The iPod nano 4th Generation, and an eBay Risk Pays off

Yup, after my post long ago about the new iPods, I actually bought one of the blighters! After searching for weeks on the Internet on sites like Amazon and the official Apple store, there were no 16GB's to be found, and me being so desperate to get one, I took the risk of ordering from eBay, and luckily, It payed off! So I now have a shiny new iPod nano! Im thinking about writing a full length review, probably very soon, but for now im just going to go over some of my first thoughts!

Well, where to start! I think the hardest decision for me was which colour to go for! It was a close call between Yellow, and Green, and possibly even black...but after observing that the Green was selling out in most places, I decided that that one was too popular, and i didnt want to get the one everyone else was going for, so It was Yellow or Black. Considering they went to the trouble of making 7 different colours, I thought it would be a waste to get the boring black one, and I ended up deciding on Yellow, and Im glad i did :)

After ordering it from a fairly respectable seller, it was just a matter of waiting, and I only had to wait just over two days, and it arrived this Wednesday, so ive had a full weekend and longer to get to know it, Im happy to say it doesnt disappoint. The colour realy is beautiful! and its made out of that shiny Aluminium stuff, that really feels great in your hand! it looks especially great when the light hits it just right, and the yellow really comes through! My only disappointment with the colour is that sometimes, when it is quite dim, it can look gold and gold look a little uglier than yellow in my opinion.

Away from the colour the actual body of the iPod is really nicely shaped. Its extremely thin, even thinner than you would think...As a matter of fact, you cant even fathom how thin this is until youve held one...and thats the truth! I didnt have the privilege of seeing one in person before buying one, so I actually had no idea what it was going to feel like, and i was pleasantly surprised. It just feels so right in your hand. My only complaint about the body, is that when mine came it had a very small, but very noticeable dent in the bottom of the aluminium casing, that really shows up when the light hits it. That really upset me when i first saw it, but now i think of it more as like...My iPod is different to everyone elses! Totally unique :p

If you care about this you probably already know what its main features are, but the lowdown it, its got an accelerometer in it, which means it can tell which way it is being held, so you can turn it on its side to go to cover flow, or shake it to go to shuffle mode etc. That is the only real addition to the new model, aside from the Genius feature, which you need an iTunes account to use, so I havent tried it out yet. But the accelerometer is very good. Its fast, responsive, and useful, not to mention quite cool! I find that it can be a bit slow to transfer to cover flow, but thats probably because its got to load all the album art onto the screen, not a problem with the accelerometer.

Speaking of loading, the iPod is very fast! browsing through the menus is really smooth, and if it loads at all, its un noticeable. Which is quite positive as far as im concerned. Even transitions between screens is pretty, with delicate transition effects like album art flipping around to reveal track listings and menus sliding in from the side, which is a nice addition, and just adds to the sleek-ness.

And really what is an MP3 player without music? the sound quality here is standard, the same as all other iPod models, but its headphones that really make the difference in quality and its the this that really lets the nano down, i recommend you get yourself some better earphones if you buy any apple MP3 player, as the apple standard ones are really pathetic. While were talking about quality, the screen really is great! absolutely flawless. Album art looks fantastic (when in cover flow mode the cover art does look slightly blurry, but thats because its been resized to fit, and as soon as the now playing screen appears, it looks great) and thats all there really is to say, Just great!

Well thats all I can think to say for now, thanks for reading! And be sure to come back regularly!

Soulcalibur IV... Anyone Itching for a Fight?

Not a major post, but im having alot of fun with SC IV still! And I want some fresh meat to practice with! If anyone wants to add me on PSN my ID is Jakeusi

Another thing to mention is the new iPod Nano 4th Generation. Im really excited about it, but ive only had the 3rd gen since Christmas, and I dont know if its worth the Money! The extra 8GB of space will definately be helpful, but for £140, its a steep price to pay...

If you weren't aware of the news, check out this page to read more. Though they added some nice new gimmicks, aparrently, the sound quality is still the same, and the screen is no bigger for videos. For now vote in the new Poll and decide which colour you would buy...

The Soul Still Burns

Yep, thats right, the reason for the makeover was in anticipation for my SoulCalibur IV Mega Review! My first Game review that i have ever put into writing is now finished, and ready to post :)

Soul Calibur IV

When first introduced to Star Wars, as a young child, I don't remember being all too impressed. However it was inevitable, and Star Wars picked up popularity at a staggering rate. Soon everyone knew about it. Pop culture was flooded with reerences, cereal boxes were hijacked and soon enough, Darth Vader's masked mugshot was even plastered over Pepsi cans. I guess I can understand that, everything gets licensed eventually....but what is he doing in my copy of SoulCalibur IV?

