Want a way to magnify the stench of BO which fills your room after endless hours of mashing those buttons on your favourite game? Then Project Natal (this a codename, the real name has yet to be announced) should be right up your street as you are now going to be physically, not just mentally, involved in your games, flouncing around the room and leading anyone who happens to pass by your window develop a concern for your sanity.

Well, maybe not. But Microsoft’s upcoming Natal technology is absolutely going to have you on your feet and doing what the hero on screen is, rather than just sitting on your rear end and letting them do all the work. It really does have potential to add a whole new dimension to your Xbox 360 experience, maximizing the outer body fun you can have when playing a quality title.

You’ve most likely heard of this intriguing product and have probably already formed your own opinions on the concept. Lots of people are filled with apprehension, not entirely sure if one of these little cameras will find its way in front of their television sets as enhancers to their gaming experiences. I, myself, am at two minds about this technology, so let’s take a look at what exactly Natal is and can do.

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Despite the DS outselling its Sony rival and even the big consoles on a regular basis, Nintendo are determined to get one into every gamer’s (and their relative’s) hands. With the children's market sorted they’re going for the grownups in force.

Handheld console manufacturers just can’t help but fiddle around. With both the DS and PSP getting numerous make-overs over the last few years getting bigger, smaller, slidier but rarely cheaper.

So it’s surprising to say that this is one upgrade that looks pretty good. Adding all the extra functions of the still recent DSi and supersizing the console to fit in adult hands and give them a screen big enough to make all the extra features worthwhile for once. While still not exactly cheap, the console will retail at £150 which is only £10 more than the smaller DSi.

So what does it do that we haven’t seen before on the DSi? Well not much to be honest. No Nintendo, new colours don’t count. There are only two colours available at launch, Wine Red and Dark Brown. It would seem Nintendo believe this the best strategy to attract the more ‘mature’ gamer, assuming they all like merlot and dirt.

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It's now common knowledge among most gamers that the Wii is primarily a box for parties, novelty games and the quirkier titles that make up your games library.  There's nothing wrong with this, afterall the 360 and PS3 have got the more serious end of the market sown up very nicely with quality game after quality game.  Nintendo have made a spectacular success and fortune out of what the Wii is and the latest addition to the Party Box identity of the Wii comes in the shape of We Sing and 4 USB microphones.

We Sing follows in the footsteps of Singstar and Lips and definitively brings the karaoke genre to the Wii.  Up to 4 players can sing along at a time (apparently the first time this is possible) and some pretty cool features looks set to bring the title alive.

Coming with 30 tracks at launch (though I would expect more to be available via download later) and spanning a range of genres, they will include: 

UB40 – Red Red Wine
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own
Charles & Eddie – Would I lie To You?
Sugababes – Girls
OneRepublic (ft. Timbaland) – Apologize
Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
Shampoo - Trouble
Spice Girls - Wannabe
Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite
Moloko - Sing It Back
Lady GaGa - Poker Face
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Lily Allen - The Fear
Tom Jones - Delilah
Kylie Minogue - Loco-Motion
Roxette – It Must Of Been Love
The Automatic – Monster
Duffy – Mercy
Madness – Our House
James Morrison and Nelly Furtado – Broken Strings

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Boy does that make me feel old.  As of today, this classic console has been entertaining the western world for 20 years. Well, America (just over 20 years for Japan and around 19 for Europe), see guys we’ve been the last in line for a while now.

With my ever-growing resentment towards my creaky Commodore 64 with its cassette loaded games and joystick, I probably wasn’t far off giving up on gaming and instead dedicating my life to something even less illustrious like sticker collections or even paying attention at school.

Early adopters and damn lucky kids at Christmas managed to get the Japanese Mega Drive, which really was the daddy as it played games from every corner of the world. Any half decent UK town would have a couple of indie game retailers, just full of obscure Japanese titles. One of which I bought and fell in love with, despite having no idea what the hell it was even called, I eventually learned it had the most excellent title of Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, which was remade for the west with an Egyptian style mummy lead character and renamed as Decap Attack.

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Physical media and dedicated gaming consoles, we are told, are dying breeds.  And the prime suspect for their expected demise is “The Cloud”.  Cloud Gaming is on it's way and may shake up the gaming world for all of us so I'm taking a look in to this to see exactly what it is, and what it means for the gaming community.

The Cloud is already present in most of our daily lives. Every time you check your Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail emails via a web browser, you're accessing, retrieving and interacting with them stored in The Cloud. Most internet users have also interacted with The Cloud when using Google Docs in which your docs, spreadsheets and presentations are all edited online without ever being saved or used on your PC itself.  The analogy of 'The Cloud' is the 'place' where the files you view and use online are stored and means not only do we save our hard drives from the abuse of saving thousands of emails and documents, but also that we can access them anywhere on the world.

