This was my first Eurogamer Expo and can I say that it was an amazing one to start with. As you have read in previous post, there were a lot of great titles that you could play. As always with expos, there are games that haven’t been released yet.

One of these titles was House of the Dead:  Overkill Extended Cut for the Playstation 3. This was an extended version of a previously realised game. I have played all the arcade versions of HOTD (I’m just going to call it that to make this easier to read) and have enjoyed them immensely. All the blood, guts and gore make for a perfect zombie, so I was excited to try this out the game to see if it had what it takes.

The game was tucked away in a corner of the 18 section, from an onlooker’s perspective, the games graphics are up to the usual HOTD standard. sharp graphics with really grainy overtones, what I like to call, arcade style of graphics. The BGM and SFX are what any arcade fan would come to expect with a HOTD game, very dark and ominous music coupled with the some perfect SFX, you can really hear the zombie moans and the body squelch as your bullets blow their heads off.

The game requires you to play via PlayStation move, you can get a plastic rifle that you plug the move controller into in order to play the game, but the move controller is just fine by itself. Since the controller I was using was needed to charge at the time I used just the controller on its own.

You didn’t get much of the story with this as it was just a demo. All that was said story wise was that an incident happened at a location and I needed to check it out. Oh and what did we find? Zombies and they are looking very nasty.

As with all the HOTD games you have little bonuses and power ups through the game, one of the latest power ups they have added to this game is slow motion. This is an awesome addition as can not only kill a butt load of zombies in slow-mo, but you also get to see zombies explode and their body parts fly off as you shoot them with your shotgun all in glorious slow motion.

Now you would suspect that after I have said all of that, that the game would be brilliant. Well sadly you would be wrong, but this isn’t because of anything in the game, it’s well designed and everything around it has been well thought out. The problem however lies with the Playstation Move controller and rifle that you use to play the game with, there are multiple reasons why the PlayStation move isn’t that great for this game, but the main reasons are:  The controller is not as responsive and accurate as you would like it to be, when you do try to calibrate it, the targeting feels off so you can not accurately calibrate the move. Even standing about a foot away from the screen I was still missing, this just shows how bad the move controller is when trying to calibrate it. The other reason is that plastic rifle you get with this game breaks quite easily.

Overall the game is good and has all the quality of its predecessors, but the only thing that lets this game down is the move controller. Get rid of that and you have the potential for an awesome arcade game for the PlayStation 3.

House of the Dead:  Overkill Extended Cut is released on the 28^th of October for PlayStation 3

-Random Man

These past couple of weeks I have been going too and from London like a yo yo, I am slowly becoming accustomed to the Capital, and feel less like a country boy in a huge city who can’t stop staring at shiny lights. The past couple of times I have been down to London I have hit the Trocadero. This is the mother of all Arcades. Well It’s the largest one I have been to and to be honest I haven’t been too many. That aside the Trocadero is massive. Just a couple of weeks ago Leon and myself went there and played some Street Fighter and Mario Kart it was great and gave us a great oppotunity to game and chat with out the head sets.

Last weekend I was there again for a Ready-up.net Forum meet. We had an awesome time there hitting the arcade machines. But there was this one shining moment that day where a group of around 20 of us hit the Rambo arcade machine. Now I don’t know if any of you guys are familiar with this sheers brilliant game, but Rambo is a shooter, where you just have to kill anything that moves. You are armed with an AK 47 and it’s just kill kill kill. The group of us set ourselves a challenge. We had to beat the game between all of us. If someone lost all their lives they would then hand the gun to the next guy who would put the credits in and continue. It was an awesome experience if I am honest and yes we did complete that Rambo game.

So where am I going with all of this? Well with my trips to the Trocadero in mind it got me thinking, Arcade gaming is defiantly not what it used to be. I was catching up with MarkBOSS and GuitarGirl after the Rambo rally and they each said that the Troc used to be packed back in the Mid to late 90′s. It was the place for any gaming geek to be. But now it has died down so much and things aren’t as shiny as they used to be. Even the machines get less maintenance than they used to. The Trocadero has been dieing since the dawn of the new millenium.

The Trocadero At Its Peak In The 90's

So why have ammusements arcades been left to die? A perfect example here would be when the PlayStation One took center stage in the late 90′s. That was when arcades started to go down hill. Why? Well games were coming into their own, they all were getting better graphics and better game play. But the pinnacle moment for me was when we had a PSone and when my family got their hands on the Die Hard trilogy, complete with Light gun. Meaning there was no real reason to go out and play Time Crisis anymore because we had an arcade style shooter right in our living room. Then I saw dance mats being advertised, true there weren’t as robust as a huge dancing stage arcade machines, but it gave people the excuse to stay in and play and not waste money.