It doesn't take a genius to realise that the two worlds couldn't be further apart. Sci-fi, as a general rule, doesn't mix with medieval history, but did that stop Namco Bandai? (from here on in to be referred to as “Bamco”) No. It didn't. Andsure enough, Darth Vader, along with his secret apprentice, graces the world's TV's again, this time to partake in the search for the cursed sword, Soul Edge.

Aside from being a rather shameful attempt to advertise thenew, upcoming Star Wars Release, “The Force Unleashed”, the inclusion or Starkiller, Vader (and Yoda if you're playing on the 360) only fuels the fire, as thousands of fans of the Soul series experiment with the latest addition to the series. Spending yet more hours perfecting their characters repertoire, to compete with the best, (or as I like to call it, the Artificial Intelligence.) Yes, that's right, SoulCalibur is back. The fighting game community rejoices, and the computer A.I is just as cheap as ever.

If you'renot familiar with it, (where have you been?)The Soul series is one of the most popular fighting games, and one of the only to use a weapons based fighting system consisting of Vertical attacks, Horizontal attacks, kicks, and guarding. Stemming from its humble beginnings under the guise “Soul Blade” (or Soul Edgein the arcades) it was the first of its genre to include the revolutionary, and slightly controversial, “8-way-run” system, allowing fighters to move about a complete axis. It was new to the world, and thus, Soul Blade thrust the series into glory. From then on is has been through three more incarnations, (being Soul Calibur,Soul Calibur II and SoulCalibur III). Each time the critics and gamers alike praised it for its tight gameplay, and multitude of single player modes. Every year the game improving, but the mechanics becoming slightly more tired and stale, Its competition from the fighting behemoths, Tekken, Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter and others, still going strong, but unfortunately, not much has changed for SoulCalibur IV.

The next gen iteration of SoulCalibur sports amazing graphics, but that's about all that is new here. While the meat of the game remains strong and fun, everything else falters. The game has taken a real battering when it comes to game modes. Only offering a measly selection on generic ways to play, including arcade, versus, and a weak story mode, bolstered by the inclusion of the Tower of lost souls (a spin off of the popular survival mode, which is absent from this edition) in which the player ascends the tower facing a string of opponents with only one life bar, accompanied by a partner, creating a tag-team situation, or descends in a similar fashion, but with no breaks in between. Tower of Lost Souls is noting to fuss over though, proving to be a fun challenge at times, but at others, a playground rich with painfully cheap A.I that can really wipe the floor with an inexperienced player, making it too much of a chore to progress at times, which isn't fun.

Another disappointment is the Character Creation mode. While not being a total let down, it hasn't evolved enough since SoulCalibur III, and seems to have been downgraded! Though it is still possible to create your signature character, you wont feel as unique as before, due to the reduced amount of clothing available, and the fact that you can only choose from the existing characters move sets, doesn't help set you apart. You can, however, also customise the existing characters if you so desire, this time offering more than just palette swaps, but the creation of entirely new costumes for them. Unfortunately, you can only use the same equipment as the normal character creator, so your modified Sigfried could end up looking exactly like your custom characters., which is disappointing considering the sheer multitude of options that were available in SoulCalibur III

One redeeming factor of this edition is the inclusion of a selection of new characters to choose from. The only Original characters to be added to the main line up, are Algol, the new boss character you will fight after every successful run of the arcade or story modes, and Hilde, a sexy and suave female knight. Hilde, wielding both a short sword and a spear, is certainly a very original character and a breath of fresh air, providing relief from all the scantily clad females of the cast, and a more classy girl. Among the rest of the motley bunch are bonus characters from previous instalments, now beefed up to fully fledged members of the cast, Amy (Raphael's Adopted daughter) and Rock (a character from the original that has been removed from the main cast since then) being the most notable. A new collection of bonus characters have also been added, (nice to look at, but just clones of existing characters move setswhich is a shame). Darth Vader/Yoda and the Secret Apprentice round off the list, being surprisingly well balanced compared to the SoulCalibur original characters. To stop the Star Wars trio from being ridiculously overpowered a force meter has been imposed upon them that recharges over time, stopping them from abusing their force powers. Use too much force and you'll be stunned for a second or two leaving you open to attack, so be careful! All in all the decision to add Star Wars characters to the game worked well, providing good entertainment value, and interesting story modes.

All that being said, the saving grace of this game will never fail to swoop down in your time of need, and provide you with some fun, which is most definitely the on-line mode. Whether you are playing on PSN or X-Box live, the experience is similar. Some lag issues are experienced, but the game dodges this issue by providing you with connection information about everyone you fight, so you can tell on a scale of one to five how good the opponents connection is. Your next foe only has a 2 bar connection? No problems, find someone else to play. But as always, I am ever cynical, and cant help but realise that there will always be people in the mix that ruin it for everyone else.

