“In the summertime when the weather is high and you could stretch right up and touch the sky… Now when the weather is fine you got gaming, you got gaming on your mind…” Well said, Shaggy.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are once again reviving our occasionally popular and always opinionated Gaming Weekly for the summer season and beyond.
We at Gadget Helpline will be able to bring you a weekly update of some of the big news and small gaming tidbits from the week as well as offering our opinions on some of the gaming gems we have come across.
News – Xbox 360’s Ultimate Games Sale – The real reason to download
If you have an Xbox 360 and have been following the Ultimate Games Sale this week then we are pretty sure that you might have picked up something of a bargain over the past 4 days.
Microsoft has had one of its biggest ever flash sales this week, offering a whole host of great games at completely slammed down prices. Games like Assassin’s Creed III, Tomb Raider, Witcher 2, Far Cry 3 and Borderlands 2 have all seen discounts of around 50%.
We have downloaded quite a few games from the sales – and the subsequent storage nightmare has already begun – and for many of the people around GH HQ it’s been the first time that they have downloaded a full Xbox 360 game to their console.
The prices in the sale are amazing but what it does bring to light is why Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony do charge so much for direct downloads. I personally don’t like the idea of downloading a game that is; a) Full price or sometimes more than the physical version I can buy in store, b) Something I can then NOT re-sell or lend to a friend, or c) something I can’t return if don’t like the game.
That’s not to mention the act of downloading the game, which takes ages, and adjusting memory allocations if you have a large amount of games filling up your console’s internal memory.
All in all the only reason I have downloaded games this week is because of the excellent prices, so Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo take note: If you want us to download games direct… lower the prices permanently.
There are still games available on day 4 of the sale through till midnight Friday and a selection of other title discounted titles will be ready to download till Monday July 8th. You can see those right here: Xbox 360 Ultimate Game Sale day 4 has Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider and Gears of War Judgement.
News: PS4 and Xbox One keeping the price down low
With things really hotting up in the battle of the PS4 vs Xbox One, something that is becoming apparent is that both Sony and Microsoft are doing all they can to get their pricing down low, and to do this the two are dropping bundled products inside of the box. Microsoft has this week done another u-turn on its original plans to not bundle in a gaming headset with its Xbox One + Kinect 2.0 package. Now MS is saying it will add the headset in and we can’t help but think this was a desperate plan to try and drop the price of the Xbox to compete with the PS4’s pricing.
Sony is currently riding high with its £80 price difference between the PS4 and the One, but one of the reasons Sony may be achieving this is the apparent lack of the PlayStation 4 Camera in the sales packages. When Sony announced the PS4 at E3 most of the images and press shots featured a Sony Eye (later renamed PlayStation 4 Camera) attachment, but when the package price was announced this was omitted from the images.
Did Sony originally plan to have the Camera as part of the basic bundle (akin to the Kinect system) and then subsequently dropped it to undercut the Xbox One price?
Well, that’s speculation my dear friends… so no one can tell for certain.
What is clear is that Sony is doing everything it can to undermine the Xbox One before its release.
News: Single player summer
As we so casually reminded you in the intro, it is indeed summer time, and for us in the UK this means the usual mix of odd days of sunshine mixed with depressingly long periods of overcast skies and showers.
What this does do though is give us all some time to catch up on what we have missed over the past year in the gaming world. Summer is the best time to pick up a bargain (see the Ultimate Games Sale), borrow a game off a mate or just put in that one game that you started but never finished!
This plucky writer has just finished Dead Space 3 and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations after starting a year ago and then promptly stopping, then following this up with Assassin’s III which I picked up in the sale.
Additionally, Borderlands 2, Arkham City (a huge wave of shock erupted when this was announced) and the original Uncharted on PS3 have all been pinned by people across the office as games to complete over the summer.
And remember the second that the school summer holidays kick in it’s possibly not the best time for your ego and sanity to be playing these games online. There is nothing like getting pwned on COD by someone with the gamertag ~~LaydeeZZLover1998~~ to make you want to get offline and play alone.
It’s also a chance to try out some games you have heard of but never committed to, like Metro: Last Night and Crysis. We’re talking single player affairs which can be played, completed and enjoyed in a short amount of time without you missing out on too much vitamin D time in the sun.
What’s sat on your shelf or set in your mind for you to play over the summer? As usual, let us know in the comments below.
What we have been playing
This is a bit of a mixed bag this week as The Last Of Us is still spinning in our consoles and blowing minds across the office. The PS3 hasn’t had this much love at Gadget Helpline HQ for quite some time.
The same can be said for the Nintendo Wii U as this writer has decided to play New Super Mario Bros. U in its entirety during lunch breaks, so I’m plodding along with that.
And oddly enough, some more retro gaming has appeared thanks to the SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Games Collection for Xbox 360, so the classic figures of Streets of Rage have been causing anger in the office throughout the week.
What’s out this week
Not. A. Lot!
As we have discussed, we are currently in the midst of the summer slump of games so what we are faced with is a selection of poorly reviewed games and re- releases. The best we’ve got in the way of new games is Project X Zone which has been re-released for the Nintendo 3DS this week.
Gaming opinion of the week
Mario is a bit of a d*@k… it’s obvious that he mistreats both Luigi and Yoshi (double jumping is the bane of Yoshi’s life) all the time but sometimes, don’t you just think that maybe Bowser has more love to give Peach?
Bye Bye
I’m a firm believer that it really wasn’t him, but Shaggy… see us out!
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