Looking at gaming, Cloud Gaming is set to cause one of the biggest shake ups of the way we play games since the early 1970's when the first dedicated gaming consoles hit the shelves.  The “Cloud Gaming” generation will not own physical media nor will they store video games on a hardrive. Instead, they'll connect via the internet to central servers, on which the games are stored and the processing required to run them takes place.  With all of the processing and media storage happening remotely, the only hardware the user will require is a PC with an internet connection and a 3rd party box to manage the flow of information from PC, through the internet to their servers, and then to receive that information back and translate it onto your TV or monitor.  With the industry leaders currently claiming to have all but eliminated latency (down to 1 millisecond), the gamer's interactions with the servers through the internet is planned to be as seamless and quick as interacting with a console in the same room.

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With Nintendo’s roster of imminent releases, it looks like this year and next could mark the company’s re-discovery of its roots as a unique and ‘pro-gamer’ institution. Following last year’s E3 showcase, Nintendo garnered some criticism for ‘dumbing down’ with many of its titles for Wii seeming aimed at a large majority of lucrative casual gamers rather than the more traditional fan base, prompting some detractors to go as far as announcing the end of the company as a unique and recognisable games developer. But with two new Mario games on the way and a new Metroid, Nintendo’s attention seems to be returning to its definitive franchises.

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Since it's UK release in March 2007 the PS3 has failed to impress me with any stand out gaming titles. Despite the PS3's bigger and better processing and graphics capabilities these have yet to be shown off in a way that I feel can't be replicated by the Xbox360. The 360 hit our shelves in December 2005 which has given developers a 2 year headstart in getting the most out of it. The early titles in particular I felt showed a clunky, shallow graphical experience which lacked the depth and thoroughness of Xbox titles being released at the same time. Launch title Resistance Fall of Man looks remarkably unimpressive compared to the original Gears of War, which was released 4 months previously in November 2006.

There has also been a number or art-style and experimental games that have failed to whet my personal appetite for what it can offer. Experimental and arty games are great, but mid-range gamers need a core substance of quality shooters, racers and action games that they can't get from the 360 to justify shelling out the £300 required for a decent bundle. Related to this, the loss, or to-date lack of, PS3 exclusive franchises which mid range gamers can feel passionate about. The loss of the GTA series exclusivity was a big blow and Gran Turismo and God of War are all games we can get excited about but can't yet buy.

But as with so many things, these issues are coming to light again now because they're hopefully about to disappear. With big name titles like Gran Turismo 5, God of War III, Heavy Rain, Massive Action Game (MAG) and Uncharted 2 on the horizon, the PS3 is hotting up. Massive Action Game is getting me particularly excited and we'll be taking a look at this in more detail.

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I've looked recently at how the MotionPlus could add new life to the Wii and bring back the interest of gamers who bought a Wii for what we hoped it would bring to the gaming world, but has failed to hit home with all but from a selection of titles.  If Wii Sports and the tennis game within it was symbolic of the Wii's launch and early days, EA's Grand Slam Tennis will hopefully be symbolic of the Wii's potential reinvigoration via the MotionPlus.

With Wimbledon just around the corner Grand Slam Tennis is set to cash in very nicely with the seasonal tennis fanaticism that affects swathes of the country every summer, and with EA's reputation for annual releases we can probably expect a similar situation for the next few years.  Also following EA tradition, Grand Slam Tennis looks licensed up to it's eye balls with all four grand slams included (Australian, French, Wimbledon and US), as well as centre court and 20 past and present tennis players.  Pat Cash has also been signed up to do the commentary and actual recordings from last year's Wimbledon are used for the in game audio.

Aside from the new motion sensitive abilities from the MotionPlus, Grand Slam tennis allows you to create and customise players and compete through the game to win the Grand Slam.  You'll also notice from the video and screenshots that although it looks fun, friendly and approachable as you'd expect from a Wii game, it doesn't look as cartoony and immature as the Mii's do  – there's good
graphical representation and realistic shapes, faces and movements from the players, even if the heads are oversized.

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We all know the big highstreet and online brands to buy video games, but shopping around can give you a much better deal and save you money.  We've collected together a range of online shops to buy video games from, some you've probably heard of, others you may not have.  Shop around and check them out for the best deals on the games, consoles or accessories you're shopping for, and if it saves you some money, I'll be happy!

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Most people will remember the first time they played on a Nintendo Wii, and while hitting back the tennis ball or throwing the bowling ball down the alley were astounded that gaming had come so far. Standing on the edge of a giant new pool of gaming possibilities things were looking good.

But the problem for Nintendo, or any other company pushing the boundaries, is that for the current generation new technology very quickly becomes old technology, and what was once astounding quickly gets picked apart and becomes everyday.  In the fastfood, get-rich-quick, google age, we want it all and we want it now, which meant that some more cynical gamers, myself included, began to see the boundaries, problems and limitations of the Wii remote, specifically the movement tracking capabilities.

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Recent monthly sales figures now show that the Playstation3 has outsold the Wii in Japan for the first time in just under eighteen months with the PS3 achieving individual sales figures of 146,948 compared to the 99,335 units sold by Nintendo.
 
