That Gaming Podcast.com

Nintendo’s next big Wii release is only a few weeks away now. Mario Kart will launch in the UK on April 11th and to celebrate that fact (and give you the chance of playing the game before it’s actually out) GAME are holding a tournament in their stores. The tournament will start on April 5th and the winner from each heat will then win a £250 experience day voucher and a trip to Mercedez World, Brooklands on April 12th for the launch party and grand final of the tournament for a chance to win the grand prize of a Mario themed VW Beetle.

All players entering the tournament will be given a certificate with their name and lap time printed on and will also be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 GAME voucher.

Time to get your shells out.

To find out more head over GAME’s website by clicking here

Posted by Ian 

Quick, eject that copy of Talledega Nights and get your PS3 online to download the latest 2.20 firmware update.

Yes, that’s right the recently announced update is now available for downloading direct to your machine and with it comes loads of new blu-ray features.

Here’s a link to the full article relating to the firmware update on eurogamer.net

In addition to adding all kinds of fancy schmancy features to future blu-ray movie releases the firmware upgrade also allows Sony’s wonder box to play WMV files and DivX files that are over 2gb in file size.

Personally that’s of no use to me whatsoever as my PS3 absolutely refuses to be friendly with my Windows Home Server.

Toss

Posted by Ian

WTF is up with Britain? Rocketing fuel prices on an almost weekly basis, the worst customer service in the world (most of it is farmed out to poor middle-east countries) and now retailers charging a higher price for GTA 4 on the ps3 than they are for the 360 version.

Yes, that’s right, major high street retailer WH Smith has posted the cost of the upcoming mega-crime-a-thon fest that is GTA 4 and its £5 more on PS3 than it is on the 360 (even though no official price point has been given to retailers yet). The same thing happened a couple of weeks ago with Devil May Cry 4 costing £10 more on the PS3 than it’s 360 counterpart (and with a 22 minute install routine to go through on the PS3 version).

Videogame retail giants GAME and Gamestation have also said they they expect the PS3 version of GTA 4 to cost more than the 360 version. This isn’t good considering that the 360 version has the DLC coming and you get free MS points (worth real money) if you pre-order.

Things like this really wind me up and make me wish I lived in another country - stupid Britain.

Click here for the full story as reported on videogaming247.com

I have GTA 4 pre-ordered on 360 already - as does Rob.

Word!

Posted by Ian

Woooooo - the first map pack for the best online shooter ever (in my opinion) is only a few days away (for 360 owners at least).

Infinity Ward have confirmed that the GOTY edition of COD 4 will go on sale on April 3rd 2008 and will include a download code to get the bonus maps. This, coincidently, is also the date that the map packs will be made available for purchase via the gift of Xbox Live Marketplace.

Quoting directly from Kotaku (who are quoting from Inifitity Ward),

The Variety Map Pack includes four new multiplayer maps. “Creek” is a wide-open village ravaged by combat where concealment is the difference between life and death. In “Broadcast,” fight throughout an enemy communications building with confined corridors and wide-open parking lots. “Chinatown” is a foggy downtown district, lit only by a full moon and the neon glow of the city. “Killhouse” features a desolate training warehouse filled with a variety of building mock-ups and soft and hard cover points.

PS3 owners will have to wait a little longer than 360 owners to get their hands on the map pack, 21 days longer to be precise (that’s April 24th - now put your socks back on). Still at least you know when you’ll be getting it. Spare a thought for poor PC owners. They’ve currently been left in the dark with no specified date for the map pack. Ironic really, seeing as it’s usually PC gamers that enjoy the benefits of new maps first usually.

In your face PC dudes.

For more details on the map pack click here

Posted by Ian 

We took a break from updating the site over the bank holiday weekend, but for everyone returning to work on Tuesday here’s a brief round-up of the gaming news for the past few days.

• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 launched
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 multiplayer is broke on PS3
• Pain was released on PSN in Europe
• the CFO of EA has quit
• the CEO of Midway has quit
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue adverts have started showing up on TV
• Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack announced for April - will cost 800 points

There you go, everything you need to know in 2 minutes worth of reading.

