Sunday 11 January 2009

Weekend Roundup XIII

Well what a week it has been. Between Macworld, the Consumer Electronics Show, and the normal gaming news, my RSS reader has been bursting at the seams.

Now first and foremost, the most exciting thing this week was the public beta release of Windows 7. Whilst I shall likely be talking more about the beta this week, there are a few things I do want to say here. The first thing that came to my attention was the sheer speed. Both the install (which took altogether about 12 minutes) and the actual running of the system are fantastically fast. Microsoft has concentrated on performance in this release, particularly on laptops, netbooks and lower-specification computers, and the internet says 7 not only runs faster than Vista, but also XP on netbooks in particular. I hope to grab myself a Dell Mini 9 at some point in the first half of this year, so I shall give my impressions then. The second best thing is the new ‘Libraries’ feature. Originally planned to be in Vista a long way back, it means that rather than physical destinations on the disk such as My Documents or My Music, all the relevant files from anywhere on your PC are sorted into virtual folders for documents, music, video and pictures. I’m hoping to have a little video tour of the new features in 7 up in the week, but to hold you over, here’s a lovely shiny screenshot:

image

Anyway, to gaming stuffs. Surprisingly, one of the coolest things this week came from a PSP game – the upcoming Resistance Retribution. I’m a big fan of the original PS3 game, and Retribution stays a lot closer to that styling and gameplay than to Resistance 2’s over-the-top-ness. ThreeSpeech grabbed some new screenshots from the ‘infected’ mode of the game (enabled by connecting the game to R2, enabling regenerating health, new weapons and more), and the PlayStation.Blog also have new details and the following trailer:


The other new content I wanted to talk about was the latest additions to the Burnout Paradise DLC offerings. In Springtime, Criterion will be adding some paid downloadable content to the game in the shape of four ‘legendary cars’: the Back to the Future-inspired 88 Special, the Ghostbusters-inspired Manhattan Spirit, the Nightrider-inspired Carson Nighthawk, and the Calvary Bootlegger, which is based on the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard. More details here.

Elsewhere on the internet this week:

Anyway, we’ve all managed to get some gaming in as well this week. Myself and Aquatic had great fun running through the MGS content for LittleBigPlanet, mostly because we couldn’t get Mercenaries 2’s online co-op to work. I also put a bit of time in with Savage Moon – doing surprisingly well, and Mirror’s Edge – getting nowhere, and Aquatic completed Bioshock. Seriously, he’s a game-completing machine. And he’s catching up on me with trophies, bastard. Armadillo has been switching between World at War and Smackdown, with a bit of World of Goo thrown in for good measure, and Fryingpan has been playing a whole bunch of shit.

Next week on the blog looks like a winner too, with lots going on, and hopefully (fingers-crossed) some exclusive content! Check back throughout the week, you lovely people. Toodles!

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