But arcade machines had one saving grace still up their sleeve, in the late 90′s arcade machines back the then were the equivalent to what we have on our home consoles now graphically, meaning that gamers still had an incentive to go to the arcade and try out the latest Time Crisis, because consoles like the PSone didn’t have the graphical power. Not only that but they were a great place to hang out and socialize, this was way before online gaming so Arcades still had the capability of brining gamers together. Ok so they may have squeezed every last living breath out of our wallets, but to be honest arcades were a great excuse for any cave dwelling gamer to actually breath some fresh air and talk to human beings.

But now we have things like the Wii, which bring casual gaming into peoples homes. Therefore us cave dwelling gamers out there don’t actually need to come out of our gaming dives. Instead we may invite our other gaming friends into our humble abodes to play some House Of The dead on the Wii or whatever. We also now have online gaming which brings gamers together across the world. Then there is the graphical power of the consoles these days, they do look stunning and rival Arcade machines. Just the other week my mum bought Time Crisis 4 for the PS3 and I just knew that was the icing on the cake.

Arcade gaming has sadly been laid to rest these days. But you will still get some shining moments such as the Rambo rally that will give you a glimpse of what Arcade gaming used to be like. Will there be a revival? Or was it just a mid 90′s fad that has been killed by todays gaming market? For me I am hoping it is the former.

Garv

These past couple of weeks I have been going too and from London like a yo yo, I am slowly becoming accustomed to the Capital, and feel less like a country boy in a huge city who can’t stop staring at shiny lights. The past couple of times I have been down to London I have hit the Trocadero. This is the mother of all Arcades. Well It’s the largest one I have been to and to be honest I haven’t been too many. That aside the Trocadero is massive. Just a couple of weeks ago Leon and myself went there and played some Street Fighter and Mario Kart it was great and gave us a great oppotunity to game and chat with out the head sets.

Last weekend I was there again for a Ready-up.net Forum meet. We had an awesome time there hitting the arcade machines. But there was this one shining moment that day where a group of around 20 of us hit the Rambo arcade machine. Now I don’t know if any of you guys are familiar with this sheers brilliant game, but Rambo is a shooter, where you just have to kill anything that moves. You are armed with an AK 47 and it’s just kill kill kill. The group of us set ourselves a challenge. We had to beat the game between all of us. If someone lost all their lives they would then hand the gun to the next guy who would put the credits in and continue. It was an awesome experience if I am honest and yes we did complete that Rambo game.

So where am I going with all of this? Well with my trips to the Trocadero in mind it got me thinking, Arcade gaming is defiantly not what it used to be. I was catching up with MarkBOSS and GuitarGirl after the Rambo rally and they each said that the Troc used to be packed back in the Mid to late 90′s. It was the place for any gaming geek to be. But now it has died down so much and things aren’t as shiny as they used to be. Even the machines get less maintenance than they used to. The Trocadero has been dieing since the dawn of the new millenium.

The Trocadero At Its Peak In The 90's

So why have ammusements arcades been left to die? A perfect example here would be when the PlayStation One took center stage in the late 90′s. That was when arcades started to go down hill. Why? Well games were coming into their own, they all were getting better graphics and better game play. But the pinnacle moment for me was when we had a PSone and when my family got their hands on the Die Hard trilogy, complete with Light gun. Meaning there was no real reason to go out and play Time Crisis anymore because we had an arcade style shooter right in our living room. Then I saw dance mats being advertised, true there weren’t as robust as a huge dancing stage arcade machines, but it gave people the excuse to stay in and play and not waste money.

But arcade machines had one saving grace still up their sleeve, in the late 90′s arcade machines back the then were the equivalent to what we have on our home consoles now graphically, meaning that gamers still had an incentive to go to the arcade and try out the latest Time Crisis, because consoles like the PSone didn’t have the graphical power. Not only that but they were a great place to hang out and socialize, this was way before online gaming so Arcades still had the capability of brining gamers together. Ok so they may  have squeezed every last living breath out of our wallets, but to be honest arcades were a great excuse for any cave dwelling gamer to actually breath some fresh air and talk to human beings.

But now we have things like the Wii, which bring casual gaming into peoples homes. Therefore us cave dwelling gamers out there don’t actually need to come out of our gaming dives. Instead we may invite our other gaming friends into our humble abodes to play some House Of The dead on the Wii or whatever. We also now have online gaming which brings gamers together across the world. Then there is the graphical power of the consoles these days, they do look stunning and rival Arcade machines. Just the other week my mum bought Time Crisis 4 for the PS3 and I just knew that was the icing on the cake.

Arcade gaming has sadly been laid to rest these days. But you will still get some shining moments such as the Rambo rally that will give you a glimpse of what Arcade gaming used to be like. Will there be a revival? Or was it just a mid 90′s fad that has been killed by todays gaming market? For me I am hoping it is the former.

Garv