Nice

Posted by Ian 

The other night my Vista PC informed me that were new updates to be installed. Naturally I proceeded with the update procedure and was quite happy to find that the update it was going to apply was Vista Service Pack 1.

The download didn’t take too long (I’m on a 4mb cable broadband line at the moment), but the installation procedure certainly did and involved several reboots too. I believe I was waiting about an hour all-in-all for it to finish applying the service pack.

I can tell you though that it was more than worth the wait for me because Microsoft’s promises of greatly improved speed performance when copying files have all come true. I tested it this evening with the latest episode of On the Spot from Gamespot. Vista copied the file (which was almost 1gb in file size) in about 50 seconds over my network to another PC. Before the update this would have taken around 20 minutes.

There are a few other key updates to the service pack, as well as all of the previous security patches that MS have released for Vista. I believe that the service pack is being rolled out in stages, so not everyone will get it at the same time. Indeed, I’m now waiting for my Vista laptop to get the update - no sign of it yet though.

Nice one Microsoft, but next time let’s test the OS’ basic file operations first eh, instead of making users wait over 12 months for their PC to work properly.

If you want to find the full details of what’s included in Vista Service Pack 1 click here. (PC Pro)

Posted by Rob

Ok Ok i know its only by 1 week but i had gone and got myself super pumped about condemned 2 but here is the kicker…………. Its now out on the exact same day as Dark Sector AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

it seems like whatever games i have the remotest interest in seem to gravitate towards each others release date, however upon reflection i have decided to treat this as a blessing rather than a curse because……….. thats right im gonna get both lol.

Anyone who knows me probably expected this anyhow but seeing as i have £35 worth of vouchers to spend it means i only have to actually pay for one of them so WOO HOO more achievement points for me.

Posted by Ian

Now I don’t know whether or not I’m being a bit slow here, or whether I’ve been hiding under a rock and everyone already knew this, but I didn’t so I thought I’d make a post about it.

There’s a new trailer for GTA 4 coming on 27th March 2008.

The trailer’s title is “Good lord, what are you doing? AKA Everyone’s a rat”

HMV are offering 1000 MS Points for free if you pre-order the 360 version of the game. Game and Gamestation (who are part of Game now anyway) are offering double reward card points, 500 MS points and 4 exclusive art cards. All 3 retailers promise to have the game with you on day of release. Pretty good deals there. My copy is  already pre-ordered with Game and has been for some time now.

Woot!

Peter Moore, the guy in charge of EA Sports has confirmed that the company are working on no less than 8 new titles for the Wii.

In his March 14th update on his blog he said:

” I’ve seen speculation the past few days about the comments we’ve made recently about new IP coming this year from EA SPORTS. While we’re still a couple of months away from any official new game announcements, I’m encouraged by the interest and excitement. As I’ve said many times over the past few months, as EA SPORTS looks to expand our brand and capture new audiences, developing new intellectual property - such as FaceBreaker and future unlicensed titles - will be a key component of that strategy. As an extension to those comments, and coming fresh out of our sku plan reviews of last week, I can tell you we now have EIGHT titles in development for the Wii, testament both to the global impact of that console currently in the global marketplace, as well as to our desire to attract more consumers to experience EA SPORTS games, no matter their experience playing games nor their prowess with a traditional controller. “

With it’s unique method of control the Wii is perfectly suited to sports games, but so far most of the titles have been lacklustre (with the exception of Wii Sports of course). Hopefully EA will deliver something fresh and new to play on our Nintendo consoles.

Facebreaker does look awesome…

The developers the awesome looking PS3 title Little Big Planet have revealed that the game is getting close to alpha stage in it’s development in their latest blog post.

“Basically this means all the cool stuff we said will be in there should be playable, even if it isn’t pretty enough to release. The game seems to change every day at the moment and it is very exciting to be able to sit down and play what feels more and more like a complete experience.”

You can read the blog in full here:

This game looks awesome and is definitely a day of release purchase for me. The wife wants it too!