If you are familiar with the term “spamming”, you have undoubtedly worked up an intense rage towards it! If you haven't, a spammer is someone who plays the game in the cheapest way possible, abusing attacks that leave them safe, and you at a disadvantage. It is these Spammers that ruin the community. When it comes to it, there are a couple of characters in the game that are particularly notorious for being easily controlled in effective ways, that attract more “spammers” than any others. During my time on-line with this game, I have observed that it is impossible to play a ranked match (where the records are kept to your name permanently) without playing a flood of Kilik's or Mitsurugi's. Its not difficult to outsmart your average “Spammer”, but it is quite disheartening to see that there are so many people in the SoulCalibur community that are so desperate to keep their records up. But this is a minor niggle. The on-line players are, for themost part, a lovely bunch, and its great fun and practice to play against your PSN/XBL friends.

So, the final judgement has come. SoulCalibur IV is an extremely fun fighting game. The battles work well, the characters are well balanced, (apart from a couple) and with a massive roster of 34 characters to choose from, all unique, you just never get tired of experimenting with them. However, the lack of fun game modes, unlockables, the crippling of the character creation system, lack of much replay value besides the on-line and versus modes, and the games momentum slowly subsiding, the formula is getting tired, and something drastic will need to be done to push it ahead of its competitors in the future.

71%

Anticipation

You may have noticed a change in the blogs look...

I have themed the blog to SoulCalibur IV...Can you guess why?

More news tomorrow :)

Blogging Virgin

Kitted out with my new logo and blog design, the Blog looks the part, only its missing something....Aha! That's it! a decent post :)

I don't know how many votes most polls get, but 7 is a new personal record for me! Even though i have only waited a couple of days, and never hosted my own poll before. However, 6 votes for "Yes!", and one vote for "Peanut Butter", the poll rests at 85%, which i will happily accept.

I have mentioned it 3 times (including this time, and in the title) but just in case you didn't gather it, I have never posted a "real" post on Blogger before. Hence, I have no idea what I should be doing. Hopefully there are no written rules about it (excluding the pesky T&C, of course) so I can't embarrass myself.

Today has been pretty slow. I'm still in my School holidays, with the threat of returning to lessons hovering over me. With only two days to go until i have to go back, I can't help but feel like Ive wasted an entire six weeks of my life. Then again i feel like this every year at the start of September.

You may already know that I like Final Fantasy (if you didn't you do now) In fact, the only PS2 games I still own are Final Fantasy X and X-2. They are by far my favourite games ever! And I thought it would be a good way of introducing myself to the blogging world with a short post about Final Fantasy VIII, which I have just started replaying, (and is the only other FF game i have apart from VII, X and X-2, as mentioned earlier) :) Now, I don't know why, but for some reason Final Fantasy VIII doesn't work on my PS3, so i had to dig up my PS1 to play it on! Wow kinda old school eh ;) I was happy to find it worked after all that time in storage!

I always Liked Final Fantasy VIII. It has a really great story line and characters unlike some other games *cough*finalfantasyVII*cough* although the battle system is lacking, i am enjoying playing it again. The last time was only a couple months ago! Its a little odd to play a game so soon again, but let me explain:

I told a little fib earlier. FFVIII does work on my PS3, but only di sc one! That's right, I got all the way to the end of disk one, and when i was so eager to get onto the next part of the game (to find out the continuation of that awfully dramatic cliffhanger!) I get a symbol saying I've inserted the wrong disc, and it does the same for all of the other discs too. Even on the second copy of the game i have!

So yeah, I've had to play through the parts of the game that are still fresh in my memory on the PS1, to get to disc two and onwards! Still I'm enjoying it, and Will post more on it, and possibly a little review when i have gotten a little further.

That's it for now, Vote in the new poll, and satisfy your appetite with the screen shots and stuff throughout the post!

A Double Helping, Fresh Out of Photoshop

Yet two more Banners! Delicious, organic, and totally free of artificial flavours, colourings and preservatives!

Blogging Banner Berserk!

Hi!

In the short time that this blog has graced the internet, it has already undergone three changes of the main banner! Yep, thats right. In less than two days!

So, I have been playing in photoshop since the creaion of the blog, and created quite a few possible choices, and there are still more in the pipe-line! As until now all of them have been Final Fantasy X-2 related (my favourite game ever!) But im hoping to create something with more variety! Soul Calibur IV has been the bane of my life lately, so Ivy, and Siegfried are both people to expect soon.

More detailed posts will be added later when more poll results are in, so stay with me until then ;)

For now, here are some of my banners:

Everybody Votes!

Vote in the Poll!