Prototype 2. Don’t get me wrong: I like the game but  it’s just that Heller acts like a complete arse  most of the time and that irked me a bit. It seems that just about every sentence that comes out of Heller’s mouth features the f-word or some angry tone. I just felt that the angry anti-hero tone could have been toned down a little.

Watch the video, then read the review and let me know what you think. I’d appreciate it.

Prototype 2 (Activision) *** 1/2 (out of five)

Army sergeant James Heller is having a really bad day.

Not only has his wife and daughter died as the result of a deadly virus, but he’s been infected by the virus himself, causing him to shape shift at will and turn his hands into mutated weapons of mass destruction.

In the opening moments of the game, we see hard-as-nails soldier Heller part of a special forces squad chasing Alex Mercer, the protagonist from the original Prototype, and  – long story short  – after confronting Mercer, he’ becomes infected (by Mercer) by the mutation that afflicts Mercer. Heller turns his rage into a hunt for Mercer and works to stop the spread of the Blacklight virus that has divided New York, now known as New York Zero, into several zones, some containing mutated creatures.

If you’ve played the first Prototype you’ll remember that the virus – now know as the Mercer virus – lets the hero  consume other people, taking on their form and identity – just the ticket to infiltrate military bases and science laboratories, and take over the identities of key military and science personnel. It also have offensive capabilities, letting Heller sprout elastic tendrils and claws from his arms, letting him chop people (and other mutants) in half and pluck helicopters from the sky. What a party trick.

Prototype 2  follows the original game’s mission structure  closely, so if you’re looking for something dramatically different, you’re not going to find it here – although some of the game mechanics have been tweaked. Now, when Heller grabs a victim he now has the choice to either consume them or toss them aside like a teddy bear.  Heller can also hijack armed vehicles, ripping the armaments from them and use them against the military.  Another new feature is the sonar, a much improved system for letting Heller locate key targets. Pressing the left analog stick (I was playing on Xbox 360) deploys a sonic pulse – like a whale or dolphin would use – and how quickly the pulse returns – and from what direction – indicates how close Heller is to the target. It makes identifying a target much easier in the hundreds of inhabitants of New York Zero and is a much welcomed addition to the game play mechanics.

The game play does get a little repetitive, though, with most missions involve Heller heading to a checkpoint, getting instructions to hunt and consume a key person (scientist/military officer) at a location, then getting the hell out of Dodge while avoiding the Blackwatch forces that have arrived on the scene. It’s a story involving a shadowy military organisation and science experiments, which a dose of super soldiers thrown in for good measure, so not exactly original.

What I liked about Prototype 2 is that it’s the sort of game that you can pick up the controller, switch off your brain for a few hours and just revel in the open-world that developer Radical Entertainment has created. There’s something about being to run up the side of a building then change your identity at the press of a button, confusing the heck out of following pursuers.

Heller becomes more powerful every time he’s consumed a certain number of mutated monsters, granting him upgradable abilities such as an attack that drives spikes into the ground and the aforementioned tendrils.

As you’d expect with a man who can turn his hands into razor-sharp blades and chop people in half, it’s a game that has plenty of blood, and I’m OK with that –  it has an R18 rating, after all    – but one thing that did bug me was Heller’s gutter mouth. He seems to have been stereotyped by the developers into the atypical angry anti-hero, and there doesn’t seem to be a sentence that doesn’t come out of his mouth that doesn’t involve the f-word.  I know he’s an angry man on a mission to avenge his wife and daughter but it seemed to me that the developers were just trying a little too hard to make Heller bad-ass hero. Having a main character spouting out swear words all the time doesn’t make the game edgy and adult: it actually makes me like him a little less.

Those quibbles aside, Prototype 2 has to be taken for what it is: a turn-your-brain-off action game where you get to play a character who can consume people, climb buildings and pull helicopters out of the sky with his arms. It’s not going to win any awards for originality, but it’s  good fun if you don’t mind a lot of swearing and buckets of blood in your games.