Is this a downward spiral for the Wii in Japan?
 
In my opinion no. It was recently announced that the Wii was now the fastest selling games console in history, outstripping the previous record held by Sony's Playstation2. The Wii has now clocked up unit sales of over 50 million consoles which is a staggering amount of units sold in such a relatively short space of time and amply demonstrates the appeal of the Wii across the consumer spectrum, a point alluded to by Nintendo. The family and friends orientated appeal of the Wii is something that the PS3 and Xbox360 cannot seem to compete with and with the release of the new DSi looking to set new sales records across the globe, I don't see this as anything but a market blip and nothing connected to a potential downfall for Nintendo. In fact, recent software releases are seen as the driving force behind this upturn in sales of the PS3 with Capcom's Resident Evil 5 being cited as a main reason.
 

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There was a varied array of games on display at the annual Independent Games Festival Awards and this is a short review of the winners. The IGFA rewards innovation and originality in the many independent games made each year, with this years IGFA showcasing over two hundred new and innovative games.
 
The top award of $30,000 Seamus McNally award was given to the fantasy based game Blueberry Garden, created by Swedish games designer Erik Svedang with the unique point that all frames from the exploration game were hand drawn in their entirety which gives Blueberry Garden a very distinctive look from other games. A preview of the game can be viewed here. The award for the Excellence in Audio was awarded to developer Digital Eel's Brainpipe, with the audio being described as "ear tickling sound effects and immersive dreamscape music.” This was particularly interesting for me as I have always had a keen interest in the audio behind video games and believe this constant pushing of boundaries is an excellent way forward.
 
There were two awards for Data Realm's Cortex Command with the game taking away the Technical Excellence award and the much vaunted Audience award. The Point and Click category was won by another game featuring hand drawn frames in the Czech developed Machinarium.

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War has changed. And it’s not a war like Metal Gear Solid, with jumpy sci-fi robots and conversations longer than Oscar acceptance speeches. I’m talking about a war that’s already happened, that’s already a part of history: the Second World War. WWII remains an ever-familiar setting for the First Person Shooter genre, with franchises like Medal of Honour and Call of Duty continuing to sell by the bunker load. However, it seems odd that just as gamers begin to demonstrate an enthusiasm for COD4’s modern warfare setting, the series returns to its 1940’s battlefield for the fifth entry.
 
The justification for this return given by Lieutenant Colonel Hank Keirsey, the military advisor for Call of Duty: World at War, was that game developers Treyarch now possessed the technology to capture the visionary scope of the story from U.S soldiers who served in the Pacific Theatre of WWII. It’s a noble intention, but somehow the videogame doesn’t quite live up to the promise. Or rather, it actively subverts its original intention for the sake of pleasing its no-scoping, splash damage shocked ‘l33ts’, which I’m pretty sure didn’t exist when the actual war was taking place. If WWII went according to COD conventions, veterans would be honoured by such game given goodies as increased accuracy or recoil reducing upgrades, and their battlefield movements defined by giant rotating icons. As videogame depictions of the war are almost irreversibly entrenched in this arcade gameplay, the technical code which goes towards creating them becomes all-too noticeable, overshadowing any sense of honest, historical realism. Sadly, there’s not a chance in hell’s highway that these games can match the authenticity which by comparison, film provides; even if they do plonk the gamer right into the thick of the action, their overt visual cues and handholding message tips lessen the force of the experience.
 

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After nearly four months from its initial release, it appears a miracle may finally have occurred – Treyarch have fixed all the glitches that had been infesting the World at War multiplayer maps like a rabid family of moles happily and contently destroying a garden. In short, it was a mess.
The question many people are asking though is that how did the game come to be released in the glitched, bug ridden state it was? Two years in the making and I found the multiplayer to be virtually unplayable. From browsing several Call of Duty forums, it was abundantly clear that I was not the only one slightly annoyed with what I was witnessing and I soon found myself returning to the welcoming, and relatively bug free, Call of Duty 4; Modern Warfare.
 

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The little white box of the Nintendo Wii doesn't have too much to look at, but it still pulls in a crowd. Ball-IT, a Finnish company, is hoping to compete with the Wii using the same tactics. They have produced a small, little squeezable ball, filled with sensors that can interact with TV screens, computers and mobile phones which they hope will revolutionize the way we play video games.
 
Established in 2005, the Finnish company Ball-IT "aims to become a global leader in the development and production of motion controlled gaming solutions. These solutions include enabling devices and modules as well as core software components for implementing consumer-level User interfaces."
 
Although many other companies are also trying to come up with the next Wiimote-like controller, none have a product like Ball-it. "Ball-it wants to become the non-keyboard standard for remote communication with your screen." By using Bluetooth the golf-ball sized peripheral can interact with most other Bluetooth capable devices. The ball has wireless sensors built in and can sense geomagnetic fields, orientation, direction, speed, air pressure and acceleration, something that no other competitor has been able to do